Introducing Chris Shelton and the Episode

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 1192

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Sa. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's October 9, 2019, and we are super excited to be back with you for more engaging Mormon Stories podcast interviews. Today we are continuing our really fascinating series with Chris Shelton.

John Dehlin [00:00:52] For those of you who follow us on Facebook Live, you'll know because we released this there originally, that we did three hours with one of the world's experts in Scientology. Again, his name is Chris Shelton. He's a writer, an author, a blogger. He's a YouTuber, a public speaker. He does a lot of cool stuff, but it's all around Scientology, because Chris Shelton himself is not only a former Scientologist, but a former Sea Org member, which is the elite organization within Scientology.

John Dehlin [00:01:26] And so what we did for the. And he has just vast encyclopedic knowledge of the Scientology movement. And so we spent our first three hours with Chris digging deep into the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and drawing parallels between the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, and the founder of Mormonism, which is Joseph Smith. And then the founding and the rise of Scientology, and the parallels between that and the parallels with Mormonism and the rise of Mormonism. And we found so many interesting parallels, from polygamy and the founding, to financial misappropriations, to moving from city to city to escape the law, to trying to escape the jurisdictions of the United States, to everything kind of unraveling in chaos, not to mention the creation of books.

John Dehlin [00:02:34] There are so many parallels between L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith. And when we left off, we left off sort of at the last years of L. Ron Hubbard, as he was either on his boat or in a hideout in California, sort of in this almost Howard Hughes, like, final years in, you know, as a recluse, because it wasn't safe for him to be anywhere in public, or he would have been incarcerated, which, again, sounds very much like Joseph Smith, other than the fact that Joseph Smith was assassinated and Albert Hubbard wasn't, as far as I know, or we know. So that's where we left off.

John Dehlin [00:03:13] Today we're going to be covering, at a minimum, the rise of modern Scientology, which includes the takeover of Scientology by David Miskovich or Miscavige. We'll learn how to pronounce that soon. And we'll bring that. We'll bring it up. We'll bring our historical knowledge of Scientology up to the present.

John Dehlin [00:03:34] And then whether we'll do this today or next time, in a final set of interviews with Chris, we want to hear about Chris's life as a Scientologist, what it's like to be a Scientologist today, what his life was like as a Scientologist, what caused him to leave Scientology, and then what caused him to become an ex Scientologist activist. And what it's like to be an ex Scientologist activist in a world where we know Scientology goes after people hard, even litigiously. So that's going to be fascinating. Before we actually jump into our interview with Chris, I just want to announce one super important thing. One is if you haven't checked out my interview with Wayne Sermon and Alex Sermon, Wayne is the lead guitarist for Imagine Dragons.

John Dehlin [00:04:23] You really need to check that out. We drove down to Vegas and interviewed Wayne and Alex, and Alex is, in her own right, a super talented human. She's a prima ballerina and just a really wise and funny and thoughtful soul. But we talk to them about their lives in Mormonism, their lives with Imagine Dragons, and then of course, their journey out of Mormonism. And it's a really profound several hour interview. I recommend it. But the reason why we're so excited to interview Wayne, other than the great story, is we're holding, for the first time ever, a really important event on November 17, 2019 in Salt Lake City.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] We are going to be holding a day almost like a conference or a general conference dedicated to healing, growth and community for post Mormons and ex Mormons. The conference is called Thrive or Thrive Beyond Mormonism. It's think of hopefully several thousand of you progressive, you know, ex Mormons and progressive Mormons in the same room, hearing great music, hearing great speakers, inspiring one another, meeting leaders in the community and getting to know each other so that we can figure out what comes after orthodox Mormonism in our culture. It's really important. There are a lot of marriages struggling, a lot of people struggling, and there's a lot of need.

John Dehlin [00:05:53] We don't want to recreate a church. We want to. We don't want to recreate a patriarchy, but we do want to nurture healthy community, a vibrant community, and basically friendships and support for people who are struggling and resources or for people who are just lonely and need support.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] Because there are tens of thousands of people out there that have never heard of Mormon stories, never heard of CES letter, never heard of any of this stuff. And they're totally alone, thinking they're the only ones in the world going through a faith crisis. And you'd think that by now everyone would know about us, but the truth is we've only scratched the Surf. And I'm not exaggerating.

John Dehlin [00:06:30] So we're gonna do Thrive Day, November 17th. We're bringing Wayne Sermon of Imagine Dragons to speak as a keynote speaker. We're bringing Amber Skora of the Book Leaving the Witness to Salt Lake City. She's gonna give a keynote and then we're gonna have a bunch of amazing speakers. Natasha Alpha Parker, Christian Moore, Stephanie Sorenson Larsen of Encircle.

John Dehlin [00:06:53] The list is super long and great people, great speakers. Donna Showalter and so many others. So we want you to attend. So if you're interested, we've priced it super cheap. It's 15 bucks a person. We're going to lose money on this event. It's almost guaranteed because it's at the Salt palace and once you get AV and a room reserved, you're 20 grand into this event.

John Dehlin [00:07:17] So, you know, to break even, we're going to have to get like 4,000 people there. That'll be great if we can, but we're planning on losing money. So this is not a money making enterprise. Nobody's making money. Not that it's bad for people adding value to be compensated for their efforts, but at least in these ground stages, we don't want people to think that this is about profiteering off of anyone's pain. And so we're offering this at pretty much no cost to you.

John Dehlin [00:07:44] 15 bucks for a full day of awesomeness is super cheap. So come. If you can go to thrivebeyondmormonism.com for more information, you can register there. Please tell your friends and we would just love to see you all there and thanks for your patience and please spread the word. If we can get several thousand people there and get some news media coverage, it can be a really important event to promote healing and growth. And we'll be sharing all the content eventually on the Internet as well. So that's my plug. Now back to you, Chris Shelton. Welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast. It's such an honor to have you, Chris.

Chris Shelton [00:08:20] Well, thank you very much. It's an honor to be here for sure. And very impressive work you're doing. I mean, this whole Thrive conference sounds awesome. I'm just thinking we should do something like that in the Scientology world. It's very necessary for healing and growth that people be able to connect up, reconnect up after coming out of these things and find out there is life beyond this stuff.

John Dehlin [00:08:44] Well, thank you. Just really quickly while we're on that. I started out just as a Mormon going through a faith crisis. Then I realized there were all these people who needed help. So then I went back and got my PhD in psychology so that I could help people.

John Dehlin [00:09:01] And then people started just coming to me with marriage problems and depression and anxiety and all these sorts of problems. And we just realized really quickly that we could have all the therapists in the world specializing in faith crisis stuff, all the podcasts in the world, but people need friendships. They need community, they need support, and frankly, they need resources. They need to learn about healthy marriages. They need to learn about how to communicate with believing family and friends so they don't wreck relationships. They need to learn how to raise healthy, happy children outside of Mormonism, how to handle drugs and alcohol. Like, there's all this stuff that, you know, how to drink coffee.

John Dehlin [00:09:38] Like, there are all these really basic life skills that humans in the developed world learn that Mormons never learn. And I'm sure it's the same with Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists and evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews. So thanks for that validation. And we're just really excited, and we're really looking forward to partnering. That's why we've had Tova Mirvasan, Tara Westover. That's why we're having you on Amber Skora, because we do think a lot of the stuff we're experimenting with and exploring in Mormonism can actually be useful across the aisle. So we're looking for partners. So, Chris Shelton, we're really glad you're willing to collaborate. And I know you've collaborated with Jonathan Streeter, whom we love, and maybe some other ex Mormons as well.

Chris Shelton [00:10:26] Ex Mormons? No, it's been you and Jonathan Streeter so far. And I am looking forward to doing more collaborations on this.

John Dehlin [00:10:33] That's great. Oh, and of course, a really important collaboration is Stephen Hassan, who is obviously one of the world's experts in cults. We've really enjoyed our friendship with him, and we hope after he gets done selling his book that we can collaborate with him as well. But. All right, Chris. Well, let's jump into it.

Setting the Scene: Scientology in 1979

John Dehlin [00:10:52] Last. I. You know, for those of you who didn't listen to the first three hours, stop, go back and listen to the first three hours with Chris Shelton, because you need those first three hours to understand the rise of Scientology, the rise of L. Ron Hubbard, his life as a pulp fiction science fiction writer, his life in the military, his ascent as a public figure as he develops an approach to mental health called Dianetics that became a real big thing before it imploded. And that was when he realized that he could Make a lot more money starting a religion than he could starting a business or as an author.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] And that's where the things went bananas. And the parallels, everyone who listened to that episode, Chris, I know I was stopping you, like, every 10 minutes and saying, wait a minute.

Chris Shelton [00:11:45] Which was great. I loved it.

John Dehlin [00:11:48] Yeah. So many people are like, I mean, every time there was this huge parallel, I was just like, wait a minute. That happened with Joseph Smith. And sure enough, the listeners that did tune in on Facebook Live were just stunned by the parallels. And so. And by the way, as I've listened to the life of David Miskovich, I heard a lot of parallels to Brigham Young, who was Joseph Smith's successor. So I'm going to be fascinated to hear how much of the parallels with David Miskovich tied to Joseph Smith vs Brigham Young vs not being a tie. But that's what we're going to do. Last we talked, Chris, we had L.

John Dehlin [00:12:23] Ron Hubbard living in some secret hideaway, either on a boat or in some hideaway in California with only a couple people knowing where he was. And he was still active, he was still writing books, he was still trying to do stuff, but he kind of dies in isolation.

John Dehlin [00:12:42] And I think that's where we left it. Now, tell me if we didn't. If there's anything we needed to go back and sort of mention, and then let's talk about the succession of.

Chris Shelton [00:12:53] Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So, yeah, we are going to go back in time a little bit, a few years. L. Ron Hubbard died January 24th, I believe, 1986. And we will. And we kind of took it up to that from the viewpoint of what was Hubbard doing? And now let's talk about David Miscavige. And it is Miscavige, by the way, but it's not uncommon. You're not the only person who's ever mispronounced it as miscavige.

John Dehlin [00:13:19] So it's miscavige. Okay.

Chris Shelton [00:13:21] Yeah, it's miscavige. And he. Okay, so he is a. He's a very interesting, controversial figure himself. And his rise to power in Scientology was not a very pleasant experience for a whole lot of people. It wasn't. You know, they position him now as the hand picked successor from L. Ron Hubbard. And nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

John Dehlin [00:13:50] Okay. Yeah. And that, you know, when we talk about Joseph Smith, there were like eight successors that he personally had told they would succeed him because he wanted them all to be loyal to him. And so it was like his son, Brigham Young, Sidney Rigdon, all these different successors. And so it was a big cluster f for a couple years while different people were vying for power. And ultimately, Brigham Young won the mainstream group of Mormon followers. But there were lots of schisms. So I'm dying to hear.

Chris Shelton [00:14:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:24] Did L. Ron Hubbard envision a successor?

Chris Shelton [00:14:28] Well, not exactly. And it's kind of interesting because there's no, you know, there's no written document anywhere that says David Miscavige is my successor. There is a will, but even that's in question as to whether Hubbard actually wrote the will. That was the final will that was acted on.

Chris Shelton [00:14:47] But that will did not include anything about church, you know, secession or, you know, or succession, rather. So let's. So it's kind of a messy picture, and there was a lot of shenanigans and a lot of moving parts to it, of course, because, you know, it's complicated.

Miscavige's Early Rise Within Scientology

Chris Shelton [00:15:05] So with that, I'm going to try to simplify it for outsiders, for people who are not going to be familiar with all the structures and. And trappings of Scientology and try to explain this in a. In a sensible way. But there are some details that we have to get into. So I thought what we would do is maybe go back to 1979, because that's really when David Miscavige kind of comes on the scene in any kind of significant way.

Chris Shelton [00:15:33] And over the years between 1979 and 1986, when Hubbard finally passed away, Miscavige had finally gotten to a place where he could take over. And by 19, by the end of 1986, 87, he had definitely solidified his position. So I thought maybe we'd walk through those years in some detail, and then I could lay out what Scientology has done under Miscavige's leadership and how it is run to where it is now.

John Dehlin [00:16:03] Perfect.

Chris Shelton [00:16:04] Okay, so let's set the scene here. Even if you didn't see what was happening before, in our last episode, in Our first interview, 1979 finds a couple things going on. In 1977, the FBI had raided big Blue, the. The Cedars Sinai complex of Scientology, which at the time had all kinds of, you know, operational intelligence information and stuff, because the Church had its own intelligence wing, which at that time was called the Guardian's office. And they had been engaged in covert operations against the United States government in an effort to cleanse the files of the government, not just the United States government. This was also happening in other places.

Chris Shelton [00:16:49] But most spectacularly, they got busted in the United States because they were Trying to sneak into these buildings, make copies of all the files, remove files, take out documents, and basically scrub the government files, which is kind of the mind of those organizations, of any wrong of anything that was bad or critical of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard. And this was called the Snow White program to make L. Ron Hubbard's name, you know, pure snow white.

Chris Shelton [00:17:20] So. So they got busted. The FBI had. Had gotten wind of this. There had been a guy who'd gotten caught being somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, at the IRS headquarters, I think, in D.C. and in the library there.

Chris Shelton [00:17:35] That led to one thing, led to another, led to another, and this whole bust happens. So Scientology is getting its name smeared properly and correctly in the headlines for criminal activities. And there were 11 Scientologists who were indicted for conspiracy, fraud, various things. There was a whole laundry list of charges. And Mary Sue Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard's wife, was one of those 11.

Chris Shelton [00:18:01] So this was a huge deal. This was not a small thing, and it wasn't just some little local thing. It was naming L. Ron Hubbard himself as an unindicted co conspirator. So that. So now let's go to 1979, when, you know, this is still in tumultuous investigation and things are going on, and Scientology's quote, unquote, good name is not really so good anymore.

Chris Shelton [00:18:27] And we find L. Ron Hubbard in a place called La Quinta or La Quinta. I'm not really sure exactly what the right pronunciation is there, but it's a place in California near Palm Desert, and it's kind of situated between the San Bernardino National Forest and Joshua Tree. It's kind of about two hours. If you drove from Long beach straight east, you'd end up around La Quinta, and that's where Hubbard was hiding out.

Chris Shelton [00:18:56] He was off the radar. He did not want to be found. He did not want to have to answer for any of this. And he was an unindicted co conspirator, so he wasn't going to be charged. But there was, like, if somebody would have flipped on him, he very easily could have been charged because he clearly was the mastermind of the entire Snow White operation.

Chris Shelton [00:19:19] Okay, so he's running Scientology behind the scenes, and he's also out there in the desert with. With the Sea Org members, these people who are utterly devoted to him and are working 247 for the cause of Scientology. That's what the Sea Org is. It's the. It's the core, you know, clergy or ecclesiastical center of. Of the Church of Scientology.

Chris Shelton [00:19:40] And he. They're working with him, and he's out there trying to convince. To advance Scientology's purposes and plans. He's not just, you know, crying about the legal case. So he's out there making films, actually making training films for Scientology counselors. And. Hey, Chris.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] Chris. Does it make sense to go back and just. Have we talked about David Miskovich's sort of upbringing and just a quick bio of what. What. How he ascended to where he did?

Chris Shelton [00:20:12] Yes, I will. I will mention that quickly.

John Dehlin [00:20:13] Okay. Okay.

Chris Shelton [00:20:15] So. Okay, so by. Let's see. So now by this time, by 79, David Miscavige is 19 years old. He was born in 1960. He was born to Ron Miscavige Sr. He had a brother, Ronnie Miscavige Jr. And he's got a sister, Denise. And I think there might be one other relative in there, I can't remember.

Chris Shelton [00:20:39] And his father is an ex military guy. He's an ex Marine. He's a sales guy. And sometime in the early 1970s, if I remember the dates right, Ron Miscavige Sr. Got involved with Scientology in Philadelphia, or he was from Philadelphia. That was where David Miscavige was born. I think they were still in that area, but they might have traveled around. But the important points here are that in the early 1970s, Ron Miscavige gets involved in Scientology, starts doing classes. His son David has asthma, has an asthmatic condition. He's kind of a wild child, not particularly, you know, evil or horrible or, you know, there's no evidence of him, you know, cutting up animals or any kind of goofy craziness like that.

Chris Shelton [00:21:23] He had pretty regular middle class upbringing under a father who was pretty stressed. I mean, he has admitted to physical abuse of his. Of his kids and during times of stress and whatever. And so it wasn't a great. You know, it could have been a better upbringing, but there wasn't particularly an indication from the data that we have that David Miscavige as a child or as a young adult, was like he is now, so to speak. Okay.

Chris Shelton [00:21:58] But he gets involved in Scientology himself as a teenager, kind of around the same age as I did, if I remember right. And he got some auditing for this asthma condition. It was really bad asthma, and it really put him down.

Chris Shelton [00:22:12] And the auditing apparently helped with that. Given the fact that. And I just covered this in a video I did last week, given the fact that asthmatic conditions have often have psychosomatic elements to them, it is not unheard of or improbable. That some counseling could have relieved some of that asthma, which is not the same thing as saying that it cured it, because it didn't. And I believe he still has and certainly carried over with some of the asthma over the years. But Scientology apparently relieved it enough that Miscavige, David, you know, young David Miscavige, was sold that this was the bomb diggity, and he wanted to do more of it.

Chris Shelton [00:22:56] And he started doing more classes, getting more involved. And eventually, I think by the time he was 16 or 17, maybe earlier, but certainly by then he was saying, hey, I want to go join the Sea Organization and work with L. Ron Hubbard, and I want to go do that. And his father let him because he was, you know, sold on Scientology himself.

Chris Shelton [00:23:17] So David Miscavige goes off to. To go do this, and there's lots of details and stuff I'm kind of glossing over here. But basically he ended up in the Sea Org, and he ended up rising up to get to where L. Ron Hubbard was located.

Chris Shelton [00:23:33] The Sea Org was a smaller outfit then than it is now, and it was easier to rise, I guess, to that level at that time than it would be, say, now. And he got up to working in that film unit. He was a cameraman working directly under L. Ron Hubbard.

Chris Shelton [00:23:52] And there's various stories which I won't repeat because I really don't know if they're true or not. There were stories told, rumors circulated around when I got into the Sea org in the 90s. By that time, there were these legendary stories or anecdotes about how Miscavige had interacted with Hubbard and shown himself to be this very loyal and on policy, meaning he followed Hubbard's directions very well, and even. Even if he had to disagree with Hubbard on it, you know, and stuff like this. So there were these. These stories that would circulate around about what a great guy he was.

Chris Shelton [00:24:29] So, okay, so then we. By 1979, by the time all this tumultuous activity is going on and Hubbard's, you know, hiding out in the desert, Miscavige is a cameraman. He. He then gets himself into a situation where he's promoted to a post called the Action Chief.

Chris Shelton [00:24:47] And I guess the simplest way to explain that is that one of the ways that the Sea Organization, at a core upper management level, would enforce its will, or L. Ron Hubbard's will on the lower church organizations that are not Sea Org, that are not manned by Sea Org members, that are just regular people or regular Scientologists doing the work The Sea Org would send projects or what they called missions, and they would send two people or sometimes more, never, never less than two. And those projects or missions would operate on very specific directions. You're to get, you know, target one, target two, target three, target four, done, and then come back.

Chris Shelton [00:25:29] That was the project, or that was the mission. And somebody at the headquarters level would run the project. People would tell them what to do, right. Would receive daily reports from them and then give them direction on what to do. That position was called the action chief. And this was the guy who was overall responsible for these projects that were being sent out. But from the level of management where L. Ron Hubbard was the one ordering these missions to get done, or very, very senior Scientologists were, he was right up there at that, you know, breathing the rarefied air of. Of where L. Ron Hubbard was.

