{"id":5684,"date":"2011-08-09T16:29:36","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T20:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=5684"},"modified":"2011-08-09T16:29:36","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T20:29:36","slug":"village-voice-top-25-people-responsible-for-scientologys-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/village-voice-top-25-people-responsible-for-scientologys-decline","title":{"rendered":"Village Voice: Top 25 people responsible for Scientology’s decline"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City’s off-beat tabloid\u00a0the Village Voice<\/em> is running a series of\u00a0what it considers to be the\u00a0top 25 people behind the decline of the late L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology.<\/p>\n

“On Friday,” writes Voice<\/em> staffer Tony Orega,\u00a0“we started a countdown that will give credit — or blame — to the people who have contributed most to the sad current state of Scientology.<\/p>\n

“From its greatest expansion in the 1980s, the church is a shell of what it once was and is mired in countless controversies around the world.<\/p>\n

“Some of that was self-inflicted, and some of it has come from outside. Join us now as we continue on our investigation of those people most responsible.”<\/p>\n

Ortega notes:<\/p>\n

Next month, Ohio State University religious studies professor Hugh Urban will officially release his academic history, The Church of Scientology, A History of a New Religion<\/em> (Princeton University Press).<\/p>\n

In June, we reviewed an advance copy of the book, and were impressed by how Urban brought a measured academic’s objectivity to a subject fraught with controversy: “Throughout that journey, what Urban does better than most is continually put Scientology’s bumpy beginnings and notorious scandals in a larger context of American history and the development of American culture and ideas about religion.”<\/p>\n

Scientology’s secrecy and paranoia, for example, come right out of the Cold War environment that Hubbard was a product of, Urban explains.<\/p>\n

The timing of Urban’s book really couldn’t be any better. It’s an academic book, but it’s very well written and makes a great companion to Janet Reitman’s popular history of the church, Inside Scientology<\/em>. If Reitman focuses on the narrative stories of individuals, Urban provides key passages from numerous court cases and Scientology’s own internal documents to piece together a thorough portrait of the church that Scientology will find difficult to label as a biased work (but no doubt it will still try).<\/p>\n

Scientology will always brand its defectors as apostates, will always say that journalists are out to smear them, but with the calm, dedicated work of academics, a library of unassailable, disinterested data is emerging that will not so easily be dismissed.<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York City’s off-beat tabloid\u00a0the Village Voice is running a series of\u00a0what it considers to be the\u00a0top 25 people behind the decline of the late L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology. “On Friday,” writes Voice staffer Tony Orega,\u00a0“we started a countdown that will give credit — or blame — to the people who have contributed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2273],"class_list":["post-5684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-scientology"],"yoast_head":"\nVillage Voice: Top 25 people responsible for Scientology's decline<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/village-voice-top-25-people-responsible-for-scientologys-decline\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Village Voice: Top 25 people responsible for Scientology's decline\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"New York City’s off-beat tabloid\u00a0the Village Voice is running a series of\u00a0what it considers to be the\u00a0top 25 people behind the decline of the late L. 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