Is Scientology Crumbling?

 Is Scientology Crumbling?

Over the last few days both Tony Ortega and Mike Rinder have presented stories about the immense recent decline of Scientology.

At The Underground Bunker Tony Ortega has a report that Scientology organizations have been on a steep decline over the last couple of years as many have closed for seven months and they now have extreme measures in place to prevent Covid from spreading and this has resulted in many people, possibly thousands or tens of thousands, of people leaving Scientology and not being replaced. 

Mike Rinder had a report on the decline of the stats of New York org and these are equally grim.

Plainly speaking, Scientology may have perhaps two to ten thousand members left, worldwide.

That's not enough to do much of anything. They are not going to be filling orgs, they are not going to be having a significant positive impact on any community or being very good at ever even faking it.

Maybe, David Miscavige can make Flag look viable if he puts a lot of eggs in that one basket, but I don't think he has enough people to do this successfully with a half dozen orgs and certainly not with all the Sea Org management orgs and service orgs and the regular orgs. It's just not feasible.

I think he's focusing on Flag in his efforts to get whales to buy up the property in Clearwater Florida so he can pretend Scientology is expanding.

I think he has no other answer to the decline of Scientology except to make more meaningless statistics for empty buildings and products that no one wants to give a facade of expansion for his rapidly hollow endeavor. 

He is probably trying to fool both the wealthy and famous people still in Scientology to avoid the negative publicity they could generate and also put forth enough of a fake effort to use some of the billions that Scientology has in cash and real estate for purposes he can pretend are charitable. Making lots of books and courses for Scientology seems kosher as does building an endless array of cathedrals, even if no one wants the materials and the big shiny buildings are almost all nearly entirely empty and actually not helping anyone in any way. 

It's remotely plausible that this way of spending some part of his billions and billions and billions in assets is intended to help Scientology survive or expand. It just needs to fool the people who frankly want to be fooled, meaning they already have reasons why the lies are easier to accept than reject, they are predisposed to preferably believing what Miscavige is selling over doubting or rejecting it, so they won't look too deeply.

The big question of course for critics of Scientology is if these recent reports are supported by a lot of good evidence and the new reality becomes a Scientology in steep decline, much like Christian Science with many empty reading rooms and virtually no growth in many decades, what will WE do?

Several court cases still loom, but if Scientology is settling into a shell of its former self, a nearly dormant husk and it is not going to be very active, outside of perhaps Clearwater Florida and a handful of other places in any significant way, then what is left for us to do?

I still sympathize with people who want to be reunited with family members in Scientology and hope they can reconcile with them and that people can escape the grip of Scientology but if they are not going to be much of a threat anymore, what is left to be done?

I just don't know. The subject has a different meaning for people who were in the group for years and had their lives severely negatively affected than it does for most people who are simply curious about it.

I think for myself and a lot of others it may be shifting to a much, much smaller part of our lives. 

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Is Scientology Crumbling?