Debbie Cook was interviewed after the TRO trial. She was asked in the interview if she thought the Church could be salvaged after all this.
I don't think that someone can slip into the position of Church leader and pull it off for a 3rd time after all that has been revealed.
What are your thoughts?
I think it could happen. The
likeliness of it happening is uncertain, because it would depend on what it took to remove DM from power. And obviously it depends upon who would take over as a new leader -- and his or her reputation among the membership.
There's plenty of historical precedent for this, not the least of which is what happened to the Christian Science Church after the death of Mary Baker Eddy. (And, as with the freezone, many people felt that the Committee who took over were
not doing what she intended, and went elsewhere.) Something like 100 years after her death, the Christian Science Church is still around.
For a non-spiritual example, look at the number of leaders that Apple Computer had. Under Sculley's and Amelio's tenure, even the most ardent Apple fan felt betrayed; the things they loved about the company and its products had been lost. The company almost went out of business. A new leader who most people believed in turned the whole company around. He made hard choices, upset a lot of people, but ultimately brought the company back to profitability, got all the old customers back, and earned new ones by expanding the company's business.
And then there are plenty of examples of a big business bringing in new leadership that makes no real change... and those organizations generally die. People who can turn around a failing company (this time in membership, not dollars) are very rare.
What you personally think of the scn tech, Steve Jobs, or Apple equipment is irrelevant here. The question you raise -- and it's a good one -- is what effect new leadership would have on current members and the somewhat disaffected.
Undoubtedly there are people who
do believe that all the problems with the CoS rest at DM's feet, and that if we went back to some mystical time when everything was perfect (and "Standard Tech"), scientologists could get back to the real business of clearing the planet. (Again, we aren't talking about what _you_ believe but
their perceptions. And I shall avoid the obvious tangent about which particular standard tech someone likes from which particular time.)
For those people, still "in" or "left but with regrets and If Onlys," a new leader could indeed give them hope that things were going to be all right again. And it's interesting to contemplate what changes any new leader would feel comfortable with, given that the "corporate culture" (the one that would make a candidate acceptable) does not encourage thinking outside policy. How much would he or she be willing to dump -- and would the individual stay in power if he dumped anything?
Who that leader is would matter a lot, though. Some would rush back if Marty took over; some would run away if he did. I don't feel qualified to judge whom members would find trustworthy, since I'm long out of touch. Though at a guess I think Debbie Cook just earned admiration both inside and outside the organization and her name would come up in serious discussions.
It'd be one heck of a political wrestling match... especially since, as far as I know, there's no written policy on what the succession plan ought to be. (LRH, in his sometimes-brilliance sometimes-idiocy, may have had one written, but obviously DM would have burned it as part of the palace coup when he took over.)
Speaking for myself, as a quiet member of the Freezone: There are extremely few people who I could trust. And the ones I most respect probably wouldn't want the job, because they are concerned with the tech and being a CEO. So I'm not sure whether a change in leadership would bring back any of us who learned to distrust the organization... especially since many of us dumped most of the Green Vols even when we hung onto the Red Vols.
