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Scientology--Is This A Religion

July 1, 1997
by Stephen A. Kent Ph.D. Religious Studies 

					Stephen A. Kent (Ph.D.)
					Department of Sociology
					University of Alberta
					Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
					T6G 2H4
					This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract

Although some social scientists insist that Scientology is a religion, the more appropriate position to take is that the organization is a multi faceted transnational that has religion as only one of its many components. Other components include political aspirations, business ventures, cultural productions, pseudo-medical practices, pseudo-psychiatric claims, and (among its most devoted members who have joined the Sea Organization), an alternative family structure. Sea Organization's job demands appear to allow little time for quality child rearing. Most disturbing, however, about Sea Organization life is that members can be subject to extremely severe and intrusive punishments through security checks, internal hearings called "Committees of Evidence," and a forced labour and re-indoctrination program known as the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) and its harshest companion, the RPF's RPF. Taken together, these harsh and intrusive punishments likely violate a number of human rights clauses as outlined by two United Nations statements.

June 30, 1997

Scientology -- Is this a religion?

Rarely, if ever, in the post-war period have diplomats from the superpowers troubled themselves over questions about the alleged religious nature of a transnational organization. Consequently, the current debate between Germany and the United States over the alleged religious nature of Scientology is remarkable, and probably unique in recent history. The fact that German officials, institutions, and citizens are seeking additional information about this organization is commendable, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share insights that may help to clarify the issues in this debate.

For the record, I did not have any contact with German parliamentary officials as I was preparing my talk. For about ten minutes I spoke by telephone with one German professor who is involved with the current discussion about the organization, but we only touched briefly on issues related to Scientology. The German Kirchentag paid my air fare and my hotel in Leipzig, and Berliner Dialog is covering some of my expenses, but they are not paying me a fee or honorarium. I prepared my talk while in Canada, and did not consult with anyone in Germany or elsewhere about its content. I had complete freedom to write whatever I wanted around the general topic of the debate about Scientology's religious claims.

As a person trained in religious studies, I find the debate about Scientology's alleged religious nature to be an interesting and important one. It should not be, however, the only issue over which we evaluate the German American debate over Scientology's religious claims. Intimately related to the religious question are human rights questions. Some people assume that religious practice is a guaranteed human right, but even a superficial examination of world events shows that many atrocities occur in the name of God or religion. Universally, therefore, religious belief must receive absolute protection, but religious practice stemming from that belief must receive protection only until it begins to violate the rights of its members or nonmembers. Following from this last point, I argue that even if Scientology contains a theology and cosmology that some members interpret religiously, its organizational actions and behaviours raise serious human rights questions. Without wanting to review the pronouncements from all German officials about the organization, I conclude that the German government has good reason to investigate Scientology's activities in this country. It also has compelling reasons to inquire about the well-being of German citizens in Scientology facilities in the United States and elsewhere. I will share just a few of the documents that led me to these conclusions, and some of them are available in numerous world wide web sites on the "internet."

Is Scientology a Religion?

For a number of my social scientific colleagues around the world, the debate between Germany and the U.S. revolves around the question of Scientology's religious claims. Many of my social scientific colleagues have examined some Scientology documents and possibly participated in some Scientology events, and they have concluded that the organization is religious in nature. Bryan R. Wilson (b. 1926), for example, who is a respected British sociologist of religion, concluded "that Scientology must indeed be regarded as a religion" (Wilson, 1990: 288). He reached this conclusion after comparing Scientology's belief system with twenty characteristics usually found within what he called "known religions" (Wilson, 1990: 279). Significantly for the current debate in this country, he dismissed historical information from the early 1950s about Dianetics presenting itself as "a mental therapy and Scientology a science." Specifically with these early self-representations in mind, Wilson insisted that "even if it could be conclusively shown that Scientology took the title of 'church' specifically to secure at law as a religion, that would say nothing about the status of the belief-system, and it is with the belief system that we are specifically concerned" (Wilson, 1990: 282-283).[1]

Footnote: [1] Undoubtedly because of this interpretation, Wilson has become a champion of Scientology's religious claims (see also Wilson, n.d.: 35) and the organization alludes to him ("[t]he foremost sociologist in the world") as an academic who concluded "that Scientology was setting the trend for the 21st century for all religions -- as it offers practical solutions for people's problems in the real world" (International Association of Scientologists, 1995: [10]). Scientology also employs his opinion in arguing before an American court that the organization has the right to keep secret its upper level materials (Wilson, 1994: 11).

