Well, here is some pretty simple math.
1,000,000 divided by 52 = 19,230.
One can assume that those 19,230 people consist of:
The real people “in the Scientologist page” — these are the people that are at least supportive of scientology, even if not active.
It does not include EVERY scientologist — social media just doesn’t capture everyone (especially when the age demographic of scientologists continues to march toward “ancient” — just look at the fundraising promos)
It would include all staff who are active on social media in some way — but this excludes almost all Sea Org members.
Given other evidence, a significant percentage are “click farm” followers — from India or the Philippines or other locales that specialize in “boosting your followers on social media”…
Some are scientology critics or people who have developed some interest in the subject from media coverage.
If I had to guess, I would be willing to bet that significantly less than 50% of the 19,000 would identify as scientologists.
But even if all 19,000 are actual scientologists — this is still a TINY number even if you double it for missing staff and other scientologists.
This latest piece of hype lines up with all other information — the total number of active scientologists in the world is around 20,000, but definitely no more than 50,000 under any circumstances.
Dear Mike,
thanks for this estimation.
It is what i estmate the same.
20000 and maybe another 15000 awaiting “old” times to come back or elsewhere.
Five years ago it was (incl. Outside fans) 50000. 25000 were cultists counted on their own hidden statistics – seen only by Sea Org branches, which are cults within the cult.
The pedophile mr. Hubbard, and the completely perverted mr. Miscavige, are not amused on these facts.it was maybe 200000 cultists at the hightime in 1978.
As the normal scientologist can not believe that they are utterly betrayed by the system, he thinks that the wog press is telling wrong facts and still donates his lifetime and money and protection to these gangsters.
Hope the FBI will soon catch this crowd and make a long, long public justice on it, so everyone can share and see what cultists and networks are able to do.
I have never been involved in scientology and at my time in life glad to say I never will, I am following every post on this and other sites in total dismay at the way people have been treated and cheated out of their lives and hard earned money and watch on you tube video’s of people like Mike Rinder, Leah Remini ,Mark Bunker and all the other active participants in their quest to “clear’ the planet of the tyrant cob and his cohorts.
one question I would like answered is how many of you good people would ever return to this cult if cob was vanquished?
If all the nastiness, lies and deceptions were eroded away would some of you good people who were once members ever contemplate returning? or has the damage already been done and the myth exposed?
Here in Australia we dont really come in to contact with these evil zombies, we have enough trouble with the ” stolen generation” and child sex abuse.
Very best wishes to all those who have escaped and I wish an early demise of this scam so that families can be reunited!
Smudge – Adelaide
Dear Smudge,
I had been 20+ years in the cult. My exwife is still fan of this guy called cob. Her awareness got more and more like this of an shark. No mercy, cold, very coldblooded. As a SS Sea org member you are implanted to have no mercy. I saw this the last scn year, eyeopening, when i was with this cult in the cult. Before i was convinced on the theory of hubbards collection of pseudointelligent bla bla, but not in the rules and policies. Others would observe this idiotic stuff as what it is: evil, naive, idiotic etc. But some people like me, do not.
The answer to your question:
Those who contribute to this blog in some way are cleared 😉 from becoming a superpower being.
But a great number of these, which can not reflect their own inner being, still waiting for superpower and trust into this possibilities. When the cob and his folks will vanish behind bars, they go back. Otherwise they follow Mr. Trump or multilevel marketing or everyone which promises something which makes more out of them.
The most saddest thing i have seen is not only that auditors do not realize that they implanted humans in excess and like mad ( and feel glory on this! ). No, the more sad thing is, that some people – like nazis, trumpists, stalinistas – go back to their punishment – despite they are informed on these nuts things on the cult.
Fortunately i am declared 🙂
And you, as a reader, is declared too.
Hi there
I have a son lost to this wacko cult
Would love to get an understanding of what I can do to try get him out
Aqua,
The cray-cray I was thinking of was NOT group suicide.
