Just how many churches of scientology are there?
If you ask scientology, they will never tell you.
You can look up on scientology.org and count the number of listed churches of scientology — but it’s tedious and they don’t make it easy. But it is around 150, the same as it has been for decades.
You can also try to count the number of missions, that is even more difficult. But again, it is around 300 (and many of these are VERY part time affairs, open a day or two a week).
The best they will do is offer that there are “10,000 Churches, Missions and affiliated groups” without defining what “affiliated groups” is. Yet we DO know what a “scientology church” is and what a scientology “mission” is. They are the official, licensed organizations that deliver Dianetics and Scientology auditing and training. Nobody else is authorized to do so. And they have a very exact count of them because they are all expected to send in money. It they never state this number. Only the fudged numbers with the undefined “affiliated organizations”.
Here you can see them promoting this number.
But if you click on the link to “Scientology” above it takes you to this entry which claims there are 11,000 of these nebulous activities:
Clearly, this number is amorphous. In fact, like the 14, 12, 10 million scientologists number they toss around, it is simply plucked out of the sky to sound better than it did previously, because, of course, scientology is always in a period of “massive expansion.”
The truth hurts. Badly.
There are in fact approximately 500 scientology churches and missions (give or take 50, but it’s a rounding error in the 11,000 figure).
A few new orgs have opened in the last 30 years — Inglewood, Budapest, Taiwan, Moscow, St, Petersburg, Harlem (there may be some others, but I don’t think so) the same number or more have been “consolidated” (closed) — many “Celebrity Centers” and “Day and Foundation” orgs have been combined. Today there are still many, many states in the US that do not have a single “church of scientology” and many don’t even have a solitary “Mission of scientology.” There are numerous countries that have no church of scientology at all.
The number of missions has been steadily DECREASING since the 1980’s.
As for the “Affiliated groups” nobody has ever been able to identify what these things are.
It certainly includes Dianetics “groups”, Narconons, WTH “chapters” and Applied Scholastics schools. But even this category is 500 grand total maximum and that is being very generous. A lot of those 500 are NOT part of the “church of scientology” — they are secular and claim no connection to scientology. But it does not stop scientology from counting them or promoting them in the category of “scientology organizations.”
That leaves “WISE businesses” to make up the remaining 10,000. Which is a bad joke. If you take every business and individual that is actually a WISE member, it is no more than 1,000. And the largest number of those are dental and chiropractic practices — they have NO scientology association.
It would be like asking “How many Walmarts are there?” and their official website says: “There are over 4 million WalMarts, Walmart Neighborhood markets and affiliated Walmart parking spaces.”
The truth is, scientology cannot disclose how many organizations they actually have as it demonstrates their LACK of expansion. They talk endlessly about purchasing new buildings for their old organizations and calling them “new churches.” They pretend new buildings are evidence of “expansion” when all it proves is that scientology is increasing its real estate portfolio.
This is a rehash of things I have written before. Every now and then I am reminded of the brazen lies scientology foists on the unsuspecting. Almost as if they are certain that if they announce their “facts” with enough certainty and repeat them often enough it makes them true. But no matter how many times you recount a lie, or how sincerely you deliver it, it is still a lie.
There are not 11,000 or 10,000 scientology organizations on earth or anywhere near this number.
And that is not a lie.
Well now we know where they got the figure. If you look at 109 from a certain angle and backwards it looks sortof like 901 but 901 adds up to 9 + 1 + 0 so we get 10 and 11 000 ads up to just 2.
How can the rest of you not see this!
Fu(€k! Am I tho only one doing any friggin work around here? God damn SP’s. The math is simple we need 11k so:
Since 109 is sort of like 901 we can state
901 =11000
Thats what “=” means it makes things equal! Fuc#=kn SP’s.
Problem solved. Now we need to make sure everyone knows how we got it. Man I’m so good at this. We need to make sure the word knows.
‐————-
On a serious note, there was this MLM back in the early 2000’s called “The Global Information Network”, the guy who created it was called Justin Trudeau and he brought a few Scientologists in for lectures. This was in fact a ponse scheme with membership levels that had nothing but fluff.
We did a comm drill as a group and talked about stats until Trudeau was outed as a scam artist. So from my pespective this was a wide trolling net and honestly it worked since I did get in eventually on these breadcrumbs.
Anyway later when I was at the Canadian Liaison Office they tried to dead agen the group and told me the Trudeau guy had been declred.
The CofS lists orgs and missions on their website – now all lumped together. The two used to be separated, but presumably they’re trying to make it look like there’s been “expansion,” and hide the disappearance of most of the missions. In the US the number of each is around the same, 45.
I just ran a GREP search of the IRS Exempt Organization database, current as of 121219, for entities with “Scientology” in the name. It turns out there are 109 such entities, scattered across 30 states and the District of Columbian.
As you’d expect, the highest concentration is in California, with 46 such entitites, 1 of which is the “Independent Reformed Church of Scientology. They are followed by Florida with 9, of which 4 are Missions and 1 being FSSO. Texas has 7, of which 5 are Missions, and New York has 6, with 1 being a Mission and 1 a ‘Celebrity Center.
The rest are 1, 2, or 3 scattered through the other 26 states and DC. Which leaves 20 states with no entity with ‘Scientology’ in the name.
Was PA a state with no anything Scientology? I hope so.
Pennsylvania is ALMOST a state without scientology. The old, failing mission just outside of Philly was “promoted” to org status, then induced to buy a monstrous old piano warehouse 15 stories high in a blighted area of philly for their “ideal” building. Since then, the only news for scientology has been the continual fight between the city’s department of licenses and inspection (L&I) and the org over unhandled code violations. It seems L&I wants to avoid another high-rise conflagration in that old barn of a building. scientology, of course, is above all these MEST concerns and will stop any fire in its tracks with their OT postulates. Meanwhile, their current org is barely there in a part of the city few dare venture into.
