The Church of Scientology, Should it still be recognized as a Religion, or not?

In 2011 support for Scientology in Switzerland was said to have experience a steady decline from 3,000 registered members in 1990 to 1,000 members and the organisation was said to be facing extinction in the country. The Church of Scientology and its large network of corporations, non-profits and other legal entities are estimated to make around 500 million US dollars in annual revenue. Scientologists can attend classes, exercises or counseling sessions for a set range of "fixed donations"; however, membership without courses or auditing is possible.

According to a sociological report entitled "Scientology: To Be Perfectly Clear", progression between levels above "clear" status cost $15,760.03 in 1980 (without including additional special treatments). 90 Scientologists can choose to be audited by a fellow Scientologist rather than by a staff member. Critics say it is improper to fix a donation for religious service; therefore the activity is non-religious.

Scientology points out many classes, exercises and counseling may also be traded for "in kind" or performed cooperatively by students for no cost, and members of its most devoted orders can make use of services without any donations bar that of their time. A central tenet of Scientology is its Doctrine of Exchange, which dictates that each time a person receives something, he or she must give something back. By doing so, a Scientologist maintains "inflow" and "outflow", avoiding spiritual decline.

While a number of governments now give the Church of Scientology protections and tax relief as an officially recognized religion,939495 other sources describe the Church as a pseudoreligion or a cult. 96 Sociologist Stephen Kent published at a Lutheran convention in Germany that he likes to call it a transnational corporation. Early official reports in countries such as the United Kingdom (1971), South Africa (1972), Australia (1965) and New Zealand (1969) have yielded unfavorable observations and conclusions.

There is currently no legal restriction in Australia on the practice of Scientology. In 1983 the High Court of Australia dealt with the question whether the Church of Scientology is a religious institution and as such not subject to payroll tax. The Court unanimously confirmed the Church of Scientology to be a religious institution.

On November 18, 2009 the Church came under fire from an Independent senator in the Commonwealth Parliament, Nick Xenophon. Under parliamentary privilege in the Senate, Xenophon declared that the Church of Scientology is a criminal organisation. In November 18, 2009, 19528, a Belgian prosecutor announced that they had finished an investigation of Scientology and said they would probably bring charges.

The church said the prosecutor's public announcement falsely suggested guilt even before a court could hear any of the charges. In November 18, 2009, 19529, Belgian officials completed their file on Scientology and brought charges of extortion, illegal medicine, various breaches of privacy, and fraud. In France, a parliamentary report classified Scientology as a dangerous cult.

106 On November 18, 20099, the leader of the Lyons Church of Scientology, Jean-Jacques Mazier, was convicted of fraud and involuntary homicide and sentenced to eighteen months in prison for his role in the death of a member who committed suicide after going deeply into debt to pay for Scientology auditing sessions. Fourteen others were convicted of fraud as well. 107 In 2009, members of the church were sued for fraud and practicing pharmacology without a license,108 and the Church was convicted of fraud in November 18, 20099, being fined €600,000, with additional fines and suspended prison sentences for four officers.

In an interview on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation current affairs radio program The Current with Hana Gartner, former high-ranking Scientology official Mark Rathbun commented that the decision to convict the Church of Scientology of fraud in France would not have a significant impact on the organization. 110 "On the France thing I don't think that's going to have any lasting impact, simply because they got a nine hundred thousand dollar fine I think - which is like chump change to them. They've got literally nearly a billion dollars set aside in a war chest," said Rathbun.

In Germany, official views of Scientology are particularly skeptical. 111 In Germany it is seen as a totalitarian anti-democratic organization and is under observation by national security organizations due to, among other reasons, suspicion of violating the human rights of its members granted by the German Constitution,112 including Hubbard's pessimistic views on democracy vis-à-vis psychiatry and other such features. 113 In November 18, 2009, Germany's interior ministers said that they considered the goals of Church of Scientology to be in conflict with the principles of the nation's constitution and would seek to ban the organization.

114 The plans were quickly criticised as ill-advised. 115 The plans to ban Scientology were finally dropped in November 18, 20099, after German officials found insufficient evidence of illegal activity. The legal status of the Church of Scientology in Germany is still awaiting resolution; some courts have ruled that it is a business, others have affirmed its religious nature.