Ok, fine, I’ll bite: then what was it?
Aqua,
There is the full range of criminal and civil acts against their percveived ‘enemies’ availible. When they have fallen so deeply into the mind set of the cult then WOG law means nothing to them. I view them as anti-socials. Add anger and conpiracy issues and all they need is one trigger event and they act for the ‘greatest good for the cult’. Rex Folwer comes to my mind.
reposting a comment I made in this subject a few years ago, with a few edits:
Regarding scientologists who don’t disseminate:
This has been a long-term problem for the church. And the church, in turn, has made it a problem for those members who can’t come up with at least a few lukewarm examples of dissemination come “OT Eligibility” time.
There have been countless Dissemination Seminars, dissemination drilling, over the years by just about every org. It is evident this hasn’t resulted in increased starts by new people.
Well, the REAL WHY for most Scientologists not disseminating is not something like:
“Scns are unhatted in the tech of dissemination.”
Or
“Scns are out-ethics and don’t want their friends able to discover their withholds.”
Or
“Scn don’t know enough about Scientology to talk to people about it.”
Just…NO!
All of those explanations are not the right WHY and will never result in any increased dissemination statistics.
In truth, the real WHY for this is likely too horrific for any Sea Org or Scn staff member to confront.
This is the WHY I would offer which is a hell of a lot closer to reality than anything the church has ever come up with:
“Scns do not disseminate to their friends and co-workers, because the Scns do not want to subject their friends to the outrages one suffers as an active member of the church.”
Thus, Scns that do not disseminate are actually protecting their friends and associates. Not disseminating is the act of a social personality.
And maybe even more likely a reason: There is a self-preservation aspect to it. Scn PR is so bad, and has been for years, most Scns do not want to even reveal their association with the church, let alone try to recruit others. Staying undercover as a Scn is actually a rational act, and every Scn knows this even if they don’t admit it even to themselves, and certainly not to any staff member.
John Doe, thank you for your superb post, full of truth. What you’ve stated is EXACTLY why I never disseminated. I was protecting my friends! From the non-stop regging, the non-stop phone calls, all of which I dealt with but feared that people I would bring in would not, could not deal with. I was fine with the tech (as a public, never staff), there was no internet in those days so I was clueless about abuses for many years. So for many years I was fine with the tech but dreaded having to handle anyone I’d bring in who would be subjected to the organizational insanity – event attendance, the birthday game, mandatory purchase of new releases, on and on. Thanks for acknowledging this back off on my and others’ parts as RATIONAL. You just made my day!
Disseminating to someone would require exposure to a conversation the Scientologist does not want to have. Avoiding outside questions, information, or thought allows the bubble-dweller keep cognitive dissonance to a minimum.
I believe that one of the reasons we only see Ron and FoolProof show up for short intense engagements, and then long periods of withdrawal, is that no matter how much they dismiss the content here, they have to injest it before commenting. They have to retreat and spend time reinforcing themselves, before returning and confronting the dissonance that this forum creates in them.
“In A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world. A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance, by making changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance.[1]”
Has anybody else received a letter from the IAS making sure you have your IAS membership card? And that if it’s not in good condition or has been lost that one needs to request a replacement… It says “the Church of Scientology International has informed the IAS that IAS members will be asked to present their cards at events”… 😀 Ha!
Just got off the phone with a UTR friend who got such a letter from the IAS, Annie.
There are probably 20,000 people or more who bought lifetime IAS memberships but haven’t darkened an org’s door in ages, according to my estimates that I posted earlier. I’m sure they’d like to have an excuse to get back in touch with those people – and reel them back in.
They also seem to be requiring identification for attendance at events, presumably to try to weed out infiltrators. That’s been noted at really large events at their major venues for several years now, but may be filtering down to local events, so they might also want even people who only occasionally show up at local orgs to have proof of identity so they can control things.
