This is a subject that came up recently in a staff memories thread. I'd be interested what a wider audience thinks of it.
After hearing many stories about how hard CofS org staff work, on projects that are duly rationalized at the time but in retrospect seem pointless, I started to compare how Scientology staff compares to the paid staff of mainstream religious denominations. There seems to be a striking difference.
Most Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, and I think also most Muslim mosques or Sikh temples, and maybe most other major religions as well, have a sort of similar pattern. For a group of public roughly as large as seems to be served by an Scn org, the mainstream religions will typically have one or two professional staff members with specific training at the university level, who work normal professional hours, work under minimal supervision from any superiors, and are paid at a middle-class level. Beyond this, they will have a sort of core membership of dedicated public, some of whom will serve the institution as volunteers, often under the guidance of the professional staff member. Most of these core members have serious secular careers, and do their religious volunteering on the side; a few may have volunteer charitable or religious activities as the main thing they do with their time. None of these people are paid.
In contrast, the Church of Scientology does not seem to have any staff members with training that is really comparable to a Master's degree, or who are paid anything like a middle class salary. Instead it has a lot more staff who are poorly paid and trained, and in general also very closely but poorly managed.
The conclusion I tentatively draw is that the CofS really has no clergy, and that what its staff (including the Sea Org) represents is not an alternative clergy, but rather, a core membership that is (nominally) paid by the Church, instead of supporting itself with secular careers, and tightly controlled.
If this theory is correct, the true main purpose of org staff is not precisely to serve or promote the Church of Scientology, but rather to BE the Church of Scientology — the stable hard core of adherents that keeps the movement in being, and ensures that any new recruits will have something to join. And the investment in lavish 'Ideal Orgs' is not necessarily to be understood as a recruitment drive to bring in lots more public, but rather as a retention plan to keep the staff in place. A sort of urban alternative to what other cults do when they set up elaborate compounds in remote places and get all their core members to move there.
This guess of mine could of course be wrong, and I welcome other suggestions from people with more knowledge than I have. But the difference between what Scientology does with and for paid staff, and what other religions do, seems pretty striking. I think there ought to be a reason.
And my prejudice is that the reason should not just be incompetence, because I think a truly incompetent organization could not have lasted as long as the CofS already has. I'm not saying that the CofS is competent at what it claims to be doing! But I think it must be competent at something, or it wouldn't have gotten this far. So I think there must be some method to the apparent madness of the way the CofS staffs its orgs, and treats its staff.
What could that method be? Why, really, does the CofS handle staff the way it does?
Hi, Some interesting questions. To give you my view I need to prise apart a few points:
1. Comparative religions
Scientology SELLS future benefit that is intangible with a heavy emphasis on the afterlife and a premise that you are/have an imortal soul. This benefit is not verifiable.
Like other religions it claims to teach the "true" story of how mankind got to the point where we find ourselves today. Establishes a "world view" with only the adherents being "in the know", again not able to be verified.
It then prescribes values and priorities, determines which behaviours are good or evil, procedures for improvement of the individual, rules, penalties, goals etc.
It establishes a rigid hierachy and in order to rise one must embrace all of the above.
Do YOU think Scientology fits the model for a religion? I do, it even has that last little ingedient - you must have faith in something/someone other than yourself.
2. Academic qualifications at the top.
COB, ED Int, CO FSO, SNR HAS Int, FBO ANZO have something very much in common with top executives in other churches, commercial organisations, government organisations and even charities: They believe they are qualified by training and experience. The difference is that the non-Scientology executives value academic standards, the evolution of professional wisdom and have access to the real world and historical example to judge which business strategies, organisational methods etc they wish to use. And they do not have the same "faith" in their commercial education as they do in their religious education. They demand results, proof, and recognise that a market has choice. They continually update and evolve their own education. They watch other organisations do well and make mistakes, they go to networking functions, access the media and have some degree of acceptance for the processes of the real world.
A Scientology executive has "faith" that his OEC-FEBC is every bit as valid as an MBA - in fact would scoff at an academic qualification and hold that the information in the green vols is much much more acurate - in fact any other material on commerce, marketing, finance, organisational stucture is the product of an abberated world where colarboration is the norm (Hubbard stated creation can only be done by an individual) and which are leading our civilisation down the road to hell. Under this is an endemic and intentional xenophobia against any non-scientology information, organisation or individual.
Any trained admin exec in the SO likley considers his training to be superior to a Doctorate in Organisational Psychology and Global Commerce.
Because Hubbard ceased to plagerise commercial material in the 1970's and thereafter only regurgitated his own paranoid meanderings in thought,
his methods and teaching about the business of the church are mumified and archaic. The strategies are not devised for the world in which they are being applied and in fact even when they were written, they were edited according to what Hubbard liked or didn't like, so fit his values and intentions. (see thread by Hellavahoax about seeds and what grows from them)
3. Clergy of the COS
The Clergy does exist. Trained in the religious practices of Scientology, ministers are called auditors and C/Ses and course supervisors and are all ordained as ministers. in 1983 the order went downthe lines, be ordained or be declared. Scientology went from a non-religious business to a religious business to protect it's tax exemption and this change was the most thorough and permeating change I have ever seen in any organisation and without so much as a peep from the members because other than then word religion and therefore association with organisations that Scientologists held in contempt, this is how we had operated for decades.
Further, administrators could be said to be ordained ministers of the organisational faith and many, if not most have some technical training and many are ordained. There are even clergy who are in the field and practicing the religious activities out there.
4.Being the Church or promoting the Church?