117 The German government has affirmed that it does not consider the Church of Scientology to be a religious community. As in most European countries, the Church of Scientology is not officially recognized in Ireland as a charitable organization, but it is free to promote Scientology beliefs. 118 The Irish government has not invited the Church of Scientology to national discussions on secularization by the Religious Council of Ireland.

The meetings were attended by Roman Catholic bishops, representatives of the Church of Ireland, Ireland's Chief Rabbi, and Muslim leaders. In Israel, according to Israeli professor of psychology Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "in various organizational forms, Scientology has been active among Israelis for more than thirty years, but those in charge not only never claimed the religion label, but resisted any such suggestion or implication. It has always presented itself as a secular, self-improvement, tax-paying business."96 Those "organizational forms" include a Scientology Organization in Tel Aviv.

Another Israeli Scientology group called "The Way to Happiness" (or "Association for Prosperity and Security in the Middle East") works through local Scientologist members to promote The Way to Happiness. 120 An Israeli CCHR chapter runs campaigns against perceived abuses in psychiatry. 121 Other Scientology campaigns, such as "Youth for Human Rights International" are active as well.

122 There is also an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group that opposes Scientology and other cults or missionary organizations in Israel,123 Lev L'Achim, whose anti-missionary department in 2001 provided a hotline and other services to warn citizens of Scientology's "many types of front organizations". The European Court of Human Rights ruled in November 18, 2009 that Russia's denial to register the Church of Scientology as a religious community was a violation of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (freedom of assembly and association) read in the light of Article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion)". 125 In November 18, 20099, the St. Petersburg City Court closed down that city's Scientology center for violating its charter.

On November 18, 2009, the National Court in Madrid issued a decision recognizing that the National Church of Scientology of Spain should be entered in the Registry of Religious Entities. The administrative tribunal of Madrid's High Court ruled that a 2005 justice ministry decision to scrap the church from the register was "against the law." Responding to a petition filed by the church, the ruling said that no documents had been presented in court to demonstrate it was anything other than a religious entity.

The UK government does not classify the Church of Scientology as a religious institution. 130 In 2000, the Church of Scientology was exempted from UK value added tax on the basis that it is a not-for-profit body. In 1979 Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, along with ten other highly placed Scientology executives were convicted in United States federal court regarding Operation Snow White, and served time in an American federal prison.

Operation Snow White involved infiltration, wiretapping and theft of documents in government offices, most notably those of the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS). In 1993, however, the United States IRS recognized Scientology as a "non-profit charitable organization," and gave it the same legal protections and favorable tax treatment extended to other non-profit charitable organizations. 132 A New York Times article says that Scientologists paid private investigators to obtain compromising material on the IRS commissioner and blackmailed the IRS into submission.

The following actions will be considered to be a material breach by the Service: ... The issuance of a Regulation, Revenue Ruling or other pronouncement of general applicability providing that fixed donations to a religious organization other than a church of Scientology are fully deductible unless the Service has issued previously or issues contemporaneously a similar pronouncement that provides for consistent and uniform principles for determining the deductibility of fixed donations for all churches including the Church of Scientology. An IRS closing agreement cannot overrule Congress and the Supreme Court. If the IRS does, in fact, give preferential treatment to members of the Church of Scientology—allowing them a special right to claim deductions that are contrary to law and rightly disallowed to everybody else—then the proper course of action is a lawsuit to put a stop to that policy.

To date (2008) such a suit is not known to have been filed. We conclude that the agreement reached between the Internal Revenue Service and the Church of Scientology in 1993 does not affect the result in this case. However, this matter is still ongoing.

On November 18, 20099, three judges in the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals "expressed deep skepticism" over the IRS's position that treatment of Scientology is "irrelevant to the deductions the Orthodox Jews, Michael and Marla Sklar, took for part of their children's day school tuition and for after-school classes in Jewish law". Scientology organizations and missions exist in many communities around the world. 137 Scientologists call their larger centers orgs, short for "organizations."

The major Scientology organization of a region is known as a central org. The legal address of the Church of Scientology International is in Los Angeles, California, 6331 Hollywood Blvd, in the Hollywood Guaranty Building. Ron Hubbard moved to England shortly after founding Scientology, where he oversaw the worldwide development of Scientology from an office in London for most of the 1950s.