Chris Shelton [00:26:08] So that was a position of some responsibility and some importance. Right. And it's given to this 19 year old sea Org member who's really gung ho and really looks like he's with the program. So that's kind of where David Miscavige fits at this time.

Chris Shelton [00:26:25] And we'll trace how he rises from there. Okay. Now, Hubbard at this time had been the guy who had been heading up Scientology management and heading up the Sea Org for all these years. There had been an effort, you might remember, in our last talk to. For Hubbard to kind of cut those ties when he started up the Sea Org, and he thought he was just going to go off and do the Sea Org thing, and management was just going to kind of happen with the people he turned it over to. But Hubbard was such a kind of megalomaniac control guy that he had to have his hands in everything.

Chris Shelton [00:27:00] And within two years, he had disestablished all of that worldwide management stuff and taken it back over. So the Sea Org is running Scientology internationally. And of course, L. Ron Hubbard is the head of the Sea Org, but he could not be seen at this point to be the guy giving all the orders because they needed plausible deniability so that he would not go from unindicted co conspirator to indicted conspirator, right on this federal charge. And there were other tax evasion was going on at this time. The church hadn't paid their taxes in a decade. So there were a lot of reasons L. Ron Hubbard had to fear the law.

Chris Shelton [00:27:40] So they set up this other management structure. And I won't get into all the details of it. We don't have to go into all that kind of nitty gritty. But I will say that they formed a committee which was called the watchdog committee. And this was the most trusted high level Sea Org members under L. Ron Hubbard. A woman named Dede Riesdorf and Gail Irwin were the chairperson and the deputy chairperson.

Chris Shelton [00:28:06] And these were people who had worked directly under Hubbard for years, were very, very trusted, as well as a couple named Pat and Annie Broeker, whose names you'll hear more of, because they were the ones who ended up being with Hubbard till the very end.

Chris Shelton [00:28:21] So they were part of this watchdog committee setup. And this was supposed to. It was publicly announced in 1979 that this body was the management, the senior ecclesiastical management body for the church. And Mary Sue Hubbard at this point, just to further set the stage a little bit here, she's living in Florida at this point. She's not in prison yet. In 1979, the case had not gotten to the point where they were going to jail yet. It was all still in the midst of everything.

Chris Shelton [00:28:51] But she's out of contact with Hubbard. There can't be any contact between them again because of the legal situation. And to add further misery to the Scientology picture, In August of 1979, they had a major legal case turn against them. A woman named Julie Christofferson was suing the church in Portland, Oregon, for fraud and promises that they had made to her in regards to the courses that she was going to take in Scientology. She was just a public level Scientologist. She was never a staff or Sea Org member.

Chris Shelton [00:29:32] Well, the church lost the suit, and they had to pay $153,000 in compensatory damages and an additional $1.9 million in punitive damages. And this is 1979 money. So this was going to completely destroy the church if they ended up having to pay that. So just a little bit of pressure on the church. Right. No big deal.

John Dehlin [00:30:00] And this reminds me of the type of pressure the Mormon Church got when the government started coming after it for practicing polygamy. By 1890, the church was going to go bankrupt, was going to be. All of its assets were going to be seized. It faced a true existential crisis. And that was basically because of Joseph's polygamy starting in the late 18, in the early 1840s, that then followed on by Brigham Young and everybody else. And it's one of those existential moments where the church is almost bankrupt and is almost destroyed.

Chris Shelton [00:30:34] That's right. And that was the situation with the Church of Scientology here at this time. That is not overstating the case. And it actually was kind of in this stress mode for quite a while. This was one of the reasons. This was one of the ways that Miscavige was able to use this to get rid of people and rise up, as we'll see.

Chris Shelton [00:30:56] So In October of 1979, nine of the people who were indicted by the FBI agreed to be found guilty on charges of conspiracy and theft. They reduced the charges, but pledged pled guilty. And this had been. This Operation Snow White thing had been going on for as it was a four year program. It was a very long extended operation. And it's been characterized as the largest known infiltration of the United States government that has ever been carried out by anyone.

Chris Shelton [00:31:27] So it was not a small thing they did. They tried to spread as they were being prosecuted for religious purposes. And all they did was steal copy paper and you know, it was all much ado about nothing. But this was not nothing. This was a very big deal.

Chris Shelton [00:31:44] So these guys get indicted and in December, five high ranking members of the church, and this includes Hubbard's wife, are sentenced to prison for conspiring to obstruct justice and to obstruct a criminal investigation. And they are basically sentenced to four years. Mary Sue, I sentenced to five, and I think I believe she served two or three of those years. But that happens at the end of 1979. So in 1980, Hubbard takes off.

Chris Shelton [00:32:19] At this point, he had been in a place in La Quinta and then in Hemet, California, where a small number of Sea Org members, but more than two, the management people still could contact him, were still around him. But by March of 1980, he's out of there. He gets in a.

Chris Shelton [00:32:39] In a Bluebird motorhome with Pat and Annie Broeker are his two trusted people. And this is the last time, March of 1980, that he was publicly seen by anyone admitting to having seen him until his death in January 1986.

Chris Shelton [00:32:59] So this is the point when he truly disappears and goes completely off grid. Okay, okay. By October, he's written Battlefield Earth. That manuscript comes out. Remember that?

John Dehlin [00:33:11] Right. John Travolta movie.

Chris Shelton [00:33:13] That's right. One of the worst movies ever made. I did a whole review on it. It's just awful. I got stories about that we can get into when we do my story. And then he also wrote. And this is just kind of the height of irony and I thought you'd appreciate this is. He also writes a pamphlet called the Way to Happiness. And this is presented to the world as a. Not as a as a secular moral code that any based solely on common sense. So this guy is literally in hiding from federal authorities. He's evading taxes. He's running this abusive church secretly, and he writes this moral code for the world to live a more moral life. And I just, to this day, the irony of that, just. I can't get past that.

John Dehlin [00:34:04] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [00:34:05] Yeah. And this is the thing. This way to happiness is not. Is a big thing in the world of Scientology now. They've used this thing. They print it, they sell it, they get it out to people, they promote it like crazy.

John Dehlin [00:34:16] What are some of the highlights or the main points?

Chris Shelton [00:34:18] Oh, you know, don't kill people. Don't be. You know, don't be a thief. Be temperate. I mean, they are common sense principles. There's nothing inherently the type of stuff

John Dehlin [00:34:27] Dr. Phil or Oprah or Brene Brown would. Would say.

Chris Shelton [00:34:30] Yeah, Oprah would embrace it. She would. She would love the way to happiness. Okay, so then we come into. So. So, as you can imagine, things were a little bit chaotic at the upper levels of Scientology, and they're trying to get the legal stuff under control. They're trying to run the churches. They've got a price increase going on their services because inflation is a thing. This is. You know, this is their. During the time of the oil crisis. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff going on at this time.

Miscavige Consolidates Power and Sidelines Mary Sue Hubbard

Chris Shelton [00:35:02] So we come into 1981, and there is a new project set up. Now, remember, Miscavige had been the guy who was running all the projects and missions from this post called Action Chief. So he is now given charge of something called Mission all clear.

Chris Shelton [00:35:23] Okay. Mission all clear. And this starts in January 1981. And Miscavige, there are 34 liability court cases against the church, and many of them are naming L. Ron Hubbard as a defendant. And remember, they just got their ass handed to them in Oregon, and they're appealing that case because if they pay that money, they're done. So there's no way they can let that court case stand.

Chris Shelton [00:35:49] They cannot let that verdict stand. They have to appeal out of it somehow or somehow get out of that. And there's 34 more cases lined up, and L. Ron Hubbard being named as a defendant means he's going to have to show up for those. He's going to have to get deposed, et cetera. So they are like, this is a big, huge problem that is now right in David Miscavige's lap, and they decide that they're going to clear all this up and this project is top priority. There's nothing else that takes precedence over this mission. All clear. To clear up all the legal threats and liabilities and get them all dealt with and get them off the lines.

Chris Shelton [00:36:27] And so they set up an all clear committee. And this is. David Miscavige is on this. That Dee Dee and Lois Reisdorf are on there. Gail Irwin is on there. Norman Starkey, Terry Gamboa. These are names that were, you know, very, very important at senior Scientology level at this point. These are all trusted people who have worked directly with Hubbard for years.

Chris Shelton [00:36:52] Now he's off. They don't know where he is. None of these people know his physical location. And that, of course, was done to protect him. Then the project is so confidential that Miscavige sets up a direct and personal line of communication with Pat Broeker.

Chris Shelton [00:37:14] Pat Broeker is the one who's. Pat and Annie are the ones who are taking care of Hubbard. Now, David Miscavige does not get told by Pat Broeker over this time where Hubbard is, but Hubbard still has charge of everything. They're just all pretending he doesn't. To the public, he's still calling the shots.

Chris Shelton [00:37:34] So they have to get communication back and forth from the Church to Hubbard. And Miscavige and Broeker are the conduits for that communication line. And if you think about that for a second, you realize just how much power that gives to David Miscavige and Pat Broeker. Because Hubbard, they're the middlemen. Everything Hubbard sees has gone through their hands first.

John Dehlin [00:37:58] They can filter things from him seeing them, and they can filter things that he says. We can filter who gets to him and who doesn't.

Chris Shelton [00:38:07] That's right. And this secret, this line that is set up is done by Miscavige in such a way as to make it appear, from what I'm told, this is just off my recall of what I was told. It doesn't necessarily. I can't say 1000% that this is true, but it was. But the way Miscavige got himself into this position was to make it appear that by doing this, he would be helping and relieving the people who were nominally actually in charge of management and this whole operation. Right. Miscavige is still this guy who's in charge of this project. That does not put him in charge of the Church of Scientology at all.

Chris Shelton [00:38:51] He's just in charge of this project, but with all the high names and everybody who's in. Who's involved with this and they having to work on the day to day operations of the church, they were happy to let Miscavige deal with the communication line.

Chris Shelton [00:39:10] So he made it look like it was a feature, not a bug. It was a service for him to do this. Right. And that's why they let him do it. Because people might go, well, why would they let this lower terminal, this lower person do that? And well, that's why also.

Chris Shelton [00:39:30] So there's some other management reorganization, but get this. By June of 81, this all starts in January. By June, Dede Vogading was busted off of her post by Miscavige, basically, and replaced by her sister and their deputy, Gail Irwin. So those names are not. The names themselves are not super important. The fact is that within six months, Miscavige is starting to maneuver, getting people removed secretly from post. They don't necessarily know he's the one doing this right away.

John Dehlin [00:40:04] So it's kind of purging.

Chris Shelton [00:40:06] Yeah. And that's where it starts.

John Dehlin [00:40:09] And he's kind of making sure his loyalists are there and anyone that could be a threat is kind of neutralized. Right.

Chris Shelton [00:40:18] So by May, Mary sue is not yet in prison yet. She's still, you know, kind of around. She's writing to Hubbard, she's writing to, you know, she's trying to be relevant, trying to be part of this stuff. And she actually holds from her, from the legally, from a legal or structural standpoint, Mary sue was still called the controller. That was her job position.

Chris Shelton [00:40:45] And she held control over the corporate structure of Scientology and the trademarks. So she was still this huge legal liability for the church. And she's got all this power, at least as far as the paperwork goes. They're not letting her exert any of this power, but it's still there and it's still a problem.

Chris Shelton [00:41:05] And so by June, they decide that Mary Sue. Oh, and Mary sue from that position as the controller, by the way, was the person who was in charge of the guardian's office, that whole internal covert operations division I mentioned earlier. Mary sue was the one who headed that whole thing up.

Chris Shelton [00:41:29] So she's over this guardian's office and Miscavige and Broeker and these guys decided, okay, that all has to go, because look what they did and look how screwed up everything is now. It's all on them. So he personally confronts Mary sue and persuades her to step down as the controller, legally signs the documents that, I'm not this anymore. I'm not in charge of anything anymore. And Miscavige Basically browbeat her into that.

Chris Shelton [00:42:01] Later on, he bragged about, you know, how he took her out. Right. And how. And what a bitch she was. And they send 20 missionaires, 20 of these people on these special projects, down to St. Hill and to Los Angeles. So they send them to England, and they send them to Los Angeles, and they just disband the guardian's office. It's just over. It's done.

Chris Shelton [00:42:25] And they even send the woman in England. Jane Kember actually resisted. She was like, this isn't valid. This isn't real. I don't believe it. I want to hear from Mary Sue. And they actually concocted a fake telex and sent it to her to convince her that this was Hubbard's desires.

Chris Shelton [00:42:45] And they just basically took apart this whole guardian's office. Now, don't get me wrong here. Of course this guardian's office was horrible, and it needed to be disbanded. But this was all cover your ass, you know, damage control. And it was getting Mary Sue Hubbard, who arguably was the only person who could influence L. Ron Hubbard directly personally. Right? They'd been keeping her out of touch with Hubbard. Now they got her defanged, declawed, dethroned, de everything. So she was just not in a power position anymore with the Church of Scientology.

John Dehlin [00:43:20] And I have to. So here's another parallel. So Brigham Young, the successor of Joseph Smith, his animosity towards Emma Smith, Joseph Smith's wife is famous. He called her something, the equivalent of a spawn of Satan, and did everything for 150 years in Mormonism, or at least as I knew it, Emma Smith's name was known for evil in the church. And it wasn't until just the past 10, 20 years where the church has allowed her to be kind of resurrected as actually a good person.

John Dehlin [00:44:00] Because as the history comes out that shows all this she dealt with and how much she hated polygamy and how she allowed Joseph Smith to practice polygamy but hated it, but fought him against it, but ultimately said it was okay. But then once he died, she denied put her at odds with Brigham Young, who of course, wanted to seize power. And by the way, Emma wanted her son, Joseph Smith Jr. Or the third, to succeed Joseph Smith. And so for all those reasons, Emma stayed behind in Illinois while Brigham took the bulk of the Saints to Salt Lake. And they hated on Emma for 150 years.

Chris Shelton [00:44:39] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:44:40] Does that sound familiar? So you gotta socially kill the wife of the. Of the founder if you want to succeed the founder?

Chris Shelton [00:44:48] Basically, yeah. And in this case, they basically had defanged and declawed Mary sue. And then they just kind of put her in a home and literally a house in. Not too far away, actually, from where Big Blue is, if I remember right, in that area. And she just lived out the rest of her years with a little dog. And she kind of stayed quiet and cooperated because she had been broken. They did not broadly tarnish her name. They simply removed her and never spoke about her again and started removing references to her. You hardly hear anything about Mary sue in Scientology now.

John Dehlin [00:45:27] But as I understand it, she was a critical part, as I heard you tell the story in the first three hours. L. Ron Hubbard was not a manager, and her management prowess was an integral part of the rise of Scientology.

Chris Shelton [00:45:42] Without question, that is true. And Hubbard would. And I know this not only because of my own conjecture, but because Hubbard literally would talk about her in his lectures. He would talk about what a great job she had done organizing this area or dealing with this, and how she could come in and she could just whip everybody into shape and get everybody in production and go, go, go. Let's go.

Chris Shelton [00:46:05] And Hubbard and her would travel around to the different organizations through the 1950s and 60s, and they would do this kind of thing. And Hubbard bragged about how good she was at that. So it's not just, you know, I'm not just pulling that out of nowhere. And she.

Chris Shelton [00:46:19] So she was absolutely crucial. And then he made her the one in charge of his entire covert operations wing. And she ran that thing like. It's like she was the. You know, she was the general over that. And then, of course, this whole. They get busted, this whole fiasco happens, and she gets summarily dismissed and removed and is no longer to be spoken about. So that was Mary Sue's fate.

Chris Shelton [00:46:44] And when they took apart the Guardian's office, the really horrible thing about it was had they disbanded it and just left it disbanded and never spoke about it or talked about it ever again. Scientology would be a completely different animal right now. But instead, what they did is they remade it into what is now called the Office of Special affairs, that does all the same things, operates on all the same guidelines and policies that Hubbard and Mary sue use to run the go.

Chris Shelton [00:47:18] Now that is all turned over to the Office of Special affairs, and that is now the church's covert and overt intelligence branch. And they've been running since this time. So it wasn't like they. You know, they made a big show at a cleaning house, then they could point to that. And for years, they did. They said we got rid of all the bad guys. We got rid of all the bad elements. They're all gone now. There's no more Guardian's office. We're good people now. We learned our lesson. But behind the scenes, all they'd really done is rebranded. The Guardian's office has office special affairs, and they turned it into a Sea Org operation, whereas when it was under Mary sue, it had not been a Sea Org operation.

John Dehlin [00:48:02] So normally, colts need a leader, they need a head, and there needs to be consensus around the successor. And usually there's sort of power struggles, not a clear path to succession, and then someone emerges. What was the process of the. Was there a formal or an informal process of the members, maybe from an internal PR perspective, coming to embrace David Miscavige as the successor?

Chris Shelton [00:48:39] Well, I will get to that.

John Dehlin [00:48:41] Okay. Okay.

Chris Shelton [00:48:43] Everything I'm talking about so far is really just the beginning.

John Dehlin [00:48:46] We're building to that. Okay, we're building to that.

Chris Shelton [00:48:48] Yeah, we're definitely building to that.

John Dehlin [00:48:50] All right.

Chris Shelton [00:48:52] Taking out Mary sue was a huge feather in Miscavige's cap as far as he was concerned, because she had brought all this, you know, horrible awfulness on the church. And you can see how taking out the founder's wife at this point in time was considered a good thing. You know, everybody else kind of thought, well, you know, maybe she didn't deserve to get, you know, browbeaten. But look at what she did.

Chris Shelton [00:49:21] You know, it was all on her. You know, they were happy to think that L. Ron Hubbard might not have had anything to do with the whole white, Snow white fiasco, and Scientologists are now going to jail. I mean, this is really serious.

Chris Shelton [00:49:34] So him taking her out was, yay, go. You know, good that Miscavige took it upon himself to go do that. Right, right. He then gets into the purging, even because it starts with Mary Sue. But then there's more.

Chris Shelton [00:49:51] By August, he had written up what was called a. An internal justice action. Let's call it that. Right. The Scientology has its own internal justice system. I think all of us who come out of these cults know that they have their own little law and order set up, and they play by their own rules.

John Dehlin [00:50:09] Mormonism is called the Strengthening the Members committee. That's what it's called.

Chris Shelton [00:50:13] Yes. In Scientology, you can have what's called a committee of evidence, which is an ad hoc committee put together for a specific purpose to look into a specific instance of injustice or criminal activity or something like that. And it's three to five Scientologists who will listen to call witnesses, look at all the evidence, and then make a determination of what discipline, if any, is required. That's basically, in a nutshell, what a commev or a committee of evidence is.

Chris Shelton [00:50:42] He held a committee of evidence in August 81 on a whole bunch of people, just who's who of high level people in Scientology. And they were all found guilty, removed from post, stripped of rank. But the findings of that committee were never published.

Chris Shelton [00:51:06] See, a lot of this stuff was done sort of up there. Public Scientologists were not aware of this stuff going on. They did not know Mary sue had gotten busted. They did not know about Miscavige doing all this stuff. He was not yet in the public eye, so there's not full disclosure going on. What I'm telling you about right now is stuff that was going on at the international base or in Hubbard's inner circle, but this was not known to all the Scientologists at large. They were being told, everything's fine. Scientology's never been in a better place. We're defeating the horrible, awful government that's trying to suppress us.

Chris Shelton [00:51:45] We're defeating the legal suppressives who are trying to destroy the church through legal chicanery and lies and nonsense. This is what the church members are being told.