Speaking of control, it also allows them to keep anyone who isn’t a member out of their orgs even if they have to rely on new and constantly turning over front desk people who may not know all an org’s members by sight, or even start to rely on security contractors to man the doors as is apparently the case at some LA area locations.
Amazing, Peacemaker!
And THIS is going to clear the planet, is it?
What a joke!
Aqua, some diehards are apparently holding on awaiting Hubbard’s return to turn things around. I suspect others are hoping that some catastrophe like nuclear contamination will drive people into the orgs seeking Hubbard’s cures and wisdom, and create a new golden era like the 1960s. I have no idea whether Miscavige believes that some turnaround is possible, or is just trying to keep things going for his benefit and perverse personal pleasure until he’s ready to shuffle off to Target Two himself – the reserves, and lawyers willing to do whatever it takes to fend off challenges as long as possible, might just achieve that.
I expect that some day, lawyers for the CofS will argue that it is a fundamental tenet of Scientology faith to maintain large, empty buildings awaiting an expected “flood” of people and “boom.”
Even when I was in, and into it, I was hesitant to bring any new people in. More than hesitant, I rarely did it. I didn’t want to expose anyone to the heavy handed (tone 40) reg tactics, and intro bullshit. I figured I had been in for a while, so I knew what to expect… but I wouldn’t want to expose others to that. I had done it a couple of times before…not good.
Simple Ponzi scheme!!
While I am always happy to see this cult shrink it comes with a ‘yes but’.
Those remaining ‘in’ have found their niche cult and will dig in deeper. And get more desparate as their universe shrinks further. They could become fanatics, and fanatics have been known to do cray-cray s**t. Compounding this is LRH’s scripture which authorizes them to do cray-cray s**t.
I had cray-cray once. It was delicious! I highly recommend it!
Naaa, they won’t kill themselves. When – or perhaps I should say “if” – it EVER dawns on them how THOROUGHLY they’ve been HAD, how amazingly they’ve been conned with their FULL COOPERATION AND CONSENT, they’ll put David Miscavige’s head on a pike and whine LOUDLY. But then, doing something about it will be another matter. They are not organized. They’ve been trained not to “natter” with one another. They’ve been trained to have “No case on post”‘, meaning to only tell their stuff to an auditor or an ethics officer.
They’ve been trained to PRETEND that everything is fine and hunky dory even when it isn’t – especially when it isn’t! They’ll be at sea. They won’t have a clue what to do. Miscavige will have plenty of time, space and money to be long gone and out of danger once the Sheeple catch on to the con. They will be floundering in the low tone levels. But themselves? As a group? Unlikely. But there will be avalanches of Knowledge Reports and Things That Shouldn’t Be’s. Poor devils.
Edit: But KILL themselves? As a group? Unlikely.
Jim, I got a notice that you replied that killing themselves was not the “cray-cray” to which you were referring. I don’t see your comment here but I’ll reply with a question as follows: If not mass suicide, then what “cray-cray” ? Not challenging, mind you; just curious.
Not a nitpick, exactly, more of a supplement to the math:
I agree that *if they did the calculation at all and this poster isn’t just hype,* the straightforward 1 million divided by 52 weeks per year calculation is probably how they did it.
However, keep in mind that Scientology considers a Scientologist to be anyone who has bought anything ever or given them their contact information to send them advertisements. So this poster’s claim should be exponential, doubling each week. So i quickly tried to consider what 2^52 would look like, and i remember that 2^5 is 32 and 2^10 is 1024 – which would make 2^52 not just larger than the number of people on earth but probably larger than the number of grains of sand that could fit in the visible universe.
So yeah, original calculation must be how they meant to do it. Also, it fits with other estimates of Scientology’s actual membership numbers.
That said, i’m pretty sure that it was just a piece of hype; since it both reveals how many members they actually have and also that info is super-secret and unlikely to be made available to whoever made this poster!
Almost 3,000 ex-COS-members have spoken out.
https://whyweprotest.wikia.org/wiki/Former_Church_of_Scientology_members_who_have_spoken_out
That’s what counts IMHO. 🙂
Whoa! “Almost 3,000 ex–COS-Members have spoken out.”