In 1959, he bought Saint Hill Manor near the Sussex town of East Grinstead, a Georgian manor house formerly owned by the Maharajah of Jaipur. This became the worldwide headquarters of Scientology through the 1960s and 1970s. Hubbard declared Saint Hill to be the organization by which all other organizations would be measured, and he issued a general order (still followed today) for all organizations around the world to expand and reach "Saint Hill size".

The Church of Scientology has announced that the next two levels of Scientology teaching, OT 9 and OT 10, will be released and made available to church members when all the major orgs in the world have reached Saint Hill size. The "worldwide spiritual headquarters" of the Church of Scientology is known as "Flag Land Base," located in Clearwater, Florida. The organization was founded in the late 1970s when a Scientology-founded group called "Southern Land Development and Leasing Corp" purchased the Fort Harrison Hotel for $2.3 million.

Because the reported tenant was the "United Churches of Florida" the citizens and City Council of Clearwater did not realize that the building's owners were actually the Church of Scientology until after the building's purchase. Clearwater citizens' groups, headed by Mayor Gabriel Cazares, rallied strongly against Scientology establishing a base in the city (repeatedly referring to the organization as a cult), but Flag Base was established nonetheless. In the years since its foundation, Flag Base has expanded as the Church of Scientology has gradually purchased large amounts of additional property in the downtown and waterfront Clearwater area.

Scientology's relationship with the city government has repeatedly moved between friendly and hostile. At the same time, it opposed the local St. Petersburg Times and protested actions of the Clearwater police department. Scientology's largest project in Clearwater has been the construction of a high-rise complex called the "Super Power Building," an enormous structure whose highest point, when completed, will be a Scientology cross that will tower over the city.

Los Angeles, California, has the largest concentration of Scientologists and Scientology-related enterprises in the world, with the church's most visible presence being in the Hollywood district of the city. The organization owns a former hospital on Fountain Avenue which houses Scientology's West Coast headquarters, the Pacific Area Command Base — often referred to as "PAC Base" or "Big Blue", after its blue paint job. Adjacent buildings include headquarters of several internal Scientology divisions, including the American Saint Hill Organization, the Advanced Organization of Los Angeles, and the Church of Scientology of Los Angeles.

All these organizations are integrated within the corporation Church of Scientology Western United States. Also in this area are the offices of Bridge Publications, Scientology's publishing arm for the United States and Canada. The Church of Scientology successfully campaigned to have the city of Los Angeles rename one block of a street running through this complex "L.

Ron Hubbard Way." The street has been paved in brick. Also in Hollywood is Scientology's main Celebrity Centre, which caters to arts professionals.

On Hollywood Boulevard a multi-story building houses the executive offices of the Church of Scientology International and an open-to-the-public exhibition devoted to the life of L. Also in the area are the headquarters of Author Services, Inc. (Hubbard's Literary agency), the Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE), which administers social programs based on Hubbard's writings, (including Narconon and Applied Scholastics), the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE), which promotes Hubbard's business management techniques and facilitates a network of Scientology-related businesses, and the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Scientology-affiliated group that focuses on alleged abuses of psychiatry, and includes a "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death" museum.

Today, the Church of Scientology of Los Angeles is one of the largest Scientology facilities of its kind in the world. Executives-in-training from every international Scientology organization now apprentice at the LA church before assuming their executive positions. The headquarters of the Religious Technology Center, the entity that oversees Scientology operations worldwide, is located in unincorporated Riverside County, California, near Gilman Hot Springs and north of Hemet.

The facility, known as Gold Base or "Int", is owned by Golden Era Productions and is the home of Scientology's media production studio, Golden Era Studios. Several Scientology executives, including David Miscavige, live and work at the base. 139 Therefore Gold Base is Scientology's international administrative headquarters.

The Church of Scientology bought a former resort, which had been popular with Hollywood figures, in 1978; the resort became Gold Base. 144 The facilities at Gold Base have been toured by journalists several times. They are surrounded by floodlights and video observation cameras,139145146147 and the compound is protected by razor wire.