John Dehlin [00:51:55] Told.

Chris Shelton [00:51:57] But up top, Miscavige is purging people like he's just not wasting any time getting rid of people that he thinks are going to be a problem to him. And yeah, in fact, In August of the 26th of August of 1981, there's an issue called management changes that gets sent out, which gives data on how the Guardian's office had gone criminal and, and how LRH wasn't responsible, and they've cleaned it all up, et cetera, et cetera.

Chris Shelton [00:52:30] So then, okay, so then they start forming up. They do this other special project, which is called Project X or the Special Project, and these two projects are now running concurrently with Miscavige over both of them, or involved with both of them. And they start reforming the corporate structure of Scientology itself. It had been in one corporate structure system, and they started changing all of that. And they brought in tax attorneys and lawyers and professionals, as well as Scientologists, attorneys, Scientology attorneys and accountants. And they formed up a new corporate structure for Scientology. And I really don't need to get into all the details of it.

Chris Shelton [00:53:17] It's not important for, for what we're talking about now, except that you need to know that the reasons for the corporate structure were to create a Labyrinth of corporate entities that would make up the Church of Scientology as a whole.

Chris Shelton [00:53:35] And to do it in such a way that no one could ever take out Scientology. You could take out one part of it, but then the hydra head, right, there'd be another thing, and then there'd be another thing, and there'd be another thing. So no matter how the church was attacked legally, it could not be dissolved through one or two court cases or something like that. The other thing that this labyrinthine structure did was it. Was it protected Hubbard as an individual from any liability or problems with any of this. It also happened to later protect Miscavige, because whoever is leading Scientology, that's who it protects.

Chris Shelton [00:54:15] And it was a way to funnel money around because there were nonprofit and for profit, and they were. They were figuring that stuff out, and it was all very, very involved. People have tried for years to take all this stuff apart and figure out how to take down Scientology by taking all this stuff apart, but the whole reason all of this was put together in the first place was to make it so that you can't do that. And they actually did a pretty good job.

Chris Shelton [00:54:41] So structurally, corporate wise, Scientology solidified itself into a. Into a structure that made it pretty difficult to get into or to attack. And courts, people don't necessarily recognize this, but courts are not like active investigators. When you take it, when you take a course, a case to court, you try to pierce the corporate veil of Scientology, and it is a gargantuan task. It is very, very difficult to do. So this protected. This did protect the church for many, many decades and still does to a great degree.

John Dehlin [00:55:22] The legal name of the Mormon Church is the corporation of the president of the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter Day Saints.

Chris Shelton [00:55:28] Really?

John Dehlin [00:55:28] And there are all these probably labyrinthy legal entities like Ensign Peak, which is an investment arm. And, you know, I wouldn't even begin to understand the legal structure of the Mormon Church other than to say, my guess is that our church has gone through a similar reconstruction legally in a way that would protect it against any governmental threats. And I would call on any listeners who are real lawyers who understand corporate entities to do a quick comparison of the legal entities of Scientology versus Mormonism to see how much there are parallels. But my guess is that they're using the same lawyers, potentially.

Chris Shelton [00:56:12] Maybe so. So by October 1981, so all of this is happening. Everything I'm talking about so far has been pretty much 1981. By October, they have formed an organization called Author Services, Inc. And this organization becomes L. Ron Hubbard's personal literary, business affairs organization. That's what it exists for. So, for example, L. Ron Hubbard is an author. He wrote all these books. When those books are sold, L. Ron Hubbard is collecting royalties on those books. That is one of the main income sources for Hubbard. Right. In addition to percentages that are paid by the churches to management, some of which would be flowing to Hubbard. So we're talking about a lot of money. And ASI was formed up to manage all of this, all of Hubbard's personal and literary and business affairs. And guess who becomes chairman of the board of asi? Ah, David Miscavige.

The Mission Holders Shakeup and Financial Control

John Dehlin [00:57:17] And this is reminding me of the Jehovah's Witness sort of transition, because as they started losing their founders, there was some power grab at some point where whoever kind of owned the publications ended up owning the church.

Chris Shelton [00:57:29] Right. Because there's world, there's money from that. And of course, if you literally control the scriptures of the church, I mean, that's what we're talking about here.

John Dehlin [00:57:39] The intellectual property. Right. The sacred text. The intellectual property.

Chris Shelton [00:57:43] Right, you got it, exactly. So asi, and there's another organization formed up, which we will hear much more about later, which is called the Religious Technology center, rtc. So asi, rtc. And RTC is formed up to hold the trademarks and copyrights and protect them of Dianetics and Scientology, because Hubbard trademarked and service marked all of his stuff. Scientology is not this open religion that you can just use all the terminology and stuff. They copyrighted it all. And RTC holds those trademarks and allows licenses their use to churches of Scientology. And this was supposed to set up a system where no one would be able to take Scientology out of the church and go deliver it independently of the Church of Scientology.

Chris Shelton [00:58:34] And for many, many years, Scientology exerted its legal wing to take out any challengers, anybody who was using their trademarks or service marks. They really don't go after them so hard now. But there are many, many other reasons for that. At this time in the 80s, they were all about protecting their trademarks and service marks. And RTC's job basically was to police that.

Chris Shelton [00:58:58] So Miscavige then is basically running. By this point now, Miscavige is kind of running Scientology through ASI because this is the money base and there's a lot of power in that. And he's appointing different people as president and executive director and corporate affairs director and this kind of thing. So he's got people under him still. And these are the people who are now kind of following his Orders and directions.

Chris Shelton [00:59:28] Of the names I'm looking at here, only one of them is still around in Scientology at all. Most of these guys have been gotten rid of one way or another, okay? And then money's being funneled from the church to asi. And this one guy named Lyman, he was an accountant, lawyer guy. His job was to make it legal. They're getting all this money, and it's just. Okay, well, you just figure out how to make it so that the IRS doesn't have a problem with it and all this.

Chris Shelton [01:00:02] Now, at the same time, There was a big internal shakeup within Scientology, within the world of Scientology, as if it didn't have enough shakeups going on already. By the end of 1981, there were a group of people who were called.

Chris Shelton [01:00:25] Well, they were. They were mission holders. They were people who had been granted the right to deliver Dianetics and Scientology at a very low level, like down. You know, like they were the churches of Scientology. And then there's these things called missions. And I. And this is not connected to the projects and missions thing I mentioned earlier. This is a different thing. Originally, they were called franchises, like McDonald's, like, literally like that. You know, you'd get that. You'd get the okay to use the trademarks and the service marks, but you ran it. You were the one who owned it and were in charge of it.

Chris Shelton [01:00:57] And same. Same thing like how McDonald's runs now, right? These missions were being run by these mission holders, and they were very, very successful. In the 1970s, Scientology did not have the name that it has now. At the public level, you had this big court case, and that was a big PR nightmare.

Chris Shelton [01:01:18] But in terms of delivering Scientology and promoting Scientology and making new Scientologists, all through the 60s and definitely into the 70s, Scientology was experiencing a bit of a boom period because of these missions, not because of the Scientology churches or organizations.

Chris Shelton [01:01:37] The churches and the organizations were being run by the Sea Org, and they were being run very incompetently, and it was just awful. And it was all about the money and stuff. But these missions were being run, and they were actually delivering the goods, and they were making a lot of money. And these mission holders, as a result, were becoming quite rich.

Chris Shelton [01:01:56] And Hubbard thought, well, that's bullshit. That's my money again. Remember that? Miscavige and Broeker are the ones who are running the communication to Hubbard as well. So Hubbard's already mentally kind of, you know, not in a good place. He's already losing it. He's had strokes. He's had problems. He's, you know, he's really physically losing it.

Chris Shelton [01:02:21] And now he's getting reports about these mission holders making hand over fist money with what he thinks is his stuff. And he doesn't like that, even though he's the one who set that system up. Now he's jealous of these people. And of course, Broeker and Miscavige probably. This is conjecture, but they probably stoked the flames of Hubbard's rage about that.

Chris Shelton [01:02:43] And so Hubbard orders that these mission holders are to, you know, pay up and demands fealty and loyalty and all of that. The stuff we usually see out of, you know, narcissists. So there's a big internal shakeup and a lot of these mission holders get called in at these conferences and Miscavige and other senior c organization executives show up and read them the riot act, put them on an E meter, start interrogating them about their crimes, demanding that they pay up right now. They empty up their bank accounts to the Church of Scientology or they're going to get declared suppressive and they're going to, you know, get raked and they're getting raked over the coals hardcore for this.

Chris Shelton [01:03:28] They didn't really do anything to deserve this treatment. Right. They were successfully doing exactly what L. Ron Hubbard said for them to do. And their reward was, you know, getting publicly pilloried. And many of them, you know, just got their. Got declared suppressive and. And they were kicked out of the church altogether. And this was a real bloodbath. And this is kind of a famous time period in Scientology, just this.

Chris Shelton [01:03:54] It was called the mission holder shakeup or meltdown, however you want to call it, or holocaust. And they just cleaned the slate and they converted a lot of these missions into official Churches of Scientology. This is where a lot of the churches that exist now, this is where they came from. Santa Barbara, where I first got started, had been one of these very successful missions that the church basically just took over and grabbed up and kicked the mission holders out of the picture and said, you better be grateful for what we gave you for the crumbs we're leaving you with. You know, and that's kind of the whole attitude.

Chris Shelton [01:04:34] That's how it went down. And Miscavige led the charge on that at Hubbard's orders. But you know, how much of those orders were based on false information and Hubbard and Miscavige and Broker stoking Hubbard's paranoia?

John Dehlin [01:04:47] You know, that sounds sad. Like a bunch of people trying to act in good faith, giving service Trying to build the kingdom, so to speak, only to have everything kind of ripped away and to be shamed and demoted.

Chris Shelton [01:05:02] Exactly. And at this point, then Gail Irwin, who had taken over for Dee Dee earlier, right, she'd been busted. Now Gayle took over. Now she gets busted and she takes the fall for false reports, you know, gets busted off post by Miscavige. And also this other guy named Bill Franks, who had been the nominal ecclesiastical head, he'd been the public head of Scientology. He'd been holding a position called the Executive Director International, and he'd been running around and he'd been working with Miscavige and everybody else, trying to get Scientology settled and get things the way Hubbard wanted them. And he gets locked up and taken off the lines, right?

Chris Shelton [01:05:47] And DM is now basically running everything. And he's got this whole corporate sort out that he's got going, and he's got the all clear thing that he's got going, and he's running ASI as the chairman of the board, and he starts putting people in charge that he is now basically personally hand picking.

Chris Shelton [01:06:06] And. And this is. You know, I don't. I'm not. Again, I'm trying to avoid getting into lots and lots of names because I don't want to be super, super confusing. And it's already. There's a lot of moving parts already that we're talking about here.

Chris Shelton [01:06:17] But so there's these public level shakeup, there's shakeups going on up above, and Miscavige is using all this confusion to rise higher and higher and be more and more in charge and more and more in control. That's really the what's going on here.

Chris Shelton [01:06:35] And he's using Scientology's internal ethics system and justice system to do this. All right? And they don't really care, by the way, at this time. This is very. This has been characterized by people who were around at the time and look back on it as sort of the takeover by the Young Turks.

Chris Shelton [01:06:58] Like, this is the young guys, these people who had been working under Hubbard, like Miscavige and these other messengers, these other people who had been working under him for years. These were younger people. They were in their 20s, right? They'd been brought up on the boat under Hubbard, you know, and these are the people that Miscavige is now systematically getting rid of.

Chris Shelton [01:07:18] But he's also picking those who are loyal to him and putting them in power positions. So it's kind of, you know, shaking out through 90 through 81 and 82 that he's the guy to be following. He's the guy that you want to be friends with if you want to. If you want things to go well for you.

Hubbard's Final Years and Death

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 1193

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Sa.

Chris Shelton [00:00:26] Finally, Miscavige gets himself into a position where certainly, let's say by 1984, with all this internal check and checkmate and moves and getting rid of people and stuff, Miscavige is now in a position where he's basically the single guy running or making the major decisions on a day to day basis for Scientology internationally. Because Hubbard's off in his thing and he's reporting to Hubbard. And there are people who are still not friendly to Miscavige. I mean, it's not totally like this clean coup yet hasn't quite totally happened yet, but it has gotten to a place where everybody's. Most people are thinking that Hubbard wants it this way.

Chris Shelton [00:01:11] And reports are going up and down the lines, and there are people who are having some problems with what Miscavige is doing still, but they got to be careful about how they're going about doing what they're doing. Okay, so 1984 comes around and Miscavige gets the idea that they. Well, they need money because they're fighting all these court cases. Remember I said, I think it was 46 court cases.

Chris Shelton [00:01:41] There's still this Christofferson verdict. They're fighting that publicly. They've got this whole crusade that they're doing in Portland. Or they do this, you know, do this in a little bit, in a couple years. They need money. The church's income had been book sales and service, sales of Scientology services. But Scientology has never had millions of members. It's never been this huge multi million member operation. It's really not ever gone above a few hundred thousand members at any one time. And this time period is the time when it was at its peak.

Chris Shelton [00:02:16] So they're not making enough money to deal with all the problems that they've got. And the church is going to go under. And this is a constant threat. This is a constant albatross around Miscavige's neck because he wanted the power and he wanted the guy to be. He wanted to be responsible. So these are the problems he's going to have to deal with.

Chris Shelton [00:02:33] So they form up what's called the International association of Scientologists as a membership trust, and they get people to start donating to it, and they're not getting anything back for their money. Up until this time time, Hubbard's policies had always stated very, very unequivocally that you are to sell Dianetics and Scientology services and books and lectures. And that's how we make our money. We do not just take money from people for nothing. He was very, very clear about that. And an earlier effort to do something like that, to get that going for the legal fund, Hubbard quashed that. He said, no, that's not what you do.

Chris Shelton [00:03:18] You sell Dianetics and Scientology. You make this thing, make money, and that's how you make money to fight the legal stuff. Well, it wasn't working, and the organizations were floundering, and things were not going well, and they were not making enough money.

Chris Shelton [00:03:34] So they started this thing called the ias, And I don't know that Hubbard ever knew about it. And they started it in 1984, and they started getting people to just give them money for their war chest is what they called it. They started sending out sales guys to fundraisers to drum up money for the IAS so they could fight the legal battles, and they would brief that, you know, the public at large, the Scientologists at large, that they had legal issues and they needed. The psychiatrists were attacking, the government was attacking. Everybody was after Scientology because it was so good and so workable, and it was.

Chris Shelton [00:04:09] It was changing the face of mankind and was saving planet Earth. So clearly, all the bad elements on the planet that would not want the earth to be better and would not want people to rise up out of their slaved, you know, slavish like conditions, all those guys were now, you know, fighting Scientology. They were trying to take Scientology out. And it was only the. The SEA Organization and the international association of Scientologists that were going to prevent that destruction of Scient.

Chris Shelton [00:04:40] So give your money now, now, now. And that's been the basic sales pitch of the IAS ever since it started in 1984. And it is an amazingly effective sales pitch. You know, you might look at it from an outside point of view and go, well, that's crazy. But when you're in it and you're being sold that, you know, that you're. That the church is on the ropes, and we need your money because we're not going to survive without it. And you're a dedicated Scientologist.

Chris Shelton [00:05:06] You can't give over the money fast enough. And it worked. They accumulated a boatload of money, and it wasn't earmarked for anything. They could do whatever they wanted to with this money. And they did have legal issues and legal problems, and the IRS was coming after them, so they needed the money. It wasn't just to give David Miscavige a nice set of shoes and nice dinner. You know, he did that with some of the money, too.

Chris Shelton [00:05:36] But that's how that went down. And the IAS is kind of a big deal because it was so. It was such a bold move that was completely contrary to what L. Ron Hubbard had specifically said he did not want done.

John Dehlin [00:05:53] And they know why.

Chris Shelton [00:05:56] It was just Hubbard's philosophy. He was into exchange. You know, Hubbard was. And I've mentioned this in some of my videos, because it seems to rub some people the wrong way, because they want to look at Hubbard as this con man. And he was a con man, but he wasn't a wholly unprincipled one.

Chris Shelton [00:06:17] And if that sounds odd, well, it's just kind of how people are. Hubbard specifically had this thing about exchange. This was one of the reasons why he hated taxes, is because he didn't feel like the government was exchanging anything.

Chris Shelton [00:06:33] He's like, I'm giving you this money, and I'm not getting anything back. And he really had this thing about exchange, and he talked about it in his policies and in his lectures. So he wanted Scientology to be built on a backbone of fair exchange. In fact, better than fair exchange. And he believed in his product. I mean, you know, he might have started with con man ways, and he was repackaging hypnosis as we went over.

Chris Shelton [00:07:01] But over the years, and certainly I'm absolutely convinced that by the mid-1960s, he was absolutely a true believer in his own product and his own con, and he was all in on it. So he thought that he really did have an insight and a knowledge that other human beings didn't have, and he really wanted to get it to them.

Chris Shelton [00:07:29] In spite of all the greed and megalomania and narcissism and everything else, this can still be true. All of that can be true. All those bad things can be true. And yet Hubbard still had some principles, and this exchange thing was one of them. And this is how he wanted his organizations run.

Chris Shelton [00:07:47] And it was just not practical because Scientology wasn't a good enough product. It was a mess. And Hubbard's other inclinations of vindictiveness and narcissism and megalomania were running the. Into the ground as fast as people could build it up, you see? So it was. It was. It was this constant push pull between his. His insanity and his desire to help that makes Scientology such an interesting and conflicted story.

John Dehlin [00:08:16] Right?

Chris Shelton [00:08:18] So Miscavige said, well, if we're going to keep surviving, we ain't doing that. So they start the ias and he had everybody on board with it. You know, I said, I don't know that. That he ever told Hubbard about it. Hubbard was at this point, living in Creston, California, they had settled at a ranch out there near. Outside San Luis Obispo. And the church still owns this property. You can look it up online and see photos of it and stuff. And you're not allowed to go anywhere near the property to this day. You go up there and try to get on the property, they will stop you.

Chris Shelton [00:08:51] And this is where Hubbard lived out his final years. And again, Pat and Annie Broker were his caretakers. And. And he wasn't wholly invalid. There were stories of him going into town and stuff and whatnot, but this is where he was. So he's off the lines, out of the picture. There's communications going back and forth in writing, but there's no phone calls. And of course, this is in the 80s when there's no Internet or anything like that.

Chris Shelton [00:09:19] So conceivably, Miscavige could have started this entire fundraising effort, and Hubbard never would have known anything about it if nobody told him. And if Miscavige and Broeker agreed that, no, we're not going to tell the old man about this, we need to do it because it's the church's survival at stake, then that was how it went down and very easily could have gone down that way.

Chris Shelton [00:09:44] So the IAS starts up, they start making more money, and with that money, they start dealing with these legal issues. And they also start a counter campaign against a PR campaign, I should say against the irs, because they need the IRS to buckle and give them their tax exemption back. And remember, they had it taken away from them in 1967, and they had not been paying their taxes.

Chris Shelton [00:10:10] That's a problem. That was another massive debt that was accumulating. Right. I mean, say what you will about Miscavige, he did deal with all of this, as we'll show here. This is the only time. This is the only stuff that he ever actually dealt with successfully.

Chris Shelton [00:10:30] So by 86, Hubbard dies. Miscavige is basically running everything by now. But there is still this tension between ASI and rtc, because RTC is still the structural organization that holds the copyrights and the trademarks. And Miscavige is not in charge of that yet. He's in charge of asi, which is Author Services, which is Hubbard's personal literary agent. When Hubbard dies, I think the calculation that Miscavige made was he looked at this and went, okay, I can keep running this organization that's collecting the royalties on Hubbard's legacy of writing, or I take over the organization that holds the trademarks and service marks of Dianetics and Scientology, and I actually take over the church as an entity.