These are not mutually exclusive. Every single ordained minister delivering tech, every administrator ensuring the tech is being delivered and even every field satff member is charged with the growth of the practice. They are pushed in every way, by training, by the internal belief that if they don't get someone in that person is forever lost to their eternity, and down the lines from seniors who are counting every person in, every book sold, every hour audited, ect.
The Laity would be considered pulic who have no mandate to audit and even they are psuhed to be "Feild Staff members" and get their family, friends, neighbours, work colleauges into the faith.
One of the cheif gripes shared by those in and out of Scn staff and SO is that staff and SO do NOT get the services they work so hard to deliver to the public. So in this regard they are not "being the church" actually, they are just prpomoting and ensuring others can "be the church and practice the faith".
This is a major difference between Scientology and the religions you mention. I expect most clergy get counselled, get time to pray, do penance, go to confession, whatever the practice is. Few SO or staff get auditing, other than sec checks which are actually NOT bridge actions.
5. Ideal orgs - for promotion?
Nope and not a staff retention strategy either. It is to move cash reserves from the orgs and public into buildings which are owned by the Int Landlord. Real estate is the core business of all the big franchises - think Mac Donalds -and Scientology is just joining it's big brothers like the Catholic Church. Did you know that the Catholic Church owns more land globally than any other organisation? Perhaps Davie has some idea he'd like more glitz, perhaps he has reaslied the value of real estate? If he felt he needed to address staff retention he might consider paying them or allowing them their bridge services. make the orgs and staff bankcrupt themselves to buy him buildings? Not a staff retention strategy in anyone's mind not even Davy's. My expectation is that it was a strategy to draw the money out of those few public to whom they have nothing more to sell and who still have millions and once it began it was then adopted world wide and the PR generated for the original purpose has gathered faith of its own. And once a strategy is shifting money from one group to another why would they stop it?
6. I am not confident that your information about the organisational set up for other churches is accurate. I have friends who have worked in other church organisations and anecdotally it shounds like they have far more paid staff (unordained and therefore not clergy) than you suggest, and also more un- or under - paid religious clergy. The volunteers who work in addition to a full time secular job or running a family absolutely exist and at cold face level where the services meet the market there may be a lot of them but I suspect the percentage is still low, perhaps 15%. Tithing also occours and in some churches this is 100% of the ministry giving 10%+ to the church of what they earn, Where do you get your information?
7. Why is it set up this way?
Because slave labour makes the best profit. This religion has the faithful believing they MUST be altruistic or they are condemming the planet and therefore their families and themselves to everlasting abberation, war, crime and insanity. It used to be nuclear war Hubbard was suggesting, today I guess it is "fourth dynamic insanity will mean the end of the world by national altercation or global warming". And the carrot is eternal control over your self, and everything else. Pretty big incentives and an indoctrination process that is highly effecive.
Look to the actions taken and what is accepted and what is not to know the real values. Scientology makes profit no matter what. It accepts staff NOT going up the bridge despite saying that reason it iexists is to get people up the bridge. It accepts families being ripped apart, people dying on service lines, staff who are less confident and empowered every year. Staff who are unhappy, poverty stricken, sick and socially disabled. It does NOT accept a downtrending GI statistic. It does NOT accept cross orders to money being sent up lines.
My god, it even accepts "the books Hubbard published for 30 years are wrong" but not "I have one set of books and I don't want to buy another."
It accepts Our EX-most highly trained person was an SP all along.... but not this OT VII says he does not need a sec check,thankyou.
The COS always accepts something that brings in more money and always rejects anything that smacks of someone making their own decision/judgement/observations. They do not respect their own integrity or quality or value to others - there is NO critisism to which they will listen. They DO value their appearance and how it might affect their income. Multi millions spent on legal fights and on events that allow them to tell everyone how well they are doing when all evidence shows the orgs are smaller, staff less stable and public reluctant to introduce their family.
8. Competence
I agree there is no competence in helping people achieve total freedom. And since there is no way to check how they are doing after they die of cancer on OT VIII, I guess we can't hold them to account for that one. (Apologies to anyone who is affected by cancer or on OTVIII for my crass joke). I never met a competent scientologist who was not competant before Scientology. I met some who felt happier, but none who had better lives by the things I value; friends, family a sense of fun, lightheartedness, compassion, wisdom, travel, understanding my fellow man, love, etc.
There is some competence in maintaining the closed system that Scientology depends upon and alot of this is built into the "tech". Once in the connections to outside influence are severed by implanting beliefs; PTS tech, the idea that everyone else is abberated, that you are vulnerable to SPs, all media are evil, all other practices are dangerous, all psychologists are going to prevent your progress, doubt is a lower condition. thoughts against scientology are evil, your opinion is suspect, don't talk to tohers about your case gain. if you don't have case gain you are an sp. I could fill a book.
With all the money coming in and so little going out at org level it is not hard to keep the big machine rolling, the key is the slave labour and tax exemption. Without that, the entire machine would grind to a halt. If minimum wage were imposed, even if staff were forced to put the money back into orgs, the profit margin would dissapear. Many companies run on a 3 -10% profit margin. Imagine a 30% profit tax and what that would do? Imagne the payroll tax? LOL! Imagine how quickly and how many staff would be in ethics for spending their money instead of handing it back? "You what? You paid to take your daughter to the doctor instead of putting it back into the org? Teason!" But it would be a new choice made every week, not one that was made 1.5 years ago and which requries a decision to stand against the group.
Goodness, what a rant! Hope it helps put another perspective on your theory.