In fact, I have made precisely the argument that Wilson dismisses. In a study that Berliner Dialog (Heft 1-97) translated into German, and in another study that I hope to publish soon, I show that L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology's founder) claimed that Scientology was a religion because he saw the claim as a marketing device to make money and avoid taxes (Kent, 1997b: 25ff; Miller, 1987: 199-203, 220) as well as a way "to reduce the likelihood of governmental interventions against it for allegedly practising medicine without a license" (Kent, 1996: 30). Moreover, Scientology denies its reputedly religious nature if it is attempting to enter a country that might react adversely to religious proselytization (such as Japan or Greece [Kent, 1997a: 18-19]). Nevertheless, the historical reasons behind Scientology's religious claims, as well as the organization's selectivity in making the claims, do not diminish the probability that many Scientologists view their commitment as a religious one.

From a social scientific perspective, and probably from a legal one as well, the objective "truth" of an ideology is not the determinant of a group's "religious" designation. Mere belief in supernatural beings or forces may be enough to get an ideology designated as religious, even if the origins or doctrines of the belief system are highly suspect. Along these lines, the inspirational figure in the sociology of religion, Max Weber, refused to exclude charlatans from his identification of charismatic figures, since the devotion of followers was a far more salient fact than authenticity. After mentioning two types of charismatic figures, Weber added that "[a]nother type is represented by Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonisn, who may have been a very sophisticated swindler (although this cannot be definitely established)" (Weber, 1968: 242). Similarly, from a social scientific perspective, a belief system is religious if it contains supposedly supernatural elements, regardless of the accuracy of those elements. Perhaps unlike Joseph Smith, Hubbard's sophisticated swindle has been definitely exposed by a number of critics (for example, Atack, 1990; Kent, 1996; Miller, 1987) who have shown that his religious alignment was purely expedient, but now many of his followers see their lives in the context of the doctrines that he developed.

Scientology as a Multi-Faceted Transnational

Even if we grant the point that Scientology cosmology and soteriology have supernatural elements that classify the belief-system as religious (regardless of these elements' suspect history), neither government officials nor society at large should necessarily grant Scientology religious status for purposes of receiving societal benefits. Rather than struggling over whether or not to label Scientology as a religion, I find it far more helpful to view it as a multifaceted transnational, only one element of which is religious. Coinciding with supernatural claims are equally important secular dimensions relating to political aspirations, business operations, cultural productions, pseudo-medical practice, pseudo-psychiatric practice, social services (some of which are of dubious quality), and alternative family structures. A few examples of each dimension will suffice, but countless examples of each one exist throughout both Scientology's literature and the social behaviour of its members. The most salient aspect of Scientology, however, is the totalitarian, some would say fascistic, use of power that holds the organization together. I will speak about some of these totalitarian uses of power, and in doing so it will be very clear that the German government has taken the only appropriate avenue open to it.

Politics

Scientology's political aspirations have surfaced at various times throughout its nearly fifty year history, with the organization involving itself with politicians or political structures in Rhodesian (in 1966), Greece (in 1968 to 1969), Morocco (in 1972), and in the Russian city of Perm (where it was training city officials in Hubbard Management ideology). Observers wonder about the fate of Scientology training to Albanian government officials after the recent popular uprisings and social collapse (see Kent, 1997a: 17 18).

Business

At times related to its political aspirations (as in Perm) are Scientology's programs designed to train business executives and professionals often in medically related areas. Through an organization named WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises), Scientology offers a business consultancy and management program. A recent publication claims that "WISE [m]embers form a network of highly trained consultants in Hubbard Management Technology who can provide you with tailor-made training programs to suit your company's needs" (WISE International, 1994b). WISE programs target various clients through numerous companies, and in Germany and other parts of Europe the best known WISE company is U-Man (see, for example, WISE International, 1994a). For all practical purposes, this dimension of Scientology is secular, regardless of how the organization portrays it.