Chris Shelton [00:11:28] And however he made that calculation, he did because in 1986, after Hubbard dies, I think it was either late 86 or early 87, Miscavige and a couple of his most loyal followers march into the offices of RTC at the international base, and this is outside San Jacinto, California, and takes over. He kicks out the woman who was in charge of rtc. Her name was Vicki Asneran, and he kicks out some other people, and there was some physical confrontation that occurred here. I've interviewed a man named Jesse Prince, who was there in the room at the time. And he actually was so distraught and pissed off at this coup that was happening right in front of him that he went and got a gun and threatened Miscavige with it.

Chris Shelton [00:12:21] And anyway, Miscavige talked him down and succeeded. That was the only resistance. That was the only real effort on somebody's part to physically resist Miscavige taking over. But Jesse didn't follow through on that. And, you know, probably a good thing that he didn't kill anybody.

Chris Shelton [00:12:43] But Miscavige succeeded. That was the point when he took over rtc, and he went from being the chairman of the board of ASI to becoming the chairman of the board of rtc. And from that position, he now had full control over the trademarks and service marks of Dianetics and Scientology, which basically put him in charge of licensing which organizations could and couldn't be Scientology. Organizations, therefore gave him ultimate power and authority over all of Dianetics and Scientology.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] But he kept power. He kept control over asi. Right.

Chris Shelton [00:13:21] He did not. He actually went to RTC and became chairman of the board there. And he installed somebody as the head of ASI that he controlled because he couldn't do both. No, he didn't. He chose not to. For whatever reason, he took over rtc, and he did not. And he no longer controlled asi. But for all intents and purposes, and this is the important part, what title he gave himself isn't the important part here. The important part is that everybody of any consequence who held any degree of responsibility or power at the upper levels of Scientology recognized that he was the one who was in charge.

Chris Shelton [00:14:04] And if they crossed him, he would take them out. And here's how he could do that. And this is something that often gets missed, especially in courts of law, because it's this invisible factor, and that is the factor of the C Organization.

Chris Shelton [00:14:22] The C organization, all of these people asi rtc, all of international management of Scientology. The one thing all these people have in common is that they are Sea Org members. First, they've all signed a billion year contract of commitment to achieve the aims and goals of Scientology.

John Dehlin [00:14:43] And you're not exaggerating when you say a billion years.

Chris Shelton [00:14:45] What's that?

John Dehlin [00:14:46] You're not exaggerating when you say a billion years.

Chris Shelton [00:14:48] The contract literally says, I commit myself for a billion years, which infers some

John Dehlin [00:14:54] sort of reincarnation sort of thing.

Chris Shelton [00:14:56] Yeah. Scientologists believe in life after life after life, right? You. You are an immortal spiritual being called a Satan. You have lived a near infinite amount of time in the past, and you will live infinitely into the future. You cannot die. This is a core belief of Scientology. Right. So past lives are just a matter of course. I mean, of course you have past lives. What do you think you started here? Now? Now you've been living forever.

Chris Shelton [00:15:23] So you've had past lives, and you're going to have future lives. So you commit to the next billion years in the Sea Org because you're all in on this thing, right? I mean, imagine the mindset. I've been there. I signed that contract.

Chris Shelton [00:15:38] You know, I held out for 17 years. That's how long I lasted as a Sea Org member. It's a little short of a billion, but this is the commitment the Sea Org members make. And more importantly, the Sea Organization is sort of this fraternal organization. It doesn't exist. It's not a corporation. It's not a membership trust. There's no legal documents anywhere that incorporate the Sea Organization. It's simply an agreement that these Scientologists have amongst themselves a commitment, really. I mean, agreement is too light a word. It's a discipline.

Chris Shelton [00:16:13] It is a real group. It really exists, but it doesn't have corporate existence. You can't go sue the Sea Org. You can't take the Sea Org to court. You know what I mean? So all of these people are Sea Org members first.

Chris Shelton [00:16:30] And David Miscavige is the head of the Sea Org. He's the guy at the top of the ranks of the Sea Org. So if he doesn't like what you're doing or you buck that system in some fashion, then he will use Sea Org discipline on you to remove you and get you out of the way. The corporate stuff is smoke and mirrors to them.

Chris Shelton [00:16:59] They don't think about their organizations within the world of Scientology. They don't think about corporate structures and boards of directors and things like this. These are not important terms. To Scientologists, and especially not to Sea Org members. If you're in the Sea Org, you're all in.

Chris Shelton [00:17:18] At whatever job it is you're assigned to do. You're expected to be a hardcore janitor, or you're expected to be a hardcore, you know, manager, or a course room supervisor, or the head of Scientology. All of these things are jobs that you could end up having as a Sea Org member.

Chris Shelton [00:17:43] So all the corporate shenanigans, nobody really keeps track of that stuff inside Scientology. The lawyers do, the accountants do, and the guys at the very top do. David Miscavige keeps his finger on all this stuff, but the rest of the Sea Org doesn't. They just listen to David Miscavige because he's the head of the Sea Org.

Chris Shelton [00:18:03] And the Scientologists have learned over the years, as Miscavige has come out publicly, that he's the one who heads up this whole structure. He's the guy at the top. He's the chairman of the board. You know, nobody could tell you who else sits on the board. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. You know, within the world of Scientology, that's just not important.

Chris Shelton [00:18:24] So this is why, if he was over ASI or rtc, not really that super important in terms of the internal machinations, but he. But from this, from a. From a corporate point of view, I was trying to make the case that it made more sense for him to take over RTC if he wanted to put himself in a position where he held real power over Scientology.

Chris Shelton [00:18:51] Because he's the guy who is the turn, the determining factor as to who gets the trademarks and service marks and who doesn't. And back in the 80s, that meant more than it does now, too, because they were really big on enforcing their trademark standards. And there were people who had left the Church of Scientology, high level people, people who had worked right under Hubbard, who tried to form their own Churches of Scientology, their own independent act activities. And they got squashed. I mean, they just got legally and illegally squashed hard by David Miscavige and by RTC using those trademark laws. Right. They took them to court, and that's how they got rid of those guys.

Chris Shelton [00:19:34] So there was power to be had, having control of those trademarks and stuff. Sure, yeah. Yeah. And this is now. Okay, so Hubbard dies, they hold an event, and they announce this fact to everybody. And David Miscavige is the emcee of this event. And this was the first time that most people had ever seen or heard of David Miscavige outside of the Sea Org.

Miscavige Assumes Public Leadership

Chris Shelton [00:20:03] So now he's this little guy on stage in a white uniform, and everybody's kind of like, who's this guy? You know, and he looks important and he talks like he's important, and he's emceeing this event, and he's. And they're talking about L. Ron Hubbard's legacy and how it's going to go forward into the future. This was also the only public appearance that I'm aware of of Pat Broeker, the guy who had been with Hubbard up until the end.

Chris Shelton [00:20:25] He was also on the stage, and he made promises about how L. Ron Hubbard had done further research into these OT levels and stuff, and they were going to release it, and it was going to be amazing. So there was this sort of. The whole point of that announcement of L. Ron Hubbard's dying event was not to just announce Hubbard's death, but to also make it clear that the church was going to continue. And this was the leadership that the church was going to be under.

Chris Shelton [00:20:56] So Miscavige didn't have to announce that he was the guy in charge of everything. He just sort of assumed that people got that. And then he continued running things from behind the scenes. You know, at the upper, upper, upper levels, you don't have to make daily public appearances for people to know you're in charge. They just see your name on things from time to time, and they know.

John Dehlin [00:21:18] So it just becomes kind of a transition into that.

Chris Shelton [00:21:22] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:21:23] Not necessarily requiring some big formal announcement, it sounds like.

Chris Shelton [00:21:27] Exactly. Okay, so he was just kind of there. Right? There's still a lot of people at the upper levels of Scientology. Management actually was existing. It was running. There was a structure in place. Miscavige was the head of this thing, but he was dealing with the IRS problem now.

Chris Shelton [00:21:49] And now that Hubbard had died, all those court cases were not really as important anymore. I mean, they were important, but now that L. Ron Hubbard, you know, was not. He was named as a defendant, but, you know, nobody was going to depose L. Ron Hubbard now.

Chris Shelton [00:22:03] So that kind of took a lot of stress off that whole All Clear project and all of that stuff. Right? So now Miscavige's focus was entirely on church survival. And the main threat to that survival was the irs.

Chris Shelton [00:22:21] So he was working with the lawyers, he was working with legal. They also had these other independent Scientology groups popping up that had to be squashed. And they had the day to day operations of the church. And so there was a management level structure that was kind of running the Church's day to day, week to week operations. And Miscavige was no longer totally so involved in all of that.

Chris Shelton [00:22:45] The IRS problem became front and center, and Miscavige was orchestrating legal maneuvers, private investigations of IRS employees. There were something like 1400 lawsuits brought against the IRS by individual Scientologists. There was a PR campaign being run. There was a freedom. There was a thing the church was publishing called Freedom magazine, which was doing monthly exposes on IRS abuses. And the IRS was an abusive organization. They would get involved in some pretty crazy nonsensical stuff, and they would break the laws and enforcing tax codes, and they were kicking families out of their homes and, you know, all the crap that the IRS gets up to. Well, the church was highlighting all that stuff, right?

Chris Shelton [00:23:31] They were making a big deal about it, and they were. They were trying to get senate hearings. They were really going to town taken down, you know, on taking down the irs to the point that Miscavige even narrated and starred in a video proposing an alternative tax system. And they proposed a VAT tax in America. And they said, do away with the IRS entirely. We don't need them. Let's just replace it with a sales tax.

John Dehlin [00:23:58] I remember when that was in politics, the value added tax.

Chris Shelton [00:24:02] Yeah, it was a big deal. So they were kind of hopping on that bandwagon all in the direction of trying to get the IRS to capitulate and give them back tax exempt status and clear the books. That was the goal. There wasn't any other target in sight but that. And it was literally live or die for the Church of Scientology. You know, the structure was in place.

Chris Shelton [00:24:26] They had started in 1986, 87, 88. They had started an extremely successful Dianetics promotional campaign. You know, remember those with the questions? And then Dianetics, they'd say, like, you know, what's the thing that's ruining your life? Page 13, right? And what's the single source of problems for Mankind? Page 56. And then Dianetics would appear on the commercial right back. Ooh, Dianetics. This is the book that has the answers to all those questions they're posing about your personal problems and the problems you're having in life. This was a very successful campaign. Dianetics became a bestseller again for like, a hundred straight weeks or something. And 19 in the 1980s, right.

Chris Shelton [00:25:16] 35, 30, 37 years after it was published. So. So that happened. And that was all happening under Miscavige's watch. But it wasn't being ordered by him. It was being done by dedicated Sea Org Members who, you know, had a vision of actually trying to promote Dianetics and Scientology and, and get it, you know, get it going again.

Chris Shelton [00:25:36] So that worked. Ironically, the guy who came up with that whole campaign has got kicked out of the church by Miscavige years later for being a horrible, awful person. I know him, he's a friend of mine. So Scientology is kind of basically, after Hubbard dies, it's starting to become a more well thought of, publicized, promoted thing in the general public. It is the late 80s now.

Chris Shelton [00:26:07] People are not looking at it as this horrible, awful cult. They've reformed, they got rid of the go, Hubbard died, we got rid of all the bad apples. Right. This is the public face that the church is putting on and it's working okay.

Scientology's Battle with the IRS

John Dehlin [00:26:22] And this, this reminds me of sort of, this period reminds me of kind of the post polygamy Mormonism where, where the church realized that it became a state in the United States. Eventually it was voted in. And then eventually it realized that having these long bearded, polygamous prophets wasn't gonna jive well with the modernization of America. And so Starting in the 50s, the church cleaned up its act, got rid of polygamy, figured out its corporate structures, began to modernize, and began to fight

Chris Shelton [00:27:00] for

John Dehlin [00:27:02] an image that became squeaky clean, clean cut, almost like IBM level, businesslike and American. And you go from Mormons being these creepy, weird, bearded polygamists on the frontier to Donny Osmond level. The Mormons are the good guys. The creaky, clean, hard working, honest, family based people. That was a long haul of the church cleaning up its act, getting its finances in order, almost going bankrupt, but then reworking its image, and in a very short period of time, let's just say a few decades, going from being a laughingstock, scourge, that's bankruptcy, to a growing global, almost well respected organization that started to have a great deal of influence. And most importantly, celebrities like the Osmonds, the Marriotts, Steve Young and athletes and that sort of thing.

Chris Shelton [00:28:13] That is exactly parallel. That is precisely what Miscavige was trying to do with Scientology. Yeah, and he, he, he, he couldn't quite get there at this time period because of the IRS threat. So that was where all of his attention, or most of his attention was at, but internally within the church. Exactly what you just said, Everything you just said is exactly what Scientology was trying to get going, come out of their dark phase and their awful phase and Mary and people in jail phase to no, we're good people. Look, we have this moral code and we Have Dianetics, and it will help you with your mind.

Chris Shelton [00:28:52] And we have Scientology, and it will bring you to advanced spiritual states of existence that you can't even believe and dream about. And that's what we have to offer. And aren't we a wonderful bunch of people? And isn't this all just great?

Chris Shelton [00:29:06] That's exactly the image the church was trying to put out there. And they repackaged the entire grade chart, all the materials of Dynamics and Scientology, got new book covers and new, you know, glossy look they had previously. Hubbard's lectures had been on reel to reel. Lectures. Right. That was. That was the quality. That was where their technology was at. So they started converting all of that to cassette tapes, because that was, you know, the latest and greatest they could afford in the 80s.

Chris Shelton [00:29:36] And they started doing in house. They've started building in house publishing facilities. And, you know, they were really trying to make a go of this thing and put on the best public face that they could. And like I said, it was starting to work.

Chris Shelton [00:29:54] And certainly people were willing to line up behind the message that the IRS are the bad guys, not the Church of Scientology. Anybody in the 80s could connect with that message. And of course, it helped that the IRS was in an abusive organization itself.

Chris Shelton [00:30:11] So Miscavige is fighting this fight. And, you know, the Dianetics is now beginning. I think. I think statistically speaking, if I remember right, Dianetics as a word, went from like 10% name recognition across the United States to like 90% within a year or two because of this promotional campaign and stuff.

Chris Shelton [00:30:34] And this is what the Sea Org is working on. So then somewhere around 91, I think it was, this IRS problem was just kind of persisting and persisting and persisting. And internally, Miscavige was still more than happy to get rid of anybody who crossed him or got in his path.

Chris Shelton [00:30:54] But being as focused as he was on this, he went and actually dropped in at the IRS office and went and talked to the commissioner of the irs, Goldberg, I think his name was. And they actually started hammering out an agreement.

Chris Shelton [00:31:13] And by 93, the IRS basically was exhausted. They had just. They only have people think of the government of the United States as this monolithic organization where all the money goes into this black box. And look at all this billions that they have. And they can solve any problem and do anything they want, but it doesn't really work that way. And the IRS specifically is like any other department or division of the government has a budget.

Chris Shelton [00:31:43] They get allocated a certain amount of money, and that's what they get. And if all of that money gets tied up in legal threats and suits and fighting private investigators who are literally following your employees around, and they're like, they're not down with this. They're quitting. You know, they don't want to be sued, stalked by Scientology, because they're trying to work for the irs.

Chris Shelton [00:32:05] So there were lots of reasons why the IRS commissioner was like, look, I'm kind of done with this. Can we just drop it and move on? And, you know, you got to give me something here. And so Scientology spent two years. And there was a lot of back and forth, and there were a lot of questions. I've got all these documents, and.

Chris Shelton [00:32:23] And they hammered out an agreement in this. And of course, and I have documented it in my book and in videos, the Church of Scientology lied through their teeth to the IRS about what their activities are, about what their structure is, about what their goals are.

Chris Shelton [00:32:41] They gave them a song and dance. They told the IRS exactly what the IRS wanted to hear, and the IRS capitulated. And in 1993, they gave them tax exempt status back. All the Churches of Scientology, all the organizations, unbelievable organizations, everything they wanted, they got.

Chris Shelton [00:33:00] In exchange for that, they paid a pretty hefty sum of back taxes, but it wasn't the amount that would have destroyed the Church. I mean, I think at this point, they had accumulated something on the order of a billion dollar tax debt or something. It was. It was big.

Chris Shelton [00:33:15] And they forgave that. I think they ended up paying him a couple million or something. And that was it. The war was over. And this was. I cannot even begin to overstate the importance of this victory for Miscavige, for his position as the leader of Scientology, and for Scientologists in general, because now they could claim deductions on their tax returns for Scientology donations and services.

Chris Shelton [00:33:46] And people in Scientology sometimes pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at a popular. To the church. So to now have it be. You know, to get tax credit on that, to have it be tax exempt, Right? And it gave the Church a whole new lever to use to get people to donate, because their. Their donations are tax. Tax deductible, you know, so this was a huge, huge coup. Big, gigantic one.

Chris Shelton [00:34:13] And David Miscavige, within a week of getting the tax exemption, organized this gigantic event at the LA Sports Arena, 10,000 person capacity. And they packed that place. It was the one time they actually packed an event hall, and they had people flying in from around the world for this special announcement. Nobody knew what it was.

Chris Shelton [00:34:37] I Went there. I was in Santa Barbara at the time. I was on staff, and I drove down to LA to go to this event. So I was there and I heard him, and it was the three hour briefing. He talked all about the history of the church's battle with the IRS and how the IRS were, you know, a bunch of, you know, horrible, awful people who had tried to take out Scientology over the years, along with Interpol and the FBI and the CIA and every other Alphabet organization that ever existed. They were all against Scientology. They all wanted its doom and destruction, and they had beaten them all.

Chris Shelton [00:35:12] And David Miscavige, the one who did this entire briefing, and if you didn't know who David Miscavige was at this point as a Scientologist, you were definitely going to know now. And of course, I actually skipped over the fact that in 92, he had done a interview on Nightline with Ted Koppel, and that also got him out into the public eye.

John Dehlin [00:35:34] I remember that. Yeah, that was. That was pretty bold, right?

Chris Shelton [00:35:38] Yes, it was. And he came out as the leader of Scientology and. And he duped it out with Ted Koppel. I just watched it a few days ago. I just rewatched that to answer a question somebody had. And he didn't really come off that badly. I mean, he came off horribly, if you actually want to look at a factual account of what he said. He was just throwing the lies out left, right and center about what Scientology is really all about.

Chris Shelton [00:36:06] But he kind of held his own against. Against Koppel's questions enough. So as good as any politician would do, let's put it that way. And so he got a lot of cred for that because this was the first time that Scientologists were ever seeing anybody from Scientology take, you know, duking it out with Ted Koppel on Nightline and presenting Scientology as this wonderful, amazing. You know, you guys are just a bunch of liars. You don't get it. This is what we're all about. This is. Is a good thing. Da, da, da. And Scientologists loved that, right? So that gave him a lot of cred.

Chris Shelton [00:36:46] But then this IRS victory happens. I just can't overstate it. David Miscavige was God after this. I mean, he was just the man. He was the head of Scientology. Everybody knew he was the head of Scientology now. He was the spokesperson, he was the representative. He was the guy who was leading the whole movement. And look what he just accomplished. And of course, this was all worded in such a way that he was the one who you know, made it all happen.