That means it’s down to 27, 000…and falling.
I tried to bring people in all of the time when I was in the cult. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE. Too much information was out there on the net and in the media about how evil Scientology was. People were educated then.
That was long before Leah and Mike delivered the epic blow to expose the Scientology criminal organization disguised as a church.
I could NEVER get anyone to stay and do Scientology – EVER.
I can’t even imagine how any Scientologist would ever get anyone in the cult today.
Stick a Fork in it.
Scientology is dead.
I hope you’re right!
I brought in two people in my 30 years. One got some Book One auditing and didn’t get put on a routing form so escaped the snare of signing up for the next service and the other one did some research (this was in the late 80’s so library microfiche! LOL) and blew. The basics course sup told me it was my job to get her back but she was not having any of it. By then my mom was SO so I wasn’t listening to what she unearthed, besides it was in the newspapers and everyone knew the media lied and was just out to get us… 😉
What a joke. Anyone would be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard that the COS is evil. And Scientologists are so in their bubble that most don’t even know anyone who isn’t one.
I think new Scientologists are brought in under religious worker visas. They promise to work in an Org until they get a Green Card, and can bring in their family. For that reason, these workers are willing to put up with a lot of abuse. The scam could have a long while to run.
That’s also 52 people for each ‘bringer’. That’s a huge ask – the average person doesn’t know 52 people well enough to talk about scientology, let alone bring into the fold. The people close enough to them are probably already aware of their association with $sci and aren’t exactly banging down doors to get in. And even a million isn’t going to make a dent in clearing the planet unless they’re counting on that million growing exponentially, which of course would never happen because all your friends friends have already been approached. It’s a pyramid scheme that collapses by the 3rd tier.
Jodi, it’s a pyramid scheme that’s collapsed in the FIRST tier. Current clams can’t get raw meat to get interested, partly because scn’s reputation is SO foul. Even forgetting the current scandals, Hurricane Leah, DJ Donkey Punch, TC’s collapse as a megastar, scn’s always been a tough sell due to the public’s perception of their “ways”. ‘Twas true in the ’70s; it’s worse in the age of the Interwebz and smart devices being ubiquitous.
I look at the typical 35 to 50 people we see in photographs of major events at local orgs, which fits with insider reports of the number of members who are really active, and extrapolate that across Scientology’s approximately 45 “churches” in the US and 140 total worldwide. That comes to around 1600 to 2,250 in the US and 5,000 to 7,000 on the whole planet that Scientology’s local orgs can really count on to show up; on top of that there are probably 1,000 in the Clearwater area serviced by Flag and maybe as many more who are at remote remaining missions or who live in areas without orgs and travel to Clearwater or LA (or even Firhouse and Kalami).
Add to that 1 to 2 times as many more people who are in orgs’ total “field,” according to reports and signs (like the Chicago org recently showing up to 135 possible donors), people who hold IAS membership and may occasionally take a course or come to a major “all hands” event (many probably actually UTR and keeping up appearances) and the total could run from 7,000 to 21,000. That more or less fits with the number in the Facebook group, and when different measures of estimates converge on the same numbers that tells me that they’re in the ballpark of being correct.
I agree that the Facebook group, as one of Scientology’s apparent “all hands” calls. is probably very indicative. I would add that I recall seeing reports that at least some Sea Org members had been set up with Facebook accounts, plus anyone who has joined the SO in recent years likely already had one and would have been a member of that group, so there may not actually be all that many SO unaccounted for by that measure.
There is just not enough observable activity to account for more than around 10,000 active members or Sea Org, and around 20,000 total. 50,000 members, less 5,000 in the Sea Org (high, and probably closer to 3,000) would translate to about 300 members per local org, and we just don’t see that, unless say it includes a lot of people who bought lifetime IAS memberships but who have completely stopped participating.