Cultural

Culturally, Scientology has an entire industry devoted to the production and dissemination of Hubbard's writings and ideological material to both members and outsiders. The Scientology owned and operated (and now tax exempt) Bridge Publications, for example, produced a volume solely dedicated to The Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard (Widder, 1994), which discusses his writings of Westerns, adventure stories, mystery and detective stories, romance, fantasy, science fiction, plays, and screenplays (among others), and makes little if any mention of his supposedly "religious" writings. The actor and Scientology public relations officer, John Travolta (Anderson, 1980: 3; Church of Scientology International, 1994), is working on a movie version of Hubbard's science fiction work, Battlefield Earth, while a team of Hollywood producers is developing a film version of the Hubbard pulp novel, To the Stars (Reuters, 1997).

As these current film productions suggest, Scientology is eager to be involved with projects that disseminate its ideology to nonmembers through high profile cultural undertakings. One vital aspect of this dissemination effort involves cultivating the conversion and support of society's cultural celebrities. Beginning in 1955, Hubbard's "Project Celebrity" targeted what he called "prime communicators" with the hope that they would "mention" Scientology "now and again" ([Hubbard], 1955). By 1992, thirteen "celebrity centres" existed around the world (Church of Scientology International, 1992: 353), and their purpose was "[t]o fully utilize opinion leaders and Scientologists to permeate society and get all the different publics utilizing LRH's Technology in every aspect..." (Jentzsch and Foster, 1977: 1). This organizational push to get everyone using Hubbard's so-called technology has dramatic secular implications for such issues of how to organize an office, how to generate and handle money, and how to measure office growth. It presumably also may have implications for people's supernatural belief systems, but it is understandable that critics see Scientology celebrities as participating in the dissemination of secular Scientology goals.

In addition to free publicity for Scientology, celebrities also give large financial contributions back to the organization. Had Scientologist Chick Corea, for example, received money from the Baden-Wurttemberg state culture ministry for performing at state-sponsored events, then some of that income may have become part of his contributions to the International Association of Scientologists. The avowed purpose of this organization is "[t]o unite, advance, support and protect the Scientology religion and Scientologists in all parts of the world, so as to achieve the Aims of Scientology as originated by L. Ron Hubbard" (International Association of Scientologists, 1995: [back cover]). In one of the Association's 1995 magazines, both he and actress Kirstie Alley each appeared as having contributed US$100,000 (Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International, 1995: 8; International Association of Scientologists Administration, 1995: 49, see 60). By comparison, the $2,000 contribution that John Travolta made seems small (Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International, 1996: 8; see International Association of Scientologists Administration, 1995: 60). What Germans will want to know, however, is that this organization provided grants to the Church of Scientology International in order to fund the series of anti-Germany ads in the New York Times and the Washington Post (both beginning, I believe, on September 15, 1994). Utilizing cultural productions and prominent cultural figures, therefore, to disseminate all aspects of Hubbard's so-called tech is an intimate aspect of the organization's overall public relations and (it would seem) financial strategies.

Pseudo-Medicine

A glimpse into Scientology's pseudo-medical practices -- in this case one that also relates to a social service effort of dubious effectiveness -- is its Narconon program. This program purports to rid the body of drug and radiation residues, and a 1996 Scientology publication told a story about an American Gulf War veteran suffering from Gulf War Syndrome who "arrived to do the detoxification program... complain[ing] of disorientation, dizziness, memory loss and muscle and joint pain. He finished the program and has no more dizziness, memory loss OR muscle and joint pain -- ALL his symptoms have been handled TOTALLY" (Church of Scientology International, 1996: 68 [original emphasis). You may have read recently that Scientologists applied the Narconon program to children suffering from radiation-related illnesses in Chernobyl (Bev, 1997).

Regardless of how Scientology portrays these claims, they are medical ones that purport to offer a social service, but one about which experts remain highly critical. In the American state of Oklahoma, for example, a 1991 mental health board examined a Narconon program and concluded that "there is substantial credible evidence, as found by the Board, that the Narconon Program is unsafe and ineffective" (Mental Health Board, 1991; reproduced in Lobsinger, 1991: 58).