I looked up the actual number of churches once and yes, it was tedious. I counted 146. I didn’t bother looking up the number of missions because I assumed that however many there are, each of them is just as unattended and unstaffed as the one Scientology mission in my otherwise extremely busy and crowded metropolitan area.
This reminds me of the membership number of FIFTEEN MILLION that scientology gave to journalist George Malko (“Scientology–The Now Religion”) as well as the NY Times in–and here comes the kicker–1970!
So here we are, FIFTY years of relentless expansion later. Or more importantly, more expansion in the last 5 years than all 50 before. 49x. Straight up and vertical. More “winning” and “tiger blood” than Charlie Sheen could even begin to hallucinate in the wildest of his drug binges. And yet…
Let’s do them a big favor, and forget about all this hype. Let’s chalk it up not to lying (after all this is a cherch we are talking about!) but to exuberance justified by even a very modest growth. So where would they be at now, after some very modest growth?
NO growth: 15 million
1% growth: 30 million
2% growth: 60 million
3% growth: 120 million
4% growth: 240 million
Full disclosure: For mathematical convenience these figures actually calculate the membership figure for 2022. So yes, they still have a couple of years to make it there. Even so, these numbers are a lot closer and a lot more telling approximations than imaginary thousands of percents of affiliates fudged in with the real amounts.
By the way Moscow ideal org building was arrested by marshals during ongoing court case of so called church tax evasions in Russia. I don’t even know where org moved since, but their cherished building is standing dark.
The CofS website listings now classify Moscow as a “religious group” – without any address or even contact information.
And they even stop calling!
“The best they will do is offer that there are “10,000 Churches, Missions and affiliated groups” without defining what “affiliated groups” is. ”
Mike, the marketing folks at $cientology will just change that PR fail to:”10,000 Churches, Missions, Affiliated groups and empty parking spaces and empty chairs. ”
That should cover it properly.
I still don’t think that will cover it Zee Moo. You will have to add in all of the affiliated Ess Pees, Pee Tee Essers, Dissaffecteds and chronically Ill folks that have ever come into contact with a body router, reg, or $cientologist in general.
Add in all of em to the ‘somehow affiliated’ and you then likely exceed the claims of Miss Management and His sinister sinners.
Yo Dave,
Lets have a toast to another year of chagrin for yer Cult good buddy. Pound down a bottle today and yer troubles will surely go away! It would be nice if you went with em.
Wonder if the members of W.I.S.E. (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises), which are all businesses, are considered to be “affiliated groups”?
Well, not at all sure how they come up with number of “churches” stat but, I finally realized how the cult counts its members. They include all the BT’s reported as handled by people on OT 3 and above!
Hey Wynski, some of my best friends are BTs! We might want to give them a break.
I agree OSD. Had a nice conversation with a cluster this morning who was cruising by after a failed session on the freakwinds. Some natter about heading for Hemet to reconnect with His boss, the guy who likes to alter the tech.
Merry Christmas Dude!
Absolutely correct Wyn. 9,400 on solo nots multiplied by the 10K-20K body thetans & cluster blown by each solo auditors = Billions of new Scientologists who have been cleared !!
BILLIONS I tell you !
Dave Mc(Redacted)
Thanks my good friend! ALWAYS good to see you here!
And the very few that exist have something in common: they are totally empty.
What is certain is that there are 1,000s of people that have left scientology.
… but if the cult 47 Xs its 10 X expansion it will surely reach a 5.4 X sustainability level which is the correct order of magnitude and includes a grandiose view from the back porch of eternity!!!!! Planetary Clearing is within reach people. All every scientologist needs to do is hand over their holiday bootie to their favorite reg before this Thursday at 2:00 (conveniently scheduled this year as the day after Xmas).
Next year will be “fun” – Christmas Day is on Friday, so 2 at Grinch-o’clock falls on Christmas Eve.
“Today there are still many, many states in the US that do not have a single “church of scientology” and many don’t even have a solitary “Mission of scientology.” There are numerous countries that have no church of scientology at all.”
Just how did so many cities, states and nations manage to AVOID scio??? Lucky devils!!! LOL
At one time I was briefly a Christian Scientist before meeting Scientology in New York. After Mary Baker Edy died, the religion just continued to shrink. They developed the strategy of the “Reading Rooms” where you could just pop in off the street and read “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”. I would not be surprised if Scientology just goes down that path but at a faster rate with larger buildings.
I often frequented downtown Fort Worth during my teen years, spending time in the old public library, regrettably long gone. I would get off the eastbound bus on 7th Street, and head south toward the library. Along the way was the Christian Science Reading Room, on the same side of the street as the library.
The CS room had big double windows, retail-style, suitable for mannikens but filled only with a few books. It was easy to see inside, and I probably passed it 20 or more times, and never once saw anyone inside, even though it seemed to be well-kept place.
Someday, hopefully, this will be the fate of Hubbard’s scam – a bunch of his books gathering dust in an empty room, with a downsized plastic bust of Source glaring from a corner shelf.
Christian Science has been shrinking since the 1940s, but it “boomed” to such a large size in its heyday that its long decline still leaves it with a significant number of members and properties.
When I went to visit the commercial building in the Boston area where the org has temporarily moved into cheap upper-story space, practically across the street was a CS Reading Room where apparently they now even hold services after having sold off their local church property. It’s possible that whatever regime follows Miscavige’s will engage in some realistic downsizing, but I suspect that in most cities the end game for Scientology will be just some limited area of the ground floor of their massive idle morgues actually being used while the rest is empty and decaying, until they disappear into a PO box the way many missions have.