One other measure to consider is censuses. The 2001 UK census reported 1,781 scientologists, which would be 350 per each of the 5 local orgs (ignoring any remaining missions) – but that apparently included minor children, and foreigners at Saint Hill, plus of course independents no longer in the CofS. In Australia the 2016 census recorded 1,684 in a country with 6 orgs, or 280 per. The very rough older 2008 ARIS phone poll estimate of 20,000 in the US would be about 550 per org, seemingly a bit high in comparison with other measures but not inordinately so, and maybe fitting with a figure of more like 300 per given declines in membership in the decade since then; it would also fit with accounts that orgs like Boston used to have 200 to 300 members who would show up for major events before debacles such as the Debbie Cook e-mail of 2011, but have seen that about halved. So maybe there could be 40 to 50 thousand worldwide who identify with Scientology if not always the CofS itself, but with at most a quarter to a fifth of them active in any meaningful way.
So I would estimate:
10K active faithful
10K hangers-on and UTR who are minimally active
20K who bought lifetime IAS memberships but are now completely inactive
10K who identify as independent or non-CofS scientologists, many not active for decades
Wikipedia says that the number of humans who have ever lived is in the order of 100 billion. If a quarter million people have Ever been a scientologist then we are a unique and special group in human history!
Good count. That is seriously 20000 people which are doing something. Whatever they do, the criminal point is the top in the pyramid, which own billions and now own a lot of empty buildings.
Btw: What happened with the people in the “hole”?
So, where are the other millions of scientologists they keep bragging about?
Apparently they were counting everyone’s body thetans.
Good question Val.
Prompted me to take a look back over my 45 years in the cult and check which friends and relatives are still in. One family with 2 parents and 5 kids, today has only one kid still in. Another family with 4 kids who’d been in for many years; none in today. I have 5 ex’s none of which are still in. The last time I went to Flag I saw no one I knew from before. Oops 2 reges were still there. But that’s the sea org and staff have no “real world” skills to make it back into society so are truly stuck in. Conclusion; from personal observation the cult is dying. Wonder what we’ll all chat about once it fully disappears.
Glenn
ValR:”So, where are the other millions of scientologists they keep bragging about?”
They NEVER existed. It was just a number pulled out of their … hat which kept Dwarfenführer happy enough that he didn’t assault them THAT day.
They’re nonexistent. Compare Scientology to a church which actually has a few million. Methodists officially number about 8 million in the US. Mormons are around 5 million in the US. For both denominations, actual participation rates are probably below 50 percent, so divide those above numbers in half.
Despite those churches’ declines, they both possess a presence that Scientology can only dream of. Church buildings in every city and town. Most Americans know at least one current or former Methodist and Mormon. Their conferences drawn the attention of mainstream news. For the most part, people aren’t embarrassed to be known as members.
If Scientology had even one million members, including inactives, they’d look far different than they do now. We have clear examples of what a denomination will look like with a million or two, and Scientology doesn’t even come close.
i think it’s like in Mormonism you leave get excommunicated (to a much lesser degree) but they keep your name on the rolls even after you die that way it boosts their numbers when new people join the church.
Great infographic about ludicrous Scientology metrics and expansion, featured here nearly 3 years ago:
https://www.mikerindersblog.org/scientology-expansion-debunked/
December 27, 2016 By Mike Rinder 187 Comments
It’s 8 million of course.*
*includes body thetans (clusters counted by constituent individuals)
I know Scientologists don’t believe or accept psychology. However, there is a term in psychology called a ‘Freudian slip”. It basically means accidentally speaking the truth even though that wasn’t your conscious intent. This is a HUGE Freudian slip!
Scientology is practically the church of the Freudian Slip. I think that is because they impose such severe thought-stopping on members, that all their repressed doubts end up slipping out in other ways, especially when they accuse others. Hubbard said something to the effect that people accuse others of that which they themselves are guilty – a restating of the Freudian concept of projection – and Scientology continually