Pseudo-Psychiatry

Another dimension of pseudo-medical claims are pseudo-psychiatric ones. Scientology's hatred of psychiatry is worthy of a study in itself, and some of its own documents very clearly indicate that Scientology's primary social purpose is the destruction of psychiatry and its replacement with Scientology techniques. In, for example, a confidential document written for Scientology's intelligence branch (then known as the Guardian Office), the unidentified author, who most certainly was Hubbard himself, had a section entitled "The War." The text in this section stated that "[o]ur war has been forced to become 'To take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms.'" The next sentences have significant implications for the current religious debate. "That was not the original purpose. The original purpose was to clear Earth. The battles suffered developed the data that we had an enemy who would have to be gotten out of the way and this meant we were at war" ([Hubbard], 1969: [5]). The central target in Scientology's efforts to "take over the field of mental healing" is psychiatry. Indeed, several Scientology organizations, including the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, the International Association of Scientologists, and Freedom magazine are working diligently in attempting to achieve the goal of "Eradicating Psychiatry" (Weiland, 1990: 21).

One aspect of Scientology's efforts to eradicate psychiatry and replace it with its own techniques is that members can take a course (called a rundown) that claims to teach members how to cure psychosis. Called the "Introspection Rundown Auditor Course," this course supposedly "factually handles the last of the 'unsolvable' conditions which can trap a person -- the psychotic break. And end forever the 'reason' psychs were kept around with their icepicks and shock machines" (Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization, 1992: [2]). This course is based upon what Hubbard described as "a technical breakthrough which possibly ranks with the major discoveries of the Twentieth Century." The consequence of this alleged breakthrough was that "THIS MEANS THE LAST REASON TO HAVE PSYCHIATRY AROUND IS GONE" (Hubbard, 1974: 346). The self-proclaimed "breakthrough" involved isolating the person having the psychotic breakdown while not speaking to the person, giving the person particular vitamins and minerals, determining what incident triggered the illness, then putting the person through a long and complex series of Scientology "counselling" sessions (called auditing) that focus on the triggering incident Hubbard, 1974: 353).

Currently this course is at the centre of controversy involving the December 5, 1995 death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson in Clearwater, Florida. After a minor car accident, McPherson exhibited bizarre behaviour -- publicly undressing, speaking in monotone with a fixed stare, exhibiting forgetfulness and confusion, and crying. Against medical advice, she signed herself out of a hospital and into the care of visiting Scientology "friends" who took her to the organization's Fort Harrison Hotel. Seventeen days later, Scientologists took her back to a somewhat distant hospital where a doctor was working who was a Scientologist, and he pronounced her dead. A police investigation continues over her death, but McPherson's estate launched a lawsuit that accused Scientology "of allowing McPherson to languish in a coma without nutrition and liquids while she was in isolation as part of an Introspection Rundown" (Tobin, 1997: 12A). In this context, a Scientology lawyer acknowledged "that the Introspection Rundown remains 'part of church services'" (Tobin, 1997: 12A). Undoubtedly, therefore, Scientology practices pseudo-psychiatry, and the lawsuit over McPherson's death may establish the extent to which at least one of these practices can have potentially fatal consequences.

Scientology as an Alternative Family Structure

Finally, Scientology is an alternative family structure, at least as it is lived by its most devoted followers who are members of a Scientology organization called Sea Org[anization]. Scientology portrays the Sea Org as "a fraternal organization existing within the formalized structure of the Churches of Scientology. It consists of highly dedicated members of the Church [who] take vows of service" (Church of Scientology of California, 1978: 205). (The organization downplays the fact that these people sign billion year contracts.) Many indicators point to the fact that Scientology structures the Sea Org in a manner that damages parent-child relations if not the well-being of children in general. In essence, Sea Org becomes one's new family, often at the expense of spouses and children.

Indication of organizationally influenced damage caused by Sea Org parents to their children formed the basis of a critical article that appeared in a major newspaper of the Florida city near to where the Scientology organization called Flag is based. In November, 1991, the St. Petersburg Times ran a long article entitled, "Scientology's Children," and it contained an excerpt about a German mother and her son:

  • Eva Kleinberg moved from Germany to Clearwater with her 9-year old son, Mark, in 1986. She had joined a group of Scientology staff members called the 'Sea Org.'
  • Eva was told she would have two hours a day for family time. But with her travel time from work, she said she actually had only one hour with her son. Because of the 12-hour workdays, she couldn't always stay awake for the full hour.
  • 'I would compromise with my son,' she said. After eating, she and her son would divide the remaining half-hour of their family time. 'I would play a game with him for 15 minutes, and I would go to lay down for 15 minutes and sleep.'
  • While Eva worked, Mark cleaned up around the motel or played with friends.
  • About a year later, Eva and Mark left the church.
  • Asked what he thinks of Scientology, Mark, now 14, said, 'I don't think it's good 'cause the people... they don't get to spend time with their family and it's real expensive.'
  • Church spokesman Richard Haworth said staff Scientologists actually spend three or four hours a day with their children, which he said is more than the average family (Krueger, 1991: 12A).
I believe the Kleinbergs' account rather than the one by the Scientology spokesperson because I had heard the same scenario (about parents having little time to spend with children) during an interview with a former Sea Org member that I conducted in December, 1987. At Flag in Florida during the late 1970s and early 1980s, infants stayed in a Scientology-run nursery during the day when parents worked, and usually parents would return from work at about 6:00 in the evening and spend about an hour-and-a-half with their children before taking them back to the nursery at 7:30 for bed. Parents then caught a bus back to the Sea Org, and finally did not leave for the night until 10:30 or later. In the morning, they would pick up their children from the nursery, have them dressed and in the dining room by 7:30 AM, drop them back at the nursery, and be on the bus going to work by ten minutes past 8. This informant added, however, that "there'd be some people who had kids who didn't go home for two or three days in a row. They'd be working all night" (Kent interview with Fern, 1987: 44, see 43).

The Kleinbergs' account about limited family time also rings true because of a series of internal memos (of which I have copies) from Scientology's Pacific Area Command (in Los Angeles, California) beginning in early November, 1989. These memos centre around an Executive Directive that the commanding officer issued which abolished the one hour nightly family time. He cited two reasons for doing so. First, he claimed, "[a] thorough research [sic] revealed that there is no LRH [L. Ron Hubbard] reference covering Sea Org members taking 1 hour family time per day. Also to have such break in schedules in the middle of production has been found to be detrimental to production...." Instead he wanted people to work the extra hour a day in order to build up their production output so that they would receive a "liberty day" (Gouessan, 1989) once every two weeks (Shapiro, 1989).

Several parents objected, and their objections were revealing. One person asked rhetorically, "[h]ow can one keep track of one's child without even an hour a day with the child? I HAVE seen staff distracted by NOT caring for their children and this time could be well utilized for this" (Swartz, 1989). Another person cited the text of a Hubbard tape where Scientology's founder complained about a condition that he had seen (and which he said had existed in the Pacific Area Command): "I wish somebody would tell me why we consistently had to ORDER parents to see their children when they hadn't seen them for weeks" (Hubbard, Transcript of LRH Taped Briefing to CS-& and Pers Comm 22 Sept 73; attached to Shapiro, 1989). This same person acknowledged in his letter of protest that "[i]n the 19 years I have been in the Sea Org in PAC this condition (parental neglect, etc.) has several times been the source of major upset and enturbulation [agitation] on Church lines" (Shapiro, 1989 [round brackets in original]). Taken together, the interview material, media accounts, internal policy directive, and responses point to the fact that parents' time with their children is severely constrained and sometimes eliminated because of the organizational pressure and job demands under which Sea Org members work. It seems that Scientology, in its Sea Org manifestation, becomes something akin to an alternative or "fictive" family structure to its members (see Cartwright and Kent, 1992: 348-349), receiving more time and commitment than their own children.

On a related point, the new Sea Org family to which adults devote their lives may at times place children in medically detrimental situations. This fictive family may not always be a medically responsible one. The informant whom I interviewed in 1978, for example, complained to me that "the nursery conditions were terrible." She complained that, in one nursery room, "there were, I think, sixteen babies in the room, all under a year old, and throughout the whole day, there were three nannies who did shifts in that room, looking after sixteen babies all under a year old" (Kent interview with Fern, 1987: 48). Under these conditions, children developed medical problems (according to my informant, Fern), because the facility did not have an isolation nursery. Consequently, common childhood illnesses (such as ear infections) spread rapidly among the children and remained in the nursery population for a long time. To support her assertion, this informant showed me medical records that she kept of her child's visits to doctors while the child was under nursery care, and compared them with similar records from after the time that she and her child left Sea Org and the nursery arrangement. The child made seventeen visits to the doctor's office during an eight month period while in the nursery, then only four visits in the twenty-nine months following the family's departure from the organization (Kent interview with Fern, 1987: 49-50).

Researchers always must be cautious in accepting as fact the account of a single person, but I heard similar stories about the condition of children's facilities in Scientology's child care program on the other side of the American continent -- Los Angeles, California. The person who related the account had occasion to visit the children's facility (called the Cadet Org) in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and she saw an infant who was the child of a man she knew. This child, she stated:

was very, very ill and she was laying in a urine soaked crib and she was -- she just had her diaper on.... She had lots of like little fruit flies and gnats on her body and she had been so ill that she had tremendous amounts of mucous plugging her nose and her eyes were, like, welded shut with mucous and I, I just snapped in my head (Kent Interview with Pat, 1997: 34).
After this incident of allegedly witnessing severe child neglect, the person began plotting how she would leave the organization.

The final example of alleged child neglect is documented in a report filed by the commanding officer of the Cadet Estates Organization in late October, 1989, concerning the hygiene of three children -- ages 4, 8, and 10 or 11. Two of the children had lice, and for one of them it was a recurring problem. A guardian was in charge of them, but she "is herself on mission quite often." [That is to say, the organization frequently sent her away on assignments.]

Scientology and Probable Human Rights Abuses

Even to concede that Scientology may be a religion to many of its adherents, the basis for German governmental opposition to it has nothing to do with what people believe. It has everything to do with what German government officials know that the organization does. Consequently, this presentation concentrated heavily on the organization's social-psychological assaults on many of its most committed members, and I barely mentioned Scientology's ideological system. The assaults that I described are ones that German government officials seem to know about, and with that knowledge they have no choice other than to see Scientology as a threat to the democratic state. Were officials to grant Scientology religious status, then even more citizens than already now do, would increase their involvement to the point of becoming Sea Org members, and then at least some of them would be subject to the brutal conditions and programs that I described. With Germany's unique experiences with both National Socialism and Communism, it is unthinkable that responsible officials would facilitate the operation of a totalitarian organization that throws its members into forced labour and reeducation camps.

One of the tragedies in this debate is that normal Scientologists will feel persecuted and threatened. These people likely know nothing about RPF conditions, and they genuinely feel that Scientology involvement has benefitted them. The organization to which they belong, however, appears to be committing serious human rights abuses. Consequently, I conclude my presentation by highlighting areas of concern raised by examining the United Nations' 1948 resolution entitled The International Bill of Human Rights (United Nations, 1996b), and the 1996 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (United Nations, 1996a).

First, Scientology's procedures involving committees of evidence, sec checking, gang bang sec checking, and the two RPF programs almost certainly violate Articles 9 and 10 of the Bill. Article 9 protects people against "arbitrary arrest, detention or exile" while article 10 guarantees "a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his [sic] rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him" (United Nations, 1996: 23).

Second, Scientology's punishment of members for merely discussing the merits of Hubbard's teachings, as well as its invasive probing into people's thoughts though sec checking, almost certainly violate Articles 18 and 19 of the Bill that deal with both "the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and "the right to freedom of opinion and expression" (United Nations, 1996: 25).

Third, the various Scientology practices and procedures that I discussed may violate Article 17 of the Bill, which states that "[n]o one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation" (United Nations, 1996: 49).

Fourth, the conditions of the RPF and the RPF's RPF almost certainly violate Article 7 of the Covenant, which discusses "the right of everyone to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work..." (United Nations, 1996a: 38). The article specifically identifies fair wages, "[a] decent living for themselves and their families..., [s]afe and healthy working conditions..., and [r]est, leisure, and reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay...." (United Nations, 1996a: 38). Indeed, many Sea Org jobs themselves may not meet these reasonable standards of propriety, safety, and fairness.

Fifth and finally, the extreme social psychological assaults and forced confessions that RPF and RPF's RPF inmates suffer almost certainly violate Article 12 of the Covenant, which recognizes "the right of everyone to enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health" (United Nations, 1996a: 18).

These and probably other serious human rights issues swirl around Scientology programs that have tax exemption and operate within the boundaries of the United States. With these serious issues in mind, the American human rights criticism of Germany's opposition to Scientology is the height diplomatic arrogance. By granting Scientology tax exemption, the United States government is cooperating with an organization that appears to put citizens from around the world at significant mental health and perhaps medical risk. While in no way do I want my remarks today to be taken as a blanket endorsement of the German government's rhetoric or tactics, on the battle with Scientology the government has the high moral ground.

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