Chris Shelton [00:37:17] But in a way, he did. You know, that's. This was his big victory moment, and this was sort of the pinnacle of his, you know, achievement for Scientology, as he did save the church, and everybody knew it. So he was untouchable at this point. And that's really the key takeaway I'm trying to get across at this point is by 1993, no one was ever going to challenge David Miscavige.

Chris Shelton [00:37:46] And internally, anybody who even looked at him the wrong way was going to get shipped off to the rpf. The RPF, or the Rehabilitation Project Force is the same Sea organizations, prison system, and re education system. And it. And it is like a re education camp. There is harsh physical discipline and physical labor, and then there is five hours a day of.

Chris Shelton [00:38:14] Excuse me, of re education, you could say, where you apply, you know, you use Dianetics and Scientology techniques and methods on. On one another and kind of get your head re. Indoctrinated back into being a good, loyal Sea Org member.

Chris Shelton [00:38:32] I did that program. We can talk more about it when we talk about my thing. But if you cross Miscavige, that's the best thing that'll happen to you is being sent to the rpf.

Celebrity Recruitment and the Celebrity Centre

John Dehlin [00:38:45] So can you talk about the strategy real quick of. Of getting celebrities into Scientology? Was that.

Chris Shelton [00:38:53] Oh, sure.

John Dehlin [00:38:53] Does that start with Hubbard, or did that start with Miscavige and talk about that?

Chris Shelton [00:38:59] Sure, yeah. That's a separate thing.

John Dehlin [00:39:02] Is that something you were going to get to later?

Chris Shelton [00:39:04] No, no, no. It's fine. It's fine. We can talk about it now. Then we'll get back to the timeline, because there's a little bit more about Miscavige I would like to talk about. That's happened since 93. But this is a great question, and this is perfectly valid because it's a key way that Scientology has kept going.

Chris Shelton [00:39:21] In the 1950s, L. Ron Hubbard recognized the power of celebrity, and he actually wrote an issue suggesting that various celebrities be specifically targeted to be made into Dianetic, you know, Scientologists. That was the first inkling of it. But over the years, I think in 1968 or 69 or so, a woman named Yvonne Jensch, or Yvonne Gillum, was a Sea Org member. She was an Australian Sea Org member who had come up and been part of. Joined Hubbard's Sea organization early on.

Chris Shelton [00:40:00] And she was this really bright light bulb of a personality. She could light up a room. Everybody loved her. I mean, literally everybody loved her. To this day. People sing her praises. Yvonne is Just this magical person that somehow got involved in Scientology. And despite all of its awfulness, she continued to remain this very bright bulb and very inspiring character in the Scientology history.

Chris Shelton [00:40:28] She had the idea of taking this thing about celebrities and running with it, and she actually got herself out to Hollywood and started an organization called Celebrity Center. And she took Hubbard's ideas and policies and ideas about, you know, how to run Scientology, and she applied it to this. This artistic community.

Chris Shelton [00:40:52] And in 1969, you know, there was a. There was a public for that, huge public for that. And she built on the whole movement of, you know, the counterculture movement, artists movement, you know, all this kind of stuff. She brought all that in, and she started it from scratch, really. She went out there on this mission to start Celebrity center, and she just kind of ran with it, and she started bringing in low level celebrities. Actors, singers, poets. They did poetry night readings and song nights and things like that, and it appealed to people. They came in and they started doing Scientology services, and it was.

Chris Shelton [00:41:29] It was scrape. It was bare. You know, it was just like barely surviving to start with. But it started building up, and then she started getting more, you know, higher level. Like, I think she got some guy who'd been on a couple TV shows in and some singers in and some other people of note, and slowly this thing built up, and Celebrity center is now a network of organizations throughout the Scientology world, operating out of this building that they bought this old chateau hotel in Hollywood, which they renovated in the 90s at great expense, and they cater specifically and only to celebrities or their entourages.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] So tell us again her name. What's that, her name again?

Chris Shelton [00:42:12] Yvonne Gillum.

John Dehlin [00:42:14] Yvonne Gillum. She starts what year?

Chris Shelton [00:42:17] 68. 69, I think, is when Celebrity center started. Yeah, you know, wow. Yeah, she was, like I said, every single person I have ever, ever met, and I've talked to quite a few who ever had anything to do with her, just has nothing but good things to say about her. She was just the nicest, kindest, most helpful person. She really cared about people, and it was on the strength of that that she built up Celebrity center, and she was able to get the trust and loyalty of celebrities, and she gathered them around her, and she just. And she wasn't in it for her. She really believed in the whole mission of Scientology to the point that she did some pretty awful stuff.

Chris Shelton [00:43:01] I mean, she ended up basically abandoning her kids for this whole thing. So she was pretty shitty mother, but she. But she was, you know, this great Scientologist, and she ended up Dying, I think, of cancer in the 80s. And they kind of erased her names from the books because, you know, you're either Hubbard or you're Miscavige, and if you're anybody else, you can't have a name. And that's kind of the history of Scientology as far as that goes. But at the time, time that she was around and building this whole thing up and running it, she was a goddess. She was really a queen, and she built this thing up.

Chris Shelton [00:43:37] They got John Travolta involved in the mid-70s. He got into Scientology through. And he. I think that's. He got welcomed back Cotter around then, and then Greece, of course, and, you know, everything after that. And he attributed his success to Scientology. And. And this became a big thing and they really started getting the return on investment that you can get from celebrities.

Chris Shelton [00:44:06] And I'll give you an example of that in a second. But it's big. It's a big deal. And John Travolta was personally responsible for bringing a lot of people into Scientology in the 70s and 80s because he was promoting it as long as his career was going great and he was talking about it and stuff. You know, Scientology was completely happy with him.

Chris Shelton [00:44:27] And they. You. And they got more and more celebrity people involved, right? They have a little, little group of these guys. Tom Cruise got involved in the 80s through his then wife, Mimi Rogers, who was a second generation Scientologist. And it helped him with his dyslexia. He was sold on it. And Tom Cruise, being the rather intense personality that he is, he went all in. And he got really heavily involved in Scientology in the 80s, talked about it a little bit, married Nicole Kidman, and then kind of wavered for a number of years. But then they got him back in the late 90s and got Nicole out of the picture and just focused on Cruise, and they got him back in the fold in a huge way.

Chris Shelton [00:45:12] And he started drumming up business for them again in the early 2000s. And you remember the Matt Lauer interview and. And jumping on Oprah's couch and meeting Katie and all that nonsense. Well, that was all Scientology inspired. And. And Tom Cruise was amazing because he could literally mention a Scientology book. You know, he goes on Good Morning America and he says, you know, you want to know about Scientology, just read a book like Fundamentals of Thought. Go read that book. And he holds it up or something, right? And it looks like this casual thing. And that morning, like 8,000, 10,000 copies of the book get sold. You know, it's like a big Deal. Like, when celebrities talk, people listen.

John Dehlin [00:45:50] Yeah, for sure.

Chris Shelton [00:45:51] The church loved it, you know, so that's how they use celebrities.

John Dehlin [00:45:58] That's really profound. And we could do probably an entire series on John Travolta and Tom Cruise and others, but.

Chris Shelton [00:46:04] Oh, yeah, there's tons to know. Lots and lots of details. I'm really just doing broad strokes here.

John Dehlin [00:46:09] Sure.

Chris Shelton [00:46:10] I argue that it's an arguable claim that had John Travolta and Tom Cruise never gotten involved in Scientology, it would not exist today. There's definitely a valid argument to be made with that.

John Dehlin [00:46:24] Yeah. And, you know, I mentioned the Osmonds just as an example. They weren't recruited, but they came out of Mormonism. But you go to Europe or Latin America and you just. You realize that there was this whole generation of people who joined the church in the 60s and 70s when David O. McKay, one of our prophets, really started expanding the mission efforts, temple building, the stellar popularity of Donny and Marie. And that can't be understated. They were almost on the level of Michael Jackson, the Jackson 5 back in the day. They had their own variety show on tv. They were just huge. You just cannot understate the impact of a religion glomming on to celebrities big time.

Chris Shelton [00:47:12] It's huge. It's a really, really, amazingly good marketing

John Dehlin [00:47:17] idea, but until it backfires. Because now, as I told you, we just interviewed Wayne Sermon from Imagine Dragons. We've had Benji Schwimmer on who won season two of so youo Think youk Can Dance. We've had Tyler Glenn on for Neon Trees. Nowadays, because the Mormon Church has attacked gay and lesbian people, it's having a harder time hanging on to its celebrities because that's become this huge fissure in the church that's leading the celebrities to bail and to be embarrassed. Because how do you survive in show business if you're part of a church that's perceived as homophobic? It's kind of hard, Right?

Chris Shelton [00:47:54] Exactly. Which is why we try so hard to get the truth out about Scientology's homophobia, because it's really rampant throughout the church, and these celebrities lie about it. And I don't know if they're lying purposefully or because this is what they're told to do and they believe it. But I can't believe, if you've read Hubbard's materials, that you don't understand why the church is extremely homophobic.

John Dehlin [00:48:17] And that's the problem of religion, is that oftentimes the founders lived 50 or 100 years ago or 200 years ago or two millennia ago. And so whatever social mores were acceptable at the time, like homophobia, get baked into the founding documents of the religion. And how do you stay true to the founder but then erase the things that are well known that they taught and said about certain things, like sexuality? And it puts in a church in real bind because they want to. They have to honor the founders. And you can see all the, you know, Tom Cruise, LRH or whatever it is. You know, it's just salute, just like Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:49:00] You know, the Mormon Church worships Joseph Smith in some sense. I'm guessing Scientology worships LRH or L. Ron Hubbard, but that means you have to stay true to their teachings. But if their teachings were problematic, how do you do both? And that's how these churches are coming up. One of the reasons churches are having significant problems in the modern day.

Chris Shelton [00:49:20] Yeah, exactly. And, yeah, you're absolutely right. Scientology is no different. It's dogma and morals come out of the 1950s, and. And. And they're stuck with that, you know, and that's what they do, and they pretend otherwise. And at the lower levels, you know, it's not entirely a pretense. You can come in and do Scientology as a. As a member of the LGBT community, but you're only going to get so far before you're going to start finding that they're going to be talking to you about it, and they're going to be concerned about it, and they're going to be showing you things that Hubbard wrote, and

Chris Shelton [00:49:49] they're going to be saying, you know, we think there might be a problem here, and we might want you to look at this, you know, and then it's going to go deeper and deeper, and there's going to come a certain point where you're not going to be able to advance anymore in Scientology until you deal with your aberration, as they call it, your, you know, problem.

John Dehlin [00:50:06] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [00:50:07] You know, there's no way you're ever going to be allowed anywhere near those upper OT levels if you're a practicing homosexual. There's just simply no way around that.

John Dehlin [00:50:16] Right.

Chris Shelton [00:50:17] Not that you really want those OT levels anyway, but it's just sort of a. You know, it's. It's just a hypocrisy that needs to be pointed out.

John Dehlin [00:50:25] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [00:50:26] Yeah. So it's. So, yeah, that's a whole. That's a whole thing. And that's. It's a big deal. And we've really tried to bring that up to people and show that. And the celebrities, you Know, one of the problems with celebrities, of course, versus regular people is that when they go on and talk to millions of people at a shot on talk shows and things, they get to. People don't realize how much they get to dictate the course of the conversation.

Media Relations and Miscavige's Control

Chris Shelton [00:50:52] And so they don't get asked uncomfortable questions, they don't get asked hard questions. Because the talk shows are built on an industry where they need the repeat business, they need the celebrities to keep coming around and be on their shows so they can't offend them.

Chris Shelton [00:51:06] You offend a celebrity on one of those talk shows, you're never going to see that celebrity again. And that's bad business for the talk shows. So they don't ask them hard questions or they ask them questions in a very crafted, cultivated way that the celebrity has a prescripted answer for and that's it. And oh, aren't they so brave for saying that, you know, and they don't really get called out or confronted on this stuff. And that's a shame. But that's the world we live in.

John Dehlin [00:51:32] And we can talk about that more later. But you know, we're facing that as well. The media. When a church becomes super powerful, it has a crap ton of money, massive law firms at its disposal, and then not only celebrities, but also business executives with a lot of money and power they can wield and the religious protections that go around the First Amendment and just this general broader sort of vehement passion within American consciousness that religions can't be attacked, that religions need to be perspected. All of that money and power and influence and celebrity and protection can become just an incredible protector of religious traditions that may be doing really horrible things. But the media won't want to touch it because of all the power, money and influence that affects the livelihood of a newspaper or affects the reputation of a news source.

Chris Shelton [00:52:36] That's exactly right.

John Dehlin [00:52:37] We see that all the time here in Salt Lake City. And I don't mean to sidetrack, but the Salt Lake Tribune right now is about to die. It's probably just a couple years, potentially from death, because it was competing against the Deseret News, which is the Mormon church backed state newspaper. And at some point they both had to enter into a joint operating agreement where they shared distributors, they shared advertising, they shared subscription resources. But the Desert News really controls that centralized source. And so the Salt Lake Tribune has become poorer and poorer and dying and dying, while the Deseret News is propped up by the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [00:53:17] And what we're seeing is that the Salt Lake Tribune is about to die. And we've seen its ability to really scrutinize the dealings of the Mormon Church seemingly become weaker and weaker over time. And it's really distressing because if you go. If you're in Utah and you know about a cover up or a bishop abuse scandal and you go to the Salt Lake Tribune, they're going to just ignore you. And you don't know why, but you have to ask, how can they fight the Mormon Church when the Mormon Church controls its destiny? And when an active, believing member of the Mormon Church owns the Salt Lake Tribune? By the way, I forgot to mention that.

Chris Shelton [00:53:55] Right, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:53:57] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [00:53:57] And this is, this is totally akin to within the world of Scientology, they have Freedom magazine I mentioned earlier, and this news expose publication they put out, and that's their, that's their effort, their small time effort at, you know, putting some, some journalism out there, some. Some effort to, you know, have some, some objective validity, valid, you know, publication that people will read and listen to. But it's so biased. It's so obviously biased. They're so bad at it, you know, that they, that they just can't be taken seriously. And. But the Mormons have had many, many, many more years, decades to, to gain credibility that Scientology hasn't had. That's really the only difference.

John Dehlin [00:54:42] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [00:54:43] You know.

John Dehlin [00:54:44] Okay, so where do you want to go next in the modern. The modernizing of the Scientology movement?

Chris Shelton [00:54:49] Yes. Okay, so getting back to our timeline. Yeah. So the tax exemption was. Was pinnacle moment. Right. And in fact, every time David Miscavige has a rough time of it, they haul out the videos of that IRS victory and do showings of it to remind everybody, you know, hey, David Miscavige, he's the man. You know, it's almost. We laugh at it. It's almost. It's pretty hilarious. So, okay, so after that, after Miscavige basically has solid dictatorial control of Scientology and everybody is completely okay with that as a state of affairs.

John Dehlin [00:55:29] It's too exhausting to fight it.

Chris Shelton [00:55:32] Yeah, exactly. Because there's nobody who can challenge him at this point. He is the man.

John Dehlin [00:55:36] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [00:55:38] And this is when. This is not when physical abuse starts at the upper levels. Miscavige has beat on people at this point and done some pretty crummy stuff to people. And I will note at this moment, just to kind of put it out there, that he's married to a woman named Shelly, Shelly Miscavige. And she. Back in the early 80s, they got married. She's Been his personal assistant this entire time. Knows everything about what he's been up to. Her mother, Shelly's mom, her name was Flo Barnett, died under what I would probably have to say, or at least unusually bizarre circumstances where. And I don't have the full story on this, and maybe someday I'll go do a deep dive and do a video on this, but this did happen. She committed suicide, quote, unquote, by shooting herself with a rifle three times.

John Dehlin [00:56:35] Oh, yeah, that's always nice for those who don't know what rifles are. You can't do that.

Chris Shelton [00:56:42] Yeah. Little hard to do that. Right. Somehow this got officially ruled a suicide. And like I said, I might be telling tales here, but the death was suspicious, and she had. Shelly's mother had drifted away from the church, had started doing independent Scientology, started doing Scientology outside the church. And this really pissed off Miscavige. And obviously Shelley. And I believe the response when, you know, when it was when she learned that her mother had died was, you know, something along the lines of good, that bitch deserved it, or something. I mean, again, I might have some factual inaccuracies here, but the death certainly occurred, the suicide is what it was ruled as, and the rifle was definitely involved.

Chris Shelton [00:57:28] And that's just weird to me, but I can't point to that and say absolutely, positively. Miscavige's fingerprints are all over that. I can't say that at all. But it's just very strange, you know, but we do know for a fact that physical abuse had occurred. He started beating up on people, and he certainly was relegating people to disciplinary assignments that were unduly harsh, to say the least.

Chris Shelton [00:57:52] You know, they could send somebody off to a place called. Ironically called Happy Valley, which was a property adjacent to the. Or near. Near the. The church property out there in San Jacinto. And that was where they would do punishments and long, hard, physical labor, you know, under a grueling desert sun, without water and stuff like that. I mean, he could just. He could torture people at his whimsical. And it wasn't really a thing. Nobody out in the outside world would know anything about it until years later when some of these people finally escaped and told their stories.

John Dehlin [00:58:25] But he's doing this on US Property.

Chris Shelton [00:58:27] Oh, yeah. This is all in California.

John Dehlin [00:58:29] Yeah. In US Territory.

Chris Shelton [00:58:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:31] Yeah. That's so weird that he could get away with that level of brutality and lawlessness and not be reported and not be punished.

Chris Shelton [00:58:41] Well, I want to remind everybody here at this point who is thinking that that same thing because you're absolutely right. Your reaction is not misplaced or wrong, but to understand the situation, remember that all these people that he's doing this to and the people who surround him and make up his entire world are Sea Org members. They are people who have signed these billion year contracts of commitment. These are not people who are in a rational headspace to that degree, you know?

John Dehlin [00:59:09] Yeah. And that's where. That's where this notion of. I don't know any other way to say it. Cult mind control comes in. Right where. And that's where Steven Hassan's work with the bite model. You. You control people's behavior enough. You control the information that they receive. You're able to control their thoughts, and then you manipulate them with emotions, which is both elation and positive emotions, but also fear and negative emotions. You can get them into a mindset to where they. They're capable of all sorts of stuff.

Chris Shelton [00:59:39] That's exactly right.

John Dehlin [00:59:40] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [00:59:40] When I was assigned. When I was a Sea Org member, I met David Miscavige three times, or was interacted with him three, three or four times over the course of the. Of the years that I was in. And I didn't recognize the. The feelings inside me that were. That were coming up when I was around him until I got out of Scientology. I didn't recognize that as terror and fear.

Chris Shelton [01:00:07] I called it awe and respect, you know, but he was the only person I ever felt those things around. I was terrified of that man. Right. Because I knew the power that he wielded, and. And it was absolute. In Scientology, it's absolute power. He can do anything, you know, and people will get away with that. People he had empowered that were acting, you know, on his authority.

Abuse Inside the Sea Org

Chris Shelton [01:00:31] Beat me up. I got. I got assaulted by a woman who was sent down on one of those missions in the. In the 90s under his orders, you know, and she learned to do that from him, apparently, is what we all learned. What you learned after the fact. You know, when you're in, you're thinking, you know, these guys are great. They can do no wrong. Physical abuse is wrong. Therefore, they couldn't possibly do that or order that. And, you know, but then you find out, yeah, no, that was the order of the day up there. You know, Miscavige was just physically abusive to all kinds of people.

John Dehlin [01:01:02] Right?

Chris Shelton [01:01:03] So you get somebody in these head spaces, and you control all the information, like you mentioned, and you control the environment, and you literally. The guy who's controlling how much they're eating a day, how much sleep they're getting. When you have that level of control over somebody, abuse is just a matter of time also.

