Having spent more than three decades in the heart of the Back Bay, the Church of Scientology is still working on moving its headquarters to the South End. The church plans to renovate space in the Alexandra Hotel building and a neighboring brownstone, thus expanding its base to nearly twice the size of its current 26,000-square-foot location at 448 Beacon Street. The church bought the space in early 2008 from previous owner, Peter Bakis, for an undisclosed amount, but has yet to move its operation.
The sale came as a surprise, as city officials had expected the building to be converted into condos with retail space on the ground floor. Since the announcement, reaction from some in the South End community and the media has been split, but church officials hope the new location will serve to educate people about Scientology and lead them to draw their own conclusions.
"The main reason it's so great is because when someone walks in and says, 'What is this place?' you can see exactly what it is about and answer any questions that you have without making easy mistakes," said Kevin Hall, the church's Social Reform Director.
Christopher Garrison serves as a minister on weekends and weeknights, delivering a Sunday sermon every week. With 39 years of experience in the church, Garrison said Scientology has motivated him to pursue injustice, learn more about psychology and realize his full physical and emotional potential.
After attending a Cambridge lecture in 1971, Garrison said he found a union of his passions for psychology and eastern religion in Scientology, a religion founded on mental and spiritual guidelines by author L. Ron Hubbard in 1954.
"About a year after the lecture, I was working at a day care center, and I said, 'What am I doing? I should go work for the church,'" he said.
First placed at one of the church's offices in Worcester, Garrison eventually relocated to work at the central church in Boston. In 1982, he became executive director for the Citizen's Committee on Human Rights (CCHR), a group stemming from the church. At CCHR, Garrison developed a profound sense of anger towards the practice of psychiatry, an industry he considers dangerous and corrupt.
"When I was in school, the thought of drugging a kid because he had trouble focusing would have been ridiculous," Garrison said, referencing the prescription of stimulants to kids diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. "Maybe he had trouble sleeping last night. Maybe his parents got in an argument."
Scientology deters followers from treating illness or pain with drugs, reasoning that such conditions are, as Garrison put it, "psychosomatic illnesses."
"Scientology addresses irrational pains and emotions caused by mental processes. You can learn to overcome those ways of thinking," said Garrison.
Having practiced the religion for nearly four decades, Garrison speaks about Scientology with intense conviction, fixing his listener with steady eye contact and gesturing with his large hands to demonstrate principles like "the tone scale," a spectrum of human conditions with corresponding numbers that range from "body death" (0 on the scale), to apathy (1.5), to the highest tone, "serenity of beingness" (40).
"I have always been interested in man and the general question, 'Why do people do what they do?'" he said. "I think it's fascinating to explore your true capabilities, which is what Scientology is about."
Asked about the controversy associated with Scientology through celebrities like Tom Cruise, who notoriously screamed and jumped on Oprah Winfrey's couch to express his relationship bliss, Garrison says that Cruise was simply manifesting a state of joy that non-Scientologists could not identify with.
"Once you progress to the higher tones, you are so ecstatic, so energetic, so positive, that you can't contain yourself," said Garrison. "[Cruise] was just blown out of his mind."
Commanding attention in a spacious, third-floor room with views of the Charles River, Garrison closes each Sunday sermon by reading "The Scientology Prayer for Total Freedom." Garrison radiates calm authority through his tall, thin frame, which stands like a static column next to the boulder-sized sculpture of Hubbard in the center of the room.
"At this time, we think of those whose liberty is threatened, of those who have suffered imprisonment for their beliefs, of those who are enslaved or martyred, and for all those who are brutalized, trapped or attacked," Garrison reads.
Garrison attributes attacks on Scientology to ignorance.
"And ignorance is the opposite of what we value," he said. "We propose understanding and knowledge."
Church officials say they are still in the early stages of relocating. The church's legal administrator, Paul Bradford, said though the church is already drafting plans with a design firm, the church on 448 Beacon Street has not yet been put on the market. The church will collaborate with the Boston Redevelopment Authority and South End residents to achieve an agreeable design.
Bradford said the new space was ideal in size and location. Set in a salient corner between Massachusetts Avenue and Washington Street, the Alexandra has great potential for a large, welcoming environment that the church aims to create, said Bradford.
Both Hall and Bradford emphasized the importance of the church's role as a resource in the community. As the social reform director, Hall said he is in charge of all the church's "external programs," such as CCHR and the volunteer ministry, which aim to inform the public about issues like drug abuse and illiteracy. Through distributing pamphlets from the South End to "the projects, where help is needed," Hall said he views education as the best means to prevent crime.
"We do a lot of tutoring at the ministry, which is important because many juvenile delinquents are functionally illiterate," said Hall.
Scientology has grown into an international movement in 165 countries, with 45 churches in the U.S. Recently renovated churches in New York and Washington, D.C., will serve as models for the renovation of the Boston church, according to Hall. In the current church's current lobby, computerized pictures of the new church depict wall-to-ceiling windows in a spacious room with colorful informational displays and burgundy upholstered seating for observers.
"The design is built to be more accessible to the public, with information stands that people can peruse in a huge reception area that will take up the entire first floor," said Bradford. "It's very exciting. The new church will turn out fantastic."
