I originally did this post in 2019 and it cited the scientology newsroom website, so I went to check this site to ensure what was said was still accurate.
Scientology is REALLY not keeping their webites current.
This is the main page concerning the status of orgs — and it talks about the fake expansion that occurred in the 10 years subsequent to 2004. In other words, this information is from 2014. Apparently there has been no growth since that time — and the statement (this is exactly what it says:) Over 11,000 Scientology Churches, Mission and affiliated groups exist across 167 nations, four times in just 10 years. Presumably this means it has grown by a factor of four in just 10 years (in 2014).
That was of course ridiculous then — but apparently the growth stopped in 2014. If they had continued that growth rate in the next decade they would be at 40,00o now. Obviously they can’t say that, not even the sheeple would believe them.
The current page from scientoloy.org
They also can’t tell the truth that there are the same 150 or so orgs and less missions (maybe only 100 or so left by now)…
So they just stick to the old bs. And it is IS bs, here is the original post about the “11,000.”
Here is the original post
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.
In another earlier post I did, The Incredible Shrinking World of Scientology
Jefferson Hawkins recently posted a comment on this blog (emphasis added by me):
They claim “thousands” of Organizations (I think the latest claim was “8000 Organizations), yet if you check their own address lists, they tell a different story. They used to publish full lists of Org and Mission addresses in their books. A 1992 edition of their book “What is Scientology?” listed 148 Orgs and 343 Missions. If you go to their own website, they have a list of their Org and Mission addresses, and [today] they list 132 Orgs and 189 Missions. So in the last 30 years, they’ve lost a third of their centers!
Scientology claims their “massive growth” is proven by the “new churches that have opened” — this is a deception. They have purchased a lot of real estate. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars renovating these buildings. They have held “ribbon cuttings” with great fanfare for their “new churches” and they have then resumed their status as empty morgues, just in larger premises. You would imagine that if scientology in fact HAD opened all these “new churches” there would be scientology organizations all over the world by now.
Yet many of the most populous nations on earth do not have a single scientology organization: China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and the list could go on. Or even in the US (the home of scientology) the following states do not have a single scientology org: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
I wonder — does the Church of Scientology count the LAPD as an “affiliated group?” The Clearwater police department?
I bet they do.
Off topic. Mike, I was told Vicki Dunstan, former President of Scientology in Australia is now in the U.S. Would she be on the RPF ? Her ex husband was on RPF there many years ago. The cult is circling the drain here. She is a dyed in the wool Kool Aid drinker. Any idea ?
No idea sorry… I doubt she is on a reward program though.
But Mike … SOMETHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT.
David Miscavige, realizing how desperate the situation is, has now approved a radical new plan to increase membership in every strip shopping center across the United States … and soon around the world.
https://twitter.com/SemiScientology/status/1657207602043064320
Good info.
Unfortunately those who need to hear this (and acknowledge it) will continue to turn deaf ears and blind eyes to the facts because it’s not what they want to hear or see.
Reminds me of a grandchild who pretends he’s a dinosaur (RRRROW). It’s cute and we play along. $ci. pretends they’re doing good and growing and the sheeple play along, unfortunately it’s not cute but it is destructive.
PS I’d guess they count FEMA, the Red Cross, 1,000’s of Police, Fire and school units, etc as affiliated groups.
According to the IRS Exempt Organization database, as of 05/08/2023 the Org/Mission breakout in the US is:
7 Orgs 3 Missions in the Northeast region
7 Orgs 3 Missions in the Mid-Atlanitc – Great Lakes region
63 Orgs 22 Missions in the Gulf Coast – Pacific Coast region
1 Org 0 Missions in Puerto Rico
78 Orgs 28 Missions total
Keep in mind a number of these, Missions in particular, may actually be closed but are kept alive with the IRS to keep the “stats” up.
Pick, NE would include the missions in Maine and upstate New York that are on life support in little office spaces with no listed hours, and presumably the essentially defunct one in New Hampshire that moved in the franchisee’s home years ago and isn’t even listed in the CofS official locator. The rest of the US is much the same from what I’ve found, with a mere handful of missions still having conventional storefront type locations and regular hours, and Clearwater being the only one that does anything near the level of business many once did.
And as Yawn helpfully informs us in an earlier comment, there are probably many missions of a sort that are little more than boxes of materials in someone’s back room – I have found signs of that type of entity when I have done corporate record searches. Those probably get counted in CofS claims when convenient.
We can also see from the regional groupings, just how much a California phenomenon Scientology really is – and always has been – and that it has very little presence in the heartland of the US, with the central areas of the country lumped in with the coasts. Thanks for this.
As I menetioned, I believe many of those locations are closed, or barely operating, but are kept alive with IRS filings just for the “stat” numbers.
And most of those California orgs and missions are concentrated within 15 miles of Los Angeles, not scattered all over the state.
Pick, I’d classify the count as including those “barely operating”, but not those that are really closed – with just a couple of possible exceptions. I’m guessing that a few like the old mission in New Hampshire have reverted to just being the private practices of “field auditors” who see long-term clients but are not really open to new “public”, and yet still gets counted as open because it functions (and produces revenue) to some extent. Then there are a good number that the CofS doesn’t claim formally because they are for all intents and purposes really closed – if they ever even opened at all – and yet which are corporations in good standing in their states with addresses such as P.O. boxes, and that sometimes show up in other business searches.
And yes, it’s definitely even a Southern California phenomenon in particular. If not for the accident of history of Flag having been established on the East coast when Hubbard’s Mediterranean and Atlantic coast fleet was looking for a land base, and now the shrinking membership consolidating in Florida (with many devoted members from the LA moving or retiring there), it would be even more obvious.