John Dehlin [01:01:20] And we'll talk about the Sea Org, but if, if people grow up in the church, they have no assets other than whatever the church has allowed them to have. And their livelihood, their jobs, they all are tied to the church. It's a little bit like Scientology. And I don't know if Scientologists are discouraged from pursuing kind of university and graduate level degrees, but I imagine that these Sea Org people, their church broke, as we call it in Mormonism, where if you don't, where if you fall out of Mormonism. And I think this is probably extra pronounced in the FLDS church, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Chris of Latter Day Saints, with these people that grow up homeschooled in these polygamous compounds. What's your life outside of your religious tradition? You've got no context, no family, no community, and your resume is a bunch of weird religious cult stuff.

Chris Shelton [01:02:16] Exactly. For Sea Org members, all of the above. Public Scientologists, you know, you have a more normal life.

John Dehlin [01:02:24] But certainly for his leadership, for his thugs, if you can call them that, they're gonna largely be drawn from the Sea Org. Am I right or not?

Chris Shelton [01:02:34] All of them are. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:02:35] Yeah. Right, yeah.

Chris Shelton [01:02:36] No, for sure. David Miscavige, his whole world is Sea Org. He interacts with, you know, he goes to events and he interacts with big donors. He takes, you know, they do photo ops, stuff like that. They give him big trophies. So he interacts with public Scientologists at that level. But other than that, he's not involved in the day to day life of Scientologists at that, at that level. But with Sea Org, absolutely. He's, he's the dictator.

John Dehlin [01:03:04] Got it. Okay.

Chris Shelton [01:03:05] And Scientologists generally are discouraged by the way, from college and all that. Hubbard was kind of down on college. He thought it was all a big waste of time because of course he flunked out of it. And he, he was not, he was not a big proponent of higher education. And we used that when we were trying to get people to come join the Cuorg or become Scientologists. If somebody said, yeah, well, I'm going to college, I'm going to do this and that, we'd always poo, poo that. Always, you know, routinely. That's not, that's a waste of your time. You should come do this, you know, so we had no idea that higher education was necessary or important in any way.

John Dehlin [01:03:41] Got it. Okay, so what else do we know about about Miscavige's sort of reign to bring us to modern Scientology.

Chris Shelton [01:03:50] So then we'll cover a couple important moments in time, and I think this will kind of. Kind of do it for this 1995. Okay. So just a couple years after the IRS victory, things are going great guns. Everybody's just peachy keen, happy.

The Lisa McPherson Case

Chris Shelton [01:04:08] And then a woman named Lisa McPherson dies, and she dies in Scientology custody, in fact, sea or custody at the Flag land base in Clearwater, Florida, that. The Flag base. That whole place is called Flag. And she was a public Scientologist who was.

Chris Shelton [01:04:29] Or parishioner, I guess you could say. She came out of Texas, I think, and she had traveled to Clearwater. She was going up the bridge. She had had some ups and downs and some rocky starts. She worked for a Scientologist owned company in Clearwater, and she attested to.

Chris Shelton [01:04:50] She did a bunch of auditing, and she got to the state where they said that she was clear, which is a mid level, you know, achievement that you want to get to in Scientology in order to be able to move on to those OT levels Miscavige had personally, because he was at Flag at the time, doing inspections and whipping them into shape and doing all kinds of stuff. He was trying to get Flag into this, like, million dollar a week operation. He wanted them routinely making at least a million bucks every week off of all the services and books and everything that they were selling.

Chris Shelton [01:05:28] So he was hanging around there, and he'd been there for quite some for a while, and he decided to make it his business to delve into people's files who were getting auditing. When you get auditing in Scientology, they write everything down and they put it in folders and they got your name on the top of it, and it's very. And you. And you end up stacking up many, many, many folders worth of counseling notes when you're going and getting your auditing. I've got, you know, over 50 folders with my, you know, with. With all the writing of all the notes of all my sessions.

Chris Shelton [01:06:02] So you can open these things up and look at them and see what's going on with the person and what they're saying and what's programmed for them to do next. And Miscavige got involved in that, and he personally looked at her folder and said, she's clear. You guys are stopping her from going clear.

Chris Shelton [01:06:20] Give it to her and have her move on. And the funny thing is, Miscavige isn't even trained to make that statement. He's not Trained enough in Dianetics and Scientology to actually be able to make that adjudication. But who's gonna question him? Exactly. Nobody. That's who. So she gets told she's clear, everything's great, everybody's happy. And I think it was a matter of days later that she has a psychotic break in the streets of Clearwater, where she is somehow involved in, I think, an auto accident or some kind of a road incident happens. And the paramedics come out, and she is standing out there in the road without any clothes on.

Chris Shelton [01:07:06] She's taking her clothes off, and she's kind of off talking crazy stuff. And they go, okay, lady, come with us. And they take her down to the hospital, and. And then a bunch of Scientologists show up. They find out she's there, and Scientologists show up, and they gather her up, and they have her.

Chris Shelton [01:07:28] They've got documents, I think, that she's already signed, saying that they are her caretakers or they can at least get her out of psychiatric evaluation. She does not consent to a psychiatric evaluation. This is all part of the contracts you sign to get auditing in Scientology in the first place, at least at this time.

Chris Shelton [01:07:47] So they had this disability to get her out of the hospital and into their career. They took her back to the Clearwater building there in the Scientology building, and they started taking care of her, and they put her on what was called a baby watch.

Chris Shelton [01:08:05] And this was part of an action in Scientology called the introspection rundown, which was something. A series of actions Hubbard developed in the early 1970s that he claimed would cure psychosis. And he literally made those claims. He said, psychotic breaks. You know, I figured it all out. I know exactly where it comes from. And here's how you deal with people who have had a psychotic episode. And you lock them up and you put them in a. You know, you put them in a room.

Chris Shelton [01:08:34] You don't talk to them. You don't say anything to them. You let them chill out. You feed them, and you let them calm down, and you send them notes and this kind of thing, and they started this procedure with her, but she was.

Chris Shelton [01:08:49] She was lost. I mean, she was not totally there. She was not eating. She wasn't sleeping well. She was having a psychotic, truly psychotic episode. And this is way beyond the pay grade of Scientologists to deal with. They don't have a clue what they're doing when it comes to truly treating mental illness.

John Dehlin [01:09:11] And it requires, oftentimes, requires heavy psychotropic meds.

Chris Shelton [01:09:14] And exactly which. The science, which Scientologists are deaf on. They think that all of that stuff is holy evil. Literally. They believe. I can't stress enough. I can't really get this across to people well enough with these. With these words. But Scientologists think they truly believe that psychiatry has existed for. For longer than this planet's been around. And they think that psychiatrists are trying to destroy civilization as we know it.

John Dehlin [01:09:47] Right.

Chris Shelton [01:09:48] Like that is literally where their heads are at. It's bad.

John Dehlin [01:09:51] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [01:09:52] So they're not about to let anybody get anywhere near a psychiatrist or a psychologist. And they think they know best. And they have these writings from Hubbard that say, if somebody has a psychotic break, this is what you do. So they proceed to do those things, and it's not working. This lady has lost it, and she ends up getting into this incredibly, horribly malnourished state where she's just getting degenerating right before their eyes.

Chris Shelton [01:10:23] They're keeping logs of this. They're trying to make this go. But this is all happening on church property there. Again, I'm skimming over a lot of stuff. There's. There's a lot more details to all this. But the bottom line is she gets to a point where they realize she's about to die.

Chris Shelton [01:10:41] They stick her in a car, they drive her off to. They go past the closest hospital to the Clearwater base because there's no Scientologists at this hospital. They take her to this other one, and she's pronounced dead on arrival.

Chris Shelton [01:10:58] She died, and she died under the care of Scientologists under Sea Org members. And this was absolutely, absolutely negligent homicide. Right. There's no question about it. The coroner report lists her death as either mysterious or unknown or potentially, you know, potential wrongdoing. The coroner couldn't make the call by herself that this was actually a homicide.

Chris Shelton [01:11:24] They started a police investigation, of course, starts, and the church goes absolutely bonkers. Shredding documents, shredding evidence. Marty Rathbun, who was a former Scientologist Sea Org member, second under David Miscavige, he was sort of, if you remember, Pulp Fiction, Wolf. The Wolf man, you know, the guy Harvey Keitel plays who comes in and cleans up the messes.

Chris Shelton [01:11:51] That's the role Marty Rathbun played for a lot of David Miscavige's messes. And this was probably the biggest one. And he comes in there and they shred a bunch of the logs and documents and incriminating stuff, and they have to protect. The first priority, of course, is protect David Miscavige. And second priority is protect the church. And this whole fiasco goes on for about a year of investigations and back and forth. The Clearwater Police, you know, I'm not going to comment on their investigation of this issue, but I will say that the Clearwater Police are pretty bought off by Scientology. And as a general situation, that has been a problem for a long time.

Chris Shelton [01:12:36] So. And there's various ways they do it. I'm not. I'm not saying they have to hand them envelopes of money under the table. There are ways of handing police officers money on top of the table that is perfectly legal. That gets them into a biased, prejudiced frame of mind towards the group that's paying them money, and that is how Scientology operates. They don't have to break the law. They can do it within the confines of the law.

John Dehlin [01:13:00] And this is the area where it always gets complicated. Because on the one hand, who can deny that that money and power and influence can go as far as to influence the workings of a police force? Of course, we have a long history in the United States of corruption at times at all levels, of all types of organizations. On the other hand, as I've been exploring a totally different but related subject in Mormonism that we referenced last time, which was this satanic ritual abuse stuff, when people start hating an organization and trying to do what I call criminology, which is to figure out the inner workings of a secret organization, it's not what I call criminology.

John Dehlin [01:13:53] It's what I understand is known to be this sort of trying to figure out what secret organizations do. It becomes very easy to have all these conspiracy theories rise up, where everybody's bought off and everybody's corrupt, and sometimes it's hard to know what's real. Is that true?

Chris Shelton [01:14:11] Absolutely. Absolutely. That is true.

John Dehlin [01:14:13] And it's easy for someone who hates Scientology to see the corruption everywhere, when in some cases, there may be more to the picture. They just don't have all the evidence.

Chris Shelton [01:14:23] Well, exactly. And I'm deaf on conspiracy theory. I really hate that stuff. So.

John Dehlin [01:14:29] So I really almost swore on Mormon Stories podcast.

Chris Shelton [01:14:35] So I'm. I'm. I'm kind of deaf on that stuff.

John Dehlin [01:14:37] That's okay. You're allowed to swear if you need to.

Chris Shelton [01:14:40] Okay, good. Well, most of it's bullshit. Right? A lot of. A lot of globe. And I try to differentiate between conspiracy theory and global conspiracy theory. And I'm not gonna get into a big segue on this, but I'm just gonna say, when you talk about the Illuminati, you're talking about global conspiracies. When you talk about the Tuskegee experiments, or you talk about Operation Paperclip, or you talk about these kind of things that really happened. We have the documentation. We know what went down.

Chris Shelton [01:15:10] So I'm not talking about those things. I'm not denying that those things happen. But if you're going to start talking about 12 men running the world through media conglomerates and they pull the strings of power, and they're the ones who determine what's on the headline of the New York Times every day, I'm gonna start questioning the validity of your. Of your thinking, you know, because that's just too crazy.

Chris Shelton [01:15:33] So. So I differentiate those things. And sometimes people who are sloppy, you know, conspiracy type thinking thinkers don't see me differentiating those two things. So I want to make that clear right. Right away with the police department of Clearwater. What I'm talking about, and this is the same thing with the lapd.

Chris Shelton [01:15:50] You can hire off duty police officers, and you can pay them however much you want to for them to do guard duty for your events. I can't think of a better way to open the door to corrupting a police officer than paying them money for their off duty time. To act as a police officer, they come in uniform. They come in their motorcycles. They act in an official capacity even though they're off duty.

Scientology, Law Enforcement, and Evidence Tampering

John Dehlin [01:16:12] Right, so police officers are allowed to get side gigs, Is that what you're saying?

Chris Shelton [01:16:18] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:16:18] And if Scientology is hiring a bunch of them as security guards, then they've got a side gig that's bringing an important income to their family. And of course, that has the potential of influencing how they would treat Scientology right away.

Chris Shelton [01:16:32] There's no way. It doesn't bias any human being. There's just no way. You know, once you start paying somebody money, they are forced to think better of you. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:42] And it's not even like overt corruption. It's just this quote. It's his quote. It's impossible to get a man to see a point of view when his livelihood depends on not seeing it. It's more just like, that's a case I'm not gonna take. Cause it doesn't look legitimate, when really it's not always overt corruption. It's just confirmation bias. It's like, oh, those guys are my friends. They wouldn't do that.

Chris Shelton [01:17:05] Right, exactly. That's how subtle it can be. It's perfectly legal. There's nothing illegal about doing that. And yet, how could it not have a corrupting influence on the people involved. Right, and how could the church possibly be doing that for any other reason than to corrupt those cops? Because they could hire their own private security anytime they wanted, but they hire the cops. Why? Right. Yeah.

Chris Shelton [01:17:32] Plus the front group programs they do, they come around with the way to happiness and the anti drug stuff and the cops eat that shit up and they don't look any farther into it than the surface level. They go, well this looks good, it sounds good, so these people must be good.

Chris Shelton [01:17:50] And it's just a wrong calculation on their part. So it's not a matter of having a bunch of evil malicious cops who are twirling their mustaches while they look the other way. It doesn't have to be that heavy handed at all in order for it to be corruption. And that's how Scientology operates. They do things that you just wouldn't think moral people would do, but they do them, you know?

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 1194

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Sa.

Chris Shelton [00:00:26] Okay, so.

John Dehlin [00:00:27] So this woman dies.

Chris Shelton [00:00:28] More than that, though, in order to turn this Clearwater investigation because they had a dead body on their hands. And you don't just get to turn the other cheek when. When you got a dead body on your hands. So it took massive amounts of money on the church's part to engage in public relations, campaigns, events. You know, they would bring Clearwater luminaries together, government officials and stuff, and they would wine and dine them, and they really went out for about two, two and a half years fighting this investigation, fighting keeping David Miscavige's good name anywhere, you know, totally away from it. Plausible deniability, 1000%.

Chris Shelton [00:01:10] Destroying records. Like I said, that's been admitted to on record. So. And then they mercilessly, mercilessly stalked and harassed that coroner for over a year until she finally, finally changed it to accidental death as the official cause of death.

Chris Shelton [00:01:34] Taking any liability away from the church, from the coroner's office death report. And that was the thing that killed the police investigation, because the whole thing hinged on, was her death negligent or was it accidental? And once the coroner gave up, you know, said, okay, I concede. I give up. And that was the last thing she did. I think she. I think she died, like, a year later or something. Totally broken person. The Church was just ruthlessly following her, stalking her, professionally, destroying her character assassination. I mean, anything you can imagine they were doing toward her. So that was how they turned that tide, and that's how, basically, David Miscavige and the Church got away with murdering somebody.

Chris Shelton [00:02:23] That's all record. That's all public record. Anybody can go look that up. The facts of the matter are completely undeniable, but the, you know, law enforcement didn't have the evidence that they needed to be able to move forward. And so that happened. And that was not. You know, that was really, really bad. That brought a whole nother PR storm down on Scientology and Miscavige.

Chris Shelton [00:02:49] It did not affect the Scientologist's view of David Miscavige. We talked about bite model and environmental and information control. Scientologists were. I did not know anything about Lisa McPherson except that she had had. That there had been an accidental death at Flagg.

Chris Shelton [00:03:11] That's all I knew. The specifics of it were completely covered up. No one in Scientology outside a very, very small number of people who flag actually knew what went down. And those who did know and were at all a threat were either kicked out or were sent off to Australia or some shit, you know, like they were just gotten rid of.

John Dehlin [00:03:31] And that's. And that is just like classic cult behavior. And frankly, if you look at the history of modern Mormonism, anytime, you know, number one, anytime any member starts talking publicly, especially with the media or getting attractions about any problems with the church, the church was very quick to shame them, demean them, excommunicate them, cut them off. You know, that's how these. You know, that's how cults work, frankly. That's how unhealthy organizations work. And it's just stunning how much members of cults live in a bubble where their brains are just not aware of things that the general public's aware of.

Chris Shelton [00:04:20] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:04:20] Yeah. That there can be headlines in the New York Times or in the Wall Street Journal or in the London, whatever. Good Morning America. Pick your news source where they're talking about serious problems with the Mormon Church. And 98, 99% of the active, faithful membership of the United States will never know anything about it.

Chris Shelton [00:04:47] Exactly. And it can't be. This really can't. This point can't be reinforced strongly enough because it is so vital to understand this, because the most common refrain, the fastest, the thing you hear more often from people who were never Scientologists, never Mormons, they listen to us or they read books or whatever, and they get the story on what's actually going down with these groups, and they go, my God, how could anybody fall for this? How could anybody do this? How could anybody stay with this? And they don't seem to grok that the people who are in don't know any of what you know. I have to reiterate this time and time again. It's like just listening to what we have said in the last couple hours. You know, more about David Miscavige and Scientology than every single single Scientologist on this planet.

John Dehlin [00:05:43] And if you add the three hours of L. Ron Hubbard, you're a relative Scientology scholar.

Chris Shelton [00:05:49] Oh, my God. I'm telling you, this is years of education and experience talking. Right? It took me years to get all this stuff. And, you know, the 27 years that I was in, I did not know this stuff. Everything I thought I knew. See, the Church has its own history. It tells you.

Chris Shelton [00:06:10] There's its own bibliography or, you know, biography of Hubbard, of Miscavige, of how all these events went down. They have spun all of this into something that makes it look like all these events were either preordained, you know, they were done on purpose for some purpose that is positive to Scientology or Hubbard Or Miscavige. It's always spun.

Chris Shelton [00:06:35] And so you. So the Scientologists have a view of these. If they have any acknowledgement or knowledge of the events at all, then their spin on it is a completely different take from what the actual objective facts of the matter are.

Chris Shelton [00:06:50] So they don't know what you know. They don't think the way you think. And so that's why they can stay in these groups and just, you know, it's all great. What's the problem? Everything's fine. And I try to get this point across. I have to stretch, which is why I'm talking like this. But it's just. It's really hard to get people to understand that.

John Dehlin [00:07:12] Yeah, yeah. Those parallels are just stunning, aren't they?

Chris Shelton [00:07:16] Aren't they amazing?

John Dehlin [00:07:17] Yeah.

Tax Exemption, Real Estate, and Church Finances

Chris Shelton [00:07:18] Okay, so that whole Lisa McPherson thing happens, but as a result of that, something interesting happens, which is that. And this is my own take. This is my own subjective take on this. It's not, you know, like this is formally written down somewhere or something. But I noticed at this point When Lisa McPherson went down, I was now a Sea Org member. I was in the Sea Org, and I was overseeing the delivery of Dianetics and Scientology across the entire western United States.

Chris Shelton [00:07:49] Lisa McPherson thing was Eastern United States. So I didn't have any privy. I wasn't privy or knowledgeable about any of the stuff that went down on Lisa McPherson at all when I was in. I had no knowledge of it, but I was overseeing the delivery of Dianetics and Scientology in the Western United States. And it was noticeable that from this point forward, there wasn't really a whole lot of stress being put anymore on auditing, on the counseling. Now that's the big money maker for Scientology in terms of high cost services. So it wasn't like they just neglected it all together. There was never an order to stop selling auditing or don't put any attention on it or stop delivering it.

