Journalist and author Lawrence Wright has won a Pulitzer Prize once before (for his book on 9/11 The Looming Tower). His new book – Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief – should put him in contention for the same prize.
Going Clear is a fascinating read in that it serves as an outsider’s guide to a religion that few who operate without being inside the religion’s base would know about. Scientology is perhaps the most recent major religion to join the American social-cultural landscape. With no practices or creeds well-known within society, many look at Scientology as a weird cult that has a glib obsession with celebrity.
Wright’s work goes in detail back to the formative years of Scientology’s founder – L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer for pulp fiction magazines whose later work, Dianetics, would become the foundation for a world religion. Hubbard’s work is voluminous (he is to date the most published author in history with over 1,000 printed books) and all of it is taken word-for-word as doctrinal truth within the church, according to Wright. This includes everything from a sort of talking therapy (called “auditing”) that has affected (and improved) the lives of many. It also includes strange scripture surrounding a tyrannical alien named Xenu that forced what we would call souls (or in Scientology terms, “thetans”) into what are our bodies – this of course happened billions and billions of years ago – and blinded us humans to our immortal potential.
Hubbard’s life is dizzying and exhumes the bulk of Wright’s work. Wright writes Hubbard to be a liar and a fraud when it comes to his war record and injuries (his lies are easily disproved). Hubbard can also be seen – and is seen by many – as a philanderer, an extortion artist, a con man, an empirical tyrant, a bully, a sociopath and a compulsive liar.
But Hubbard’s works have also touched the lives of millions and ring true for them. Millions believe and say that they have personally witnessed the good that auditing can do; the church claims that if you reach a certain level of goodness, then you will receive super-powers like mind control, telekinesis and the ability to levitate.
However, many who have left the church have claimed that they are abused and used as exploited labor. Some even claim that the church is simply a free labor camp and just a huge Ponzi scheme of sorts. Scientologists have come forward saying that they have tried to flee, but are then forced to disconnect from their families. Many claim to have seen physical harm done to others by the church’s current leader David Miscavige, for menial and insignificant reasons, as well as Miscavige’s enforcers.
Wright’s book explores the church’s obsession with celebrity, particularly the hearty bonds that the church shares with such stars as Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Anne Archer among others. I would love to go into further analysis of those chapters, but the content is so juicy and exquisitely written that you must read it for yourself.
There are many bold statements made in Wright’s book, but the puzzling thing is we will likely never find out whether Wright’s claims are true or not. Scientologists are not allowed to read anything that attacks their church and leader Miscavige hasn’t spoken to journalists in years since an interview with Ted Koppell that went horribly for the church’s allegedly brutish leader.
While every word of Wright’s work may not be true – if it’s not, then Scientologists are certainly doing themselves a disservice by not reading it – but many of the stories have been corroborated and investigated so thoroughly that I would have a hard time believing that they were false. It’s the best investigation done on the subject thus far and Going Clear is a book that deserves your attention.
Written by Brian Laughran