The Church of Lies. It’s incredible the bs they get away with…
In my decade on staff I saw, audited or had in the course room around 4 or 5 people who had been coerced into “buying” or starting missions. Big sales of books especially, ‘Mission Starter Packs’ I think they were called. Biggest problem was actually getting anyone to run them and to find a place to establish the mission. All sorts of assurances were given. The Church personnel involved, once money changed hands simply wandered off to find other ‘marks’ or told them they’d have to run it themselves, which in fact, was a broken promise. They had assured them they would recruit the staff needed with the basic personnel to get it off the ground and of course, then the good tech of L Ron Hubbard would boom the enterprise and all would be sweet.
To a person, they became disaffected and vanished off lines, well my lines anyway in the then, Class 4 Organisation. A few drifted, actually stolen from lower Orgs and ended up on Advanced Orgs lines for auditing/servicing, where even more money was extracted from them. The criminality of it all was so blatant it simply stunned those who saw or knew about it into silence.
It’s a cold, hard reality the lies and criminality that Scientology employs to fleece people. It’s a scam of the most despicable order.
They are all becoming Kitcheners. Or in otherwords, they are all sliding towards “small and failing” into oblivion.
Scientology/L.RonHubbard entropy.
(The old Org Flag Officer job, that Flag Bureaux lower down staffers held as a “double hat” to do the filing and staff member letter answering for the letters that far flung org staffs would send up to Flag management in the old days, the OFO (Org Flag Officer doubled hatted management level staffers) would answer letters and do filing of the “Data Files” of a particular org. The “small and failing” orgs were the small ones, with maybe 3 full time staff, if that, and the rest of the staff were truly part time volunteers, flakey at best. Kitchener and Winnipeg org staffs were constantly at best less than 5, and sometimes NO fulltime staff in those two Canadian orgs, and this went for orgs all over the world, just identically 1-5 full time staff, if that, with the rest of the staff highly parttime and spotty.)
Nothing has changed, and the bottom line is Hubbard’s falsely trying to have other people do the impossible which is try to sell Scientology.
The truth of the beliefs of Scientology catch up everyone in Scientology.
it’s difficult to sell exorcism of spirits which Xenu dumped onto earth during the Wall of Fire/4th Dynamic Engram. It’s difficult to get popular support for Hubbard extremist shunning perpetrating organizations.
it’s difficult with so much backfiring controversies surrounding Scientologists’ obfuscating and “fair gaming” the critical ex members of Scientology.
Hubbard’s solutions to all the backfiring rules he wrote, are just more backfiring.
Double backfiring Hubbard, whose backfiring rules don’t work, don’t hide the world from finding out that the Hubbard exorcism quackery and the Hubbard past lives mainline pseudo-therapy just isn’t making anyone into spiritually enlightened souls.
Hubbard’s noxious Scientology rules system is merely flypaper, and not as effective as flypaper.
Hubbard’s Scientology is wannabe flypaper to supposedly make wannabe enlightened flies. But enough rich flies are stuck long enough to bilk enough big money from them to keep up appearances that the flypaper organization is saving the world, only in the minds of the duped richer flies.
Tip of the hat to Jens😎:
David “he is not insane” Miscavige is a BRILLIANT strategist and statesman. He is the preeminent ecclesiastical leader on Teegeeack and bravely-and quite capablely- carries the unbelievably difficult burden of SAVING THIS SECTOR OF THE UNIVERSE on his wee human frame!
You joking and degrading, overt-ridden meat-bags can’t even BEGIN to comprehend the OT 47 brilliance of his faster-than-the-speed-of-light mathematical computations or the quarkian-level specificity of his super-evolved perceptics. Earth shall be rescued, according to his mighty postulates-period.
Lo, though he walks in the shadow of Masterson fuckery and criminal antics…AND traipses in the fecal pool of intergalactic fiduciary pimping of Cardone et al, he fears no “wog” tribunals or humanoid “laws”, for he is an OT Hubbardian Mafioso!
From Arslykus to Teegeeack, from Farsec to Beezlebub’s Bunghole, his accomplishments are legendary…
In the name of the postulate check, the exhausted credit card, and the 4th mortgage:
RAMEN!
I’d love to hear from some former members who recently left the cherch for whatver reason – was anyone surprised at discovering the extent of the lies and abuses of Scientology? Was all that swept under the rug and forgotten? Do former members still think it is all lies made up by people who hate Sciento[ogy?
If Scientology ever did get to the point where they had 40,000 churches, they’d be like Starbucks with a church on just about every other street corner.
You can’t blame them, however, for their over-the-top claims. It’s just all bullshit. They did it all for Ron–L. Ron Hubbard, the King of Bullshitters. Doubt what I’m saying? Read Russel Miller’s biography of Hubbard: “Bare-Faced Messiah,” a book that scientology kept from publication in America for 27 years.
So, the growth of their empire apparently ground to a halt in 2014. Scientology is a cancer on society; that tumor appears to be in remission. The I.R.S. and/or the Dept. of Justice needs to step up to the plate, and become the surgeon that will remove this blight once and for all.
Meanwhile, scientology sticks to the same old bullshit. What worked for Hubbard then works for scientology now. Just about everything he ever said and did turned out to be a lie, so much so that his first name should be changed, thus: Lie Ron Hubbard.
All hat, no cattle.
All show, no go. ATNA (all talk, no action).
And this doesn’t even count the tent Orgs. (I thought of this when I saw the initial photograph.)
The only thing “expanding” in Scientology is the hot air coming from the mouth of COB.