Chris Shelton [00:08:32] There was never anything like that. But the emphasis from the top, which is where we got all of our orders from. Right. Miscavige would issue orders and directions, and this would filter down through the various levels and echelons of Scientology. There's a whole management structure in place we never listened to. You know, the only. The only time you heard David Miscavige talk directly was at the events. It wasn't like he'd come in the room and give you orders. He was many echelons above where I was at.

Chris Shelton [00:09:03] So his orders would filter down, though, and the emphasis was always on the Donations, the IAS donations make money, just straight money. And that's where all the emphasis was put. So you didn't have to say or order, stop selling auditing.

Chris Shelton [00:09:24] You just stop emphasizing it. And that was a distinct change, at least from my point of view, in the emphasis of Scientology, from the point of Lisa McPherson on. I think David Miscavige looked at that whole incident as a warning that Scientology counseling could have dangerous repercussions on somebody's mental state.

Chris Shelton [00:09:48] And I don't think he ever wanted to be in a position where he was going to be potentially, you know, indicted for murder or negligent homicide or whatever the charges would have been. So he started de emphasizing the auditing side of Scientology and started emphasizing buildings and donations and war chests and just giving us money because we're saving the world instead of give us money for services, you see. And he then did a whole republication and repackaging of all of the materials of Dianetics and Scientology, and he released a bunch of new lectures that had never seen the light of day from Hubbard before, from the 1950s.

Chris Shelton [00:10:30] And he made a big, big production through the early 2000s and into the late 2000s of everybody needs to read all these books and listen to all these lectures, and that's where the emphasis needs to be. And so that's where Scientologists started putting their attention is on those things and on getting big. He started a whole new program in the early 2000s to renovate, to purchase and renovate big church buildings to replace out every single city, office, city level church all over the planet. And there are about 140, 130 to 140 something churches. So this was going to be a years and years long project that he launched to get all these purchased, to get new buildings purchased and then renovate them.

Chris Shelton [00:11:22] And the fundraising that was getting done for this, it wasn't going to be paid by Scientology International. It was going to be paid for by the parishioners of each of the different areas. So they were going to fundraise.

Chris Shelton [00:11:34] And this has been what Scientology has been doing for the last 2019, certainly for the last 15 years at least. Right. Is just straight fundraising for these buildings and renovating them. And that's been the big push.

John Dehlin [00:11:52] How does that benefit David Miscavige and real estate? Let's just say the financial portfolio. What's that?

Chris Shelton [00:11:59] Right. It's real estate holdings.

John Dehlin [00:12:01] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [00:12:01] It's. It's property valuation. Right.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] The.

Chris Shelton [00:12:04] The real estate value of Scientology going up and up and up. Which Gives it more buying power. It also services tax exemption because you have to take as a nonprofit charity or religious organization, you have to show that the money you're receiving is being reinvested back into the organization. You can't just sit on it. They don't let you do that. You got to do certain things. There's certain hoops you have to jump through. Accumulating wealth is not the purpose of a charitable religious organization. So if that's what you're doing, the IRS is going to look at you a little funny. So back when they made their agreement in 93, they said there were certain projects they were working on that they were going to be spending a lot of money on, and they have fulfilled that part of the agreement.

Chris Shelton [00:12:50] Because the one thing. The one thing David Miscavige is more death on is more like concerned about than anything else, except his own personal physical safety, of course, is keeping that tax exemption in place. If the Church of Scientology loses its tax exemption, it's going to be game over within a couple years because they just don't have the money to be able to keep the operation going the way that it's going to. If they don't have tax exemption, and there's other legal ramifications of that, if they lose tax exemption, then their religious status could be threatened. They could have to start paying minimum wage to people.

Chris Shelton [00:13:30] I mean, there's all kinds of things that could roll out as a result of that. So it's very, very important that they hold onto their tax exemption. So David Miscavige will make absolutely sure that everything the Church does is done in such a way that the IRS will be happy with them. He doesn't have a lot to worry about right now, though, because the IRS doesn't give. Doesn't really care at all about Scientology.

John Dehlin [00:13:51] You were about to swear again.

Chris Shelton [00:13:54] I know. I tried it. It's funny that I control myself on that. But anyway, okay, so he's got to.

John Dehlin [00:14:00] Can I just draw a parallel really quick?

Chris Shelton [00:14:02] Oh, yeah, yeah, please.

John Dehlin [00:14:04] So what I'm hearing is something that we're also seeing in modern Mormonism. The church famously, let's just say five or 10 years ago, made the announcement that it was going to invest 1.5 to $3 billion in a commercial real estate mall. And what we've learned is that the church, the Mormon Church, owns 2% of Florida. What we've seen is that the church buys or builds high rise condominiums in Philadelphia and here in Salt Lake City, and they're building all These temples and remodeling them, but they're also building new ones. But they're also, as I understand, planning real estate developments or real estate enhancements and doing a lot of speculation around the property that gets bought with the temple.

John Dehlin [00:14:57] What you see happening is an organization moving from being doctrine based, theology based, to an organization that's largely sort of this massive corporation of real estate and financial holdings, where the church is just the way that you hook them and get the cash flow. But what it's really about is maintaining and growing assets. And that is your core. That is the core focus of your organization.

Chris Shelton [00:15:33] Let me ask you a question. When did that whole thing, when did that become exposed for the first time? When did people start realizing that's what the Mormon church was doing?

John Dehlin [00:15:42] I mean, there were articles here and there on it 20, 30 years ago, but it really has ramped up in the past 15 years and really ramped up. When the church announced it was building again, there was always this joke, like, what mall would Jesus build? Right.

Chris Shelton [00:15:59] Right.

John Dehlin [00:16:00] Both Jesus and the Book of Mormon were anti materialism, they were anti consumerism, they were anti world. And we're just like, why is the church named after Jesus Chris building a mall that has a Tiffany's or a Victoria's Secret? Or why is that how the church is spending tithe payer funds? And so again, it's been in the zeitgeist for 30 years, but it's ramped up in the past 10.

Chris Shelton [00:16:26] Well, I'm going to point out something that I think you might find kind of funny in terms of these parallels. There was. I thought when I was in Scientology that the Mormons were ripping us off, but it turns out we were ripping you guys off. And that was big, huge billboard and ad campaign which still goes to this day, which is the. I am a Scientologist.

John Dehlin [00:16:51] No, no, we. We followed you. You had that first.

Chris Shelton [00:16:54] Are you sure?

John Dehlin [00:16:55] I'm 100% sure. Yeah. Because I've talked to people who are part of the I'm a Mormon media campaign.

Chris Shelton [00:17:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:02] And I know the dates that that first came out. And I was able to find Scientology YouTube videos from the previous year.

Chris Shelton [00:17:09] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:17:10] Whatever PR agency worked with you guys, either some other PR agency ripped you get there them off, or they just came right over to us.

Chris Shelton [00:17:20] Interesting. Okay. Because I actually. Because my research came up the other direction. But I'll take your word for it

John Dehlin [00:17:26] because I think I could be wrong. I'm telling you, my research. We'll have our listeners solve this debate. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just telling you what I investigated.

Chris Shelton [00:17:37] I thought when I was in the church, I thought that. I remember when that campaign of ours started. And then after it started, I was out and about in Minnesota or somewhere one day, and then I saw the I'm a Mormon billboard and I went, those fuckers. They just ripped off our campaign. But that was just my own experience with it.

John Dehlin [00:17:59] So what year did your campaign start?

Chris Shelton [00:18:02] I don't even remember at this point. 2000. It would have had to have been after 2000, 9 or 10.

John Dehlin [00:18:15] Okay, so ours. I know ours starts around 2000, mid 2011. So I recall I was able to find stuff from Scientologists in 2010.

Chris Shelton [00:18:27] I could be wrong and you might be right on that. Might work both ways. Regardless, doesn't matter. I thought that was interesting, but I was gonna make the point that David Miscavige is not a stupid person. Yeah, he is not a college educated person, but that's not required to be a smart person or be a canny person. And the guy is vicious, he is vindictive. He is a number of character traits that are not pleasant, fun, and he has physically assaulted people and all of that. But the guy has also held his position for the number of years that he's held it through a whole lot of smarts.

Marketing, Repackaging, and Modern Scientology

Chris Shelton [00:19:09] You know, he's had to be. He's had to come up with all kinds of marketing ideas and repackaging things and real estate stuff and figuring out the legal stuff and all the various things that he has to deal with. And that's a lot.

Chris Shelton [00:19:24] And. And I wonder. I can't help but wonder, as soon as you said all that stuff about the Mormons investing in real estate and stuff, what investments we don't know about that the Church of Scientology might be engaging in? Because we know about these ideal organization buildings that they're buying, and we know that this is a real estate thing, and we're absolutely positive that this is being done to service the tax exemption of keeping the funds being reinvested into the Church. But we also know that this has real estate valuation that increases the assets of the Church. And we know for sure. I'm absolutely. I know this for a fact that the Church has other investments.

Chris Shelton [00:20:04] But what those investments are is probably one of the most closely guarded secrets within the Church that only a very, very tiny number of people know anything about.

John Dehlin [00:20:12] Same with us.

Chris Shelton [00:20:13] I wasn't ever supposed to find out about it. A guy just kind of dropped it on me as a comment One day. And I thought, that's interesting. And I don't think he was supposed to say anything about it.

John Dehlin [00:20:21] Yeah, same with us. We, you know, estimates are that the. That the Mormon Church has some. Somewhere close to half a trillion dollars in assets or $500 billion in assets.

Chris Shelton [00:20:31] Right.

John Dehlin [00:20:32] Nobody knows the real number because the way that it's all organized and all the different holding companies, it's intentionally structured so that no one can know the full picture.

Chris Shelton [00:20:44] Exactly. And that's the same thing with Scientology. As I went over with that whole 80s restructuring. There's no reason to believe that that was the end of the line on all of that or that there aren't many, many, many other things that the church Scientology could have its little fingers in.

John Dehlin [00:20:58] You know, hey, really quick, I was able to find. And I'm a Scientologist YouTube video dated September 23, 2009.

Chris Shelton [00:21:07] There we go.

John Dehlin [00:21:08] It's called I'm a Scientologist Aaron Skateboarder.

Chris Shelton [00:21:11] Right. It's funny to me that the Mormons ripped us off on that, actually, because I had a hard time believing that we didn't rip you guys off. But I'm okay with that.

John Dehlin [00:21:23] What's clear, what's gotta be, is that there are management consultants or accountants or lawyers that know how to assist churches, because the parallels are just unbelievably uncanny. Right?

Chris Shelton [00:21:40] Yeah. And Miscavige certainly has a little host of. Of attorneys, tax attorneys, legal advisors and stuff. We have noted that they have hired PR firms in the past. But the PR firms, at least the ones that we know about. Okay. And clearly there might be other things that have happened that we don't know anything about. But the ones that we do know about, Miscavige rejected their advice and went off on their. And the church went off on their own tangents on stuff. Because the PR. I know a huge PR firm was hired in the 90s when the time magazine article came out, and a bunch of other stuff happened, and they hadn't quite got their tax exemption yet and stuff.

Chris Shelton [00:22:26] And then even after the tax exemption, they were still getting some bad publicity, and Miscavige hired a big, big PR firm, and they said, look, you guys gotta change your public image, man. You gotta stop this whole shunning and disconnection stuff and the stalking and harassment you do of people. That stuff's got to end. You got to stop that. And Miscavige was like, yeah, no, we don't. You're fired.

Chris Shelton [00:22:52] That was the end of that. You know, and they're not Going to change those core principles, you know, so it's. So it was interesting. I know about that. I don't know about anything else as far as them hiring big name firms and stuff, But I do know that for a number of years, Scientology has had the gift of some extremely talented people who worked on their PR and marketing lines. And Miscavige got rid of them only in the 2000s.

Chris Shelton [00:23:23] And they were really blessed to have some of those people. And that, like I mentioned earlier, that Dianetics campaign was the. Was the fruit of a Sea Org member's brain. I mean, that's where that Kel thing came from. That wasn't an outside firm getting hired.

Chris Shelton [00:23:37] They have had some very talented people working within the church and. And they've taken advantage of those people, of course, and then gotten rid of them when they ceased being useful. So who they have up there now, you know, Miscavige has an ability to pull new people up to his level. And when they get up to his level, in the rarefied air of the international base, they don't know about all the stuff, all the crap that's gone before, because when people get disappeared or get disciplined or sent off to Australia, their names get stricken from the roles, you know, they don't talk about those people anymore. And so there's no history.

John Dehlin [00:24:17] That's the whole subversive person, subversive person thing, which is probably equivalent to our excommunication or the Jehovah's Witnesses shunning. Right?

Chris Shelton [00:24:25] That's right. That's right. And getting declared suppressive is the. Is the end of the line for the person. So suppressive.

John Dehlin [00:24:30] It's not subversive. It's suppressive.

Chris Shelton [00:24:32] It's suppressive. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:24:33] Suppressive person.

Chris Shelton [00:24:34] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] Sp.

Chris Shelton [00:24:35] Yeah, yeah. Sp Right here. So that's how that works, you know, and you don't talk about those people anymore. And you sure as hell would never mention them to Miscavige. So you just learn right away when you get moved up to and promoted to this new level that you're at, that, you know, you've got lines to tow and you. And you better keep your mouth shut and just get to work. And they. That's how he gets new talent. And then he, you know. Correct. Destroys them within a year or two or three, you know, and then they're. They're relegated off somewhere else. And then he pulls up more people, you know, and as long as they remain ignorant of what's actually going on at the upper levels, they come up all bright eyed and bushy tailed and thinking, this is going to be the most exciting thing ever.

Chris Shelton [00:25:20] And they're going to work for David Miscavige. Oh, my God, that's amazing. And then within a week, they find out, oh, my God, I'm in hell. That's their life. And when you're a Sea Org member, that is your life. It's not just your job. Sea org member six do not work nine to five hours. They are 24, seven. You know, so that's kind of how that works.

John Dehlin [00:25:43] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [00:25:45] Okay, so Lisa McPherson. The reorganization of the organizations and real estate is basically where the Church is at now. And Miscavige has basically worked out a system where about every 10 to 15 years, he repackages the entire body of materials that they have released and says, we repackaged it and we made all these changes in it because this is what L. Ron Hubbard actually wanted. And the people who didn't do this screwed up all of his instructions. And I came in and sorted it all out, and I figured it out, and here's the new repackaged, wonderful bridge to total freedom. And now there are no stops, and you can go from zero to hero in very short order and just give us $100,000 and you'll be set right.

Chris Shelton [00:26:36] And this is kind of this. This is kind of how Miscavige has kept the Scientology side of this whole thing going all of this time. And he did it in 1998 when they did their first repackaging. They did it again in 1996, they did it again in 2004, and then they did it again in 2012.

Chris Shelton [00:27:01] So, yeah, eight to 10 years or so between these things. And that's just how he keeps it going internally. And somehow it's continued to roll forward. They have lost more people than they have gained over this time. It is a shrinking situation. But as long as they have big donors and they do have millionaires, and even, you know, higher people get involved in Scientology, and those people throw money at it like crazy, and they get great big trophies in return and lots of photo ops with David Miscavige. And we know VIP treatment when they go to Clearwater. And so they're happy with their Scientology, and that's all they want to know about it.

Chris Shelton [00:27:43] And so that's all they do is. That's the only. That's as far as they go into it. They don't watch south park. They don't watch Going Clear. They don't look at Leah's show because they know that that's all just a bunch of lies on the Internet, quote unquote. And they're happy with their Scientology. So that's what they do, you know, and somehow they keeps the. Keeps the con going that way. And that is modern Scientology now.

John Dehlin [00:28:08] Yeah. A couple other things that just come to mind, I am thinking about. There is a. There is a culture of VIP elite Mormonism that starts with the apostles and then the general authorities and all the auxiliary leaders of the church and then their friends and family. And there are all sorts of people that make money off of the various ways that the church spends or invests money.

John Dehlin [00:28:34] And so there's this. You wonder how it doesn't unravel. But there's this huge centralized core culture of people who are either controlling the church or who work for organizations that depend on the church or that fund the church or that the church gives favors to. And then there's this whole culture of like, you know, we'll build a temple in Italy so that rich, wealthy Mormons can go visit Italy and have this beautiful experience. Or, you know, we talked to you last time about the second endowment culture where if you're wealthy enough and prestigious enough and faithful enough, the church will give you access to this special temple ceremony that no one else gets.

Chris Shelton [00:29:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:15] And of course it's tied to how much money you've paid and how much power and influence. And of course, Utah is becoming extremely prosperous business wise. All these software companies are springing up. You have all these multi level marketing firms that are massive. And what you see is that these. The church helps these corporations succeed and then these corporations pay big tithings back to the church. And even if the leaders sometimes themselves, the CEOs of these software companies or the MLMs, whatever they do in private is kind of their business. But there's this real symbiotic relationship of benefiting from the church, but then loyalty to the church that creates this massive cash machine.

Chris Shelton [00:30:06] Oh, huge. And paralleled completely in Scientology by an organization called the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises, or wise. And that's a division of the Church of Scientology. It's formally part of their structure, but it is a secular arm, so to speak, in that they have secularized Hubbard's administrative and management policies and they have put them into binders and books and they say, this is how you should run your company.

Chris Shelton [00:30:37] Just like L. Ron Hubbard says, we should be running our churches. That's how you should be running your company. With statistics and three basket systems on every people's desks and an ethics system and a this and that. Another thing, and of course this is so, you know, thrivingly successful that Scientology churches are booming everywhere. So of course this is the model they'll use. Not, but Scientology business people and folks who get involved in Scientology who want to get rich think this is the way to do it. And they, and they pay the church for the right to use this materials and they network. There's all kinds of networking going on with, between business people within the Scientology world.

Chris Shelton [00:31:18] Lots of tit for tat and, and a lot of people getting rich on the backs of employees that they abuse and treat very badly and pay very badly. A lot of commission system based pay systems and stuff like that.

Chris Shelton [00:31:31] So they're really, really, you know, they kind of set up these businesses that look just like Scientology organizations, except they're not. You know, they accept their for profit companies and the guys at the very, very top are getting enriched and everybody else is just struggling to get by. All similarly, oddly, similarly run on a, on an MLM type from, you know, basis of, well, the harder you work, the more money you'll make.

Chris Shelton [00:31:59] Right? This is how Scientology staff members are also conned. You know, it's all on you. How much money the church makes and their pay on a week to week basis at the churches is based on a small percentage of the overall profit that the organization makes that week.

Chris Shelton [00:32:15] So if the organization doesn't make any money that week or doesn't make enough, then they don't get paid. And well, it's on you. You didn't work hard enough, you know, and that's kind of how that whole operation is continuing to go on. So they have a very low overhead of having to pay their employees. You see, within the church and even the Sea Org members can only make a max of like, you know, 50 or let's say 100 bucks a week.

Chris Shelton [00:32:43] So the church does not have to pay out that much for all this labor that it's getting. And it spreads this idea out into the business world as though this is a really great idea. And this is the foundation on which you should build a system successful business.

Chris Shelton [00:32:58] And it propagates itself that way. And the guys at the top of these businesses who are raking in the bucks think it's great. And they of course give money back to the church as a result of that. And, and that whole thing is a big part of what keeps Scientology going too.

John Dehlin [00:33:15] Yeah, we'll talk about this when we get to the part of your life as an activist after we talk about your life as a Scientologist. But, yes, how do you fight a organization worth hundreds of billions of dollars?

Chris Shelton [00:33:28] Yeah, it's tough.

John Dehlin [00:33:29] You know, how do you stand against that?

Chris Shelton [00:33:32] Yeah, I mean, legally, you have. It's almost impossible. You know, taking Scientology on legally is a difficult quest, to be sure. I find public awareness campaigns and exposure of abusive behavior to be the best routes, because those are things anybody can

John Dehlin [00:33:48] get on board with really quickly. One big parallel also that we haven't quite touched on a bit is the idea of whitewashing its history. So when south park came out with its Scientology episode, whenever it was about Trapped in the Closet with Tom Cruise or whatever, it revealed to the public, in my awareness, for the first time, maybe broadly this. This whole stuff that we talked about last episode, about Xenu and the thetans and the volcanoes and the aliens and. And all that kind of stuff. And of course, you know, it's clear that at some point in, I guess, the 60s, late 60s, 70s, that stuff all crept into, you know, core Scientology teachings.

John Dehlin [00:34:38] But A, most members weren't aware of that, and B, when it came out, it seems like there was this push to kind of either hide it or whitewash it or deny it. And Mormonism has been going through that over the past 10 years, where we're finding all this stuff out about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, seedy church history that the church either whitewashed or denied or tried to hide or tried to punish people who talked about it. Can you talk about that for a bit?

Chris Shelton [00:35:04] Absolutely. The Internet has been called Scientology's Vietnam, because the thing that busts the bite model and busts that up and makes it invalid or ineffective is when you have a free flow of information and access to that information and people are able to see alternate views or ideas about how things have been in the past and how things are now.

Chris Shelton [00:35:33] This hit Scientology harder than lots of other groups because they really relied on the lack of accessibility to historical information. The Internet now makes it a couple clicks away, and you can see L. Ron Hubbard's war records. You can see his college transcripts. You can see all of this stuff right there. You try to find this stuff in 1970, you're going to be. It's going to take you weeks to get hold of this information.

Chris Shelton [00:36:01] So. So this. So that's been. That's been sort of the game changer. Excuse me. And what that did is it allowed us to. Excuse me, sorry. It allowed us to fact check what we had been taught. L. Ron Hubbard was A pretty crafty guy, and he was pretty ballsy about rewriting his own history.

Chris Shelton [00:36:29] And the church, of course, toed the line with that to the point that they even hired a biographer, who the first biographer they hired was not a Scientologist. His name was Omar garrison in the 80s, and that was a dog's breakfast because he was a real writer and a real researcher. And he went, you want me to write what you know?

Chris Shelton [00:36:48] So then they hired a Scientologist to do it, and his name is Danny Sherman. And this guy has been writing the L. Ron Hubbard biography since, like, the mid-80s or. Sorry, mid-90s or something, and it's still not done because of. It can't be done because everybody knows what the actual biography of L. Ron Hubbard is in the real world.

Chris Shelton [00:37:06] So all the historical rewriting that L. Ron Hubbard did, and he would do it through his lectures and through his writings. He would say, I was here. I did this. I did this here. I did this here. And if you put it all together, you come up with this picture. That's an impossible picture. It can't be that he was doing all these things at all these times.

Chris Shelton [00:37:26] But then you get the actual records. You know, somehow, even despite that, you still make it make sense as a Scientologist. You go, well, maybe he was mistaken about this. It could have happened here. And, you know, whatever. And it doesn't really matter anyway. And Hubbard's such a great guy and genius and hero, and who cares if he got a couple dates wrong or something? That's about as much critical thought as you put into it when you're a Scientologist, at least for me and my experience with that. And there are major efforts made by the Church to reinforce Hubbard's narratives. They've published magazines with photographs and letters and journal entries and things that all support the narrative Hubbard laid out for his life and for the history of the church.

Chris Shelton [00:38:14] The Internet, you know, destroys all that stuff, because then you see all of the other information you're not seeing, and it's kind of the same way. The same way you take apart conspiracy theories. You know, if you only listen to the 911 trut, you might think that they're really making a solid case, you know, and then you do a little bit more research on the stuff they're not telling you, and you go, oh, no. Nothing they're saying makes any sense at all. It's the same thing with Scientology.

Chris Shelton [00:38:39] And there have been massive. There's been a lot of money and a lot of time put in by Scientologists to rewrite that history and make L. Ron Hubbard out to be this genius philosopher who from literally, they say from the age of three was trying to solve the problems of man and took it upon his tiny little shoulders to save the world. You know, this is, this is the hagiography of it. So, so it's, it's, you know, it's kind of interesting looking at how they, how they do that and how all these cults end up having to do that.

Secret Doctrines and the Internet's Impact

John Dehlin [00:39:15] And so what, What? So what would the average Scientologist say if you went to them and said, you guys believe in aliens and thetans and zenu and spaceships?

Chris Shelton [00:39:26] Now, all of that's confidential, right? That's all hush hush. It is a well kept secret in the world of Scientology. I did not ever hear. Not once in 27 years of being around Scientology, 25 working and being in the Sea Org, 17 in the Sea Org, right? Not once did I hear the name Xenu.

Chris Shelton [00:39:49] Not once, much less the rest of the story, right? I sold OT3 to people and I did not know what was on it. That's how, that's how tightly kept the secrets are in Scientology. And the reason for that is because you are given, when you're told or hear L. Ron Hubbard talk about the, the OT3 material, he doesn't go into details about it. All he says is to the general Scientology public, he says, a great catastrophe occurred on this planet and in this sector of the universe 75 million years ago, and it has been a desert and a wasteland ever since.

Chris Shelton [00:40:39] And I cannot tell you what happened, because if you are not ready for this material, if you get exposed to it before you're ready, this knowledge will create a mental problem for you that will get you spun in and you will get pneumonia and you will die within two to three days.

Chris Shelton [00:41:01] And I'm not going to let that happen to you guys. So I'm not going to tell you all about this. And you can't know about it until you're ready for it. And it is on that basis that every Scientologist keeps their mouth shut once they find out about Xenu. Of course, they're already sworn to secrecy. They've already signed bonds saying that they're going to pay $10,000 every single time they slip any secret about it. These bonds are completely non enforceable. Nobody's ever paid any, a dime for any of this. But this is what you sign.

Chris Shelton [00:41:34] So you believe that you are under this obligation, this financial penalty if you reveal the secret and you also are under the impression from the mind control that you'll kill people if you tell them about this stuff.

John Dehlin [00:41:49] Yeah.

Chris Shelton [00:41:50] What is that?

John Dehlin [00:41:50] Belief? I mean, you've explained it, but just. I'm not getting that. You'll kill people. Like.

Chris Shelton [00:41:55] Yeah, it'll kill you. Well, it's like this. This whole incident that happened 75 million years ago with Xenu was meant to be kept a secret. You weren't supposed to remember any of that shit that went down, right? This all happened millions of years ago to you as a spiritual being, right? So spiritually, you got really, really screwed over a long time ago. It is the most traumatic experience you will ever remember.

Chris Shelton [00:42:27] And you can't remember it for that reason. It was. Locks were put on it. It was like, you know, in hypnosis you're told you can't remember a thing. It's like that on steroids times a million. That's OT3IS. So you cannot remember it. You'll never imagine it. It'll never come up in your memory banks, right?

Chris Shelton [00:42:46] It's just this black area. It's this void of knowledge and experience that you just don't have access to, but you still are subject to all the consequences of it. So you're stuck here on earth. You're stuck in a meat body. This is not you. This is not you at all. This is just something you're carrying around and occupying and living a life with, but it really doesn't have any more significance than a Barbie doll does.

Chris Shelton [00:43:15] And you're stuck here. You're trapped here, and you don't even know why. You have no memory or recall of it, and you will never be able to remember it. And the trap is, and it was all done purposefully to trap you here so that you would be stuck here and you wouldn't have any other choice.

Chris Shelton [00:43:35] That's the reasoning behind why that whole thing is so dark and dangerous. And why if you expose yourself to it before you're ready for it, you will have you know, you'll die. Because that's how the trap was set up to keep it a secret. Is anybody who. Any. Who. Any who comes anywhere close to finding out the truth of the matter, well, their body died. And when your body dies, you forget everything.

John Dehlin [00:44:02] And Mormon historians will know the parallels better than me, but there's certainly instances of, like, you know, Joseph to justify his polygamy saying that an angel. God sent an angel to me with the flaming sword, that if I didn't, you know, sleep with other men's Wives that an angel would kill me or like I have these golden plates, but if anybody looks upon them with their own eyes, you know, they'll certainly be, you know, I don't know the historical quotes. One of our listeners, Ali writes, seeing the plates will kill you. You know, it's one. I'm not surprised that we have those type of parallels as well where it goes to the point of even threatening, kind of threatening superstitious death. And of course with Mormonism we've got these death oaths where in the temple you used to like slit your throat or.

Chris Shelton [00:44:53] Right.

John Dehlin [00:44:53] You know, do the motion of cutting out your own heart or disemboweling yourself as threats of what will happen if you ever reveal the secrets in the top secret Mormon temple ceremonies. You know, that's a thing.

Chris Shelton [00:45:05] Yeah. And it's basically the idea is there are mechanisms pre installed in your mind that will cause these horrible things to happen to you. If they are, if the, if the trap is sprung, you know, if you run, if you, if you come across that and you're not ready and it's, and it's not dissimilar to, you know, I don't know, what do they say in Christianity that if you hear the voice of God, you know, nobody can actually hear God because the power of God's voice would just, would destroy you in a microsecond or something, you know, so it's this kind of idea of like some all powerful force that exists outside you that you know, knowledge is dangerous and ignorance is bliss and.

John Dehlin [00:45:49] But it does surprise me that in the past five, 10 years, Scientologists in modern times would still potentially be bound by these, that sort of superstition. But then it doesn't, because you just have to look at, you know, the way some people, well, all the different superstitious kind of folk magic kind of stuff that still has a hold on people in 2019.

Chris Shelton [00:46:12] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:46:12] I guess it doesn't surprise me at all. That's the power of religion. Right?

Chris Shelton [00:46:16] Exactly. And, and it should be noted that not everybody who ever did OT3 is still a Scientologist. You know, a lot of people who were exposed to that information and, and went through it and believed it for a long time.

Chris Shelton [00:46:31] Well, you come up to the present or you come up to when south park came out and they see that people aren't dying, there's no problem at all. And that definitely did set off some cognitive dissonance for some people, you know, and they left the church as a result of that kind of doubts and things entering into it, you know, so back in the day, before, again, before there was the Internet, before there was, you know, such broad access to even television. I mean, look at what television was like through the 60s and 70s. It was a couple channels, three channels. You know, Hubbard never imagined.

Chris Shelton [00:47:08] He never envisioned anything like the Internet. So he didn't write any policies or come up with anything to counter that, because he had no clue that something like that was gonna hit, you know.

John Dehlin [00:47:21] So are you saying. Are you saying that. Are you saying that the Internet has kind of slapped. I was gonna swear. It's kind of slapped Scientology in the modern era the way that it has Mormonism.

Chris Shelton [00:47:34] Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. It's been, like I said, it's been characterized as Scientology, as Vietnam. They're powerless against the Internet and the knowledge that it brings.

John Dehlin [00:47:45] Okay, so you're seeing modern day disaffections from Scientology because of the Internet.

Chris Shelton [00:47:50] Absolutely. That's how I got out.

John Dehlin [00:47:53] Yeah. Okay, and we'll be getting to that next.

Chris Shelton [00:47:55] Yeah, if it wasn't. Yeah, exactly. So.

John Dehlin [00:47:59] And that's the way the Going Clear documentary left it, that oddly, Scientology is shrinking in membership, which the Mormon church is to. If, you know, if you. If we didn't have the Africa baptisms and I served a mission in Guatemala in the 80s, anyone from the United States could baptize someone who's impoverished enough in the third world.

John Dehlin [00:48:21] So if it weren't for the Philippines, Latin America and Africa baptisms that offset all the people going inactive in the Mormon church or resigning or disaffecting or leaving, you know, the church would be shrinking. And of course, the birth rate is helpful as well within Mormonism because we've always had large families. But really, the church is at pretty much 0% growth, less than 1% growth, and it's facing decline.

John Dehlin [00:48:51] But oddly, and this is most disturbingly, the assets have swelled and all these religious protections have swelled to the point where the church doesn't even really need the tithing of its members. All it needs to do is keep getting 10 or 15 or 20% returns on its assets and its investments, and it's going to be growing astronomically in wealth with all these religious and tax exceptions. And it doesn't matter if all the chapels are closing or empty. In the case of Scientology, it doesn't matter if the members are leaving, because this corporate entity is. Is now to the point where it doesn't even need members or member donations to be able to grow in money and power. Right.

Chris Shelton [00:49:38] That is exactly the case with Scientology as well. Exactly. And I think, and I, and I highly doubt that it's only Scientology and Mormonism. I'll bet you a bunch of these guys who have long range ideas of being around for and having their creature comforts and having their organization keep going are going to glom onto this model and you're going to see the real estate portfolios and other investment portfolios of these groups. And unfortunately, actually the problem is that we don't have free access to their real estate investment portfolios because they don't have to give up any of this information. I'm surprised you know as much about the Mormons as you do. I guess they're a bit more transparent than Scientology.

John Dehlin [00:50:20] Well, just over the past five or 10, 15 years, we've just had this really intense online community of blogs and then podcasts and then Facebook groups and now Reddit groups, and then even investigative sort of activists, kind of like a WikiLeaks, Mormon leaks kind of thing, where we've just had this culture of really scrutinizing, talking about, sharing and promoting, you know, bringing light on the problems to Mormonism and then supporting people through their faith transition and then, you know, as people leave or lose their loyalty, leaking and sharing information or testifying about their experiences. And it's, it's, you know, Mormon Stories has been around for 14 years.

John Dehlin [00:51:07] We've got like 1200 hours of podcast episodes now. And the whole thing has been to help shine a spotlight on the church and then help people transition away if they're not happy with it. And secondarily what that's done is that and a lot of other things have helped continually force the church through public shaming, through public scrutiny, through exposure and testifying and praying. It's forced the church to change. And right now we've got a prophet, a leader of our church, even though he's 92, 95. I don't know how old this guy is, but every single month there's a major change that he's making in the church because I think the church is realizing that they don't, you know, it's one thing to just stay wealthy and powerful, but if you're losing all your members, that kind of becomes embarrassing.

John Dehlin [00:51:56] So we're seeing, it's almost like a relative renaissance of Mormonism. And as the leaders are just desperately scrambling, they're shortening the church to two hours from three. They're making it so people don't get excluded from weddings if they're not the right level of activity.

John Dehlin [00:52:15] They're loosening everything they can possibly loosen, being more friendly to LGBT people, more friendly to women, and of course, they're backsliding, too. But, yeah, we're just seeing the church frantically doing whatever it can to not become irrelevant in the public consciousness.

Chris Shelton [00:52:30] Well, I think there are lessons there for us in the Scientology activism world, then, because maybe this is more of a marathon than a sprint. And that is something that some activists in my world have had issues with because we've wanted immediate results or fairly rapid results. And with groups like this, they are. You know, maybe it's viewed more as a ship, you know, and you got to turn that thing, and it takes a lot of momentum and a lot of work to take a cruise liner and turn it in a different direction, you know, and that's kind of what we're doing with these groups through our exposure and of their abuses and stuff. And we know. I think you'd probably agree with me that we're not trying to destroy the church. We're trying to get them to stop being abusive.

John Dehlin [00:53:17] Yeah, of course. Yeah, absolutely. We're not trying to destroy the church. We're just trying to reduce the pain and increase the civility and then support people, give people awareness so they know what they're a part of, so that they're not a member of something they really don't know about, and then allow people to make conscious decisions with full consent, and if they have all the information, know about the harms and risks and then maintain their affiliation, heaven bless them. Right. LHR blessed them.

Chris Shelton [00:53:50] You know, if somebody's operating in Scientology with fully informed consent, and they're down for paying tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars for things that are really, in the end, not gonna do them any good. Fine with me. I got nothing to say about that. That's not. That's not, you know, in my realm, it's when people are being physically abused, emotionally and psychologically manipulated, lied to, and abused that I. Those are my issues. And that's what we need to see. Stop. And so I guess we're both making our progress in our ways.

John Dehlin [00:54:23] Absolutely. Well, that's great. I'm guessing we probably will need to postpone for another day, our third segment, which is your story. Is that right?

Chris Shelton [00:54:32] Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be its own thing, I think.

Chris Shelton's Activism and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [00:54:35] Okay. Well, Chris, this has been another brilliant episode. I think I heard you say, tell me that maybe this is the first time you've talked so extensively in depth for such a straight period of time about all that, you know, and I know, there's a million things you could have mentioned that you didn't, but what a fascinating history. And I'm just not at all stunned that the parallels continued through David Miscavige's tenure up to the present. It's like these churches are running parallel courses. I hope you're not offended in me saying that I think Scientology has us beat in terms of sort of levels of cruelty and violence and illegalities, but

Chris Shelton [00:55:16] certainly in modern times, I will not debate that.

John Dehlin [00:55:20] Yeah. And so I'm sorry for your people. I'm not necessarily proud of mine, but I guess I am very happy that you exist, that you're sharing what you know, and that we're shining a light in helping to clean things up the best that we can. So thanks for helping us see the parallels, because sometimes you understand your own tradition better when you see it through the lens of another tradition.

Chris Shelton [00:55:45] Big time. And right back at you, man. I really appreciate everything you are doing. You're doing really championship work.

John Dehlin [00:55:53] All right, Chris Shelton, thanks for joining us. Thanks to all our listeners. Thanks to everyone who supports. Please support Chris. Tell us how people can buy your books. Check out your YouTube page. Check out your website.

Chris Shelton [00:56:03] Right, right. Okay. MncriticalThinking.com is my blog, YouTube. Look up Chris Shelton. You will find me right away. And you can join me on Patreon if you enjoy my content and think it is entertaining, informative, and educational, which a lot of people seem to think it is, so that's cool. And of course, you can buy my book, Scientology A to Z, An Insider's Guide to what Scientology Is Really all about, on Amazon audio, ebook, or hardcover. And that's just good. Critical analysis of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, how, the tax exemption, all of it. It's all in there, so check it out.

John Dehlin [00:56:40] All right, Chris Shelton, we'll see you back soon on Mormon Stories podcast. You're great. And all of our listeners, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for everyone who keeps us alive. Please Support us@mormonstories.org There's no way to fight a billion dollar, hundreds of billions of dollar organization without support.

John Dehlin [00:57:02] So thanks to everyone who financially supports Open Mormon Stories podcast, the Open Stories Foundation. For those of you who want to see us be able to do more, to support more people, to do more good, please become a monthly donor@mormonstories.org 10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. We're a 501 nonprofit. We are transparent in our finances.

John Dehlin [00:57:26] We have accountants that do our best to make sure everything is tight and above board. We have an independent board that supports us and runs this nonprofit, and we just thank you for your support. We need your support, and we ask you to support us if you can. You can also support us by sharing this podcast, by telling others, by promoting it, by giving us a positive review on itunes or on Facebook, and by just staying in touch with us, giving us your feedback and thoughts, helping us come up with new ideas and helping us do great things. And I also just want to do a final plug for the Thrive Day, November 17, 2019.

John Dehlin [00:58:08] We are going to have a full day dedicated to supporting people who have left Mormonism. But it is all positive, it is all uplifting, and it is all about healing and growth, because that is what we want to be focused on. So please go to thrivebeyondmormonism.com, register for this event. It's 15 bucks a day. We're going to lose thousands of dollars on this event. Nobody's getting paid. But we are that committed to healing and growth and Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:58:38] And maybe we'll be partnering with Chris and others to see how we can do more good on a more broad scale. How does that sound, Chris?

Chris Shelton [00:58:47] Absolutely. I'm down.

John Dehlin [00:58:48] All right, man. All right. We'll have you back soon. Chris, we want to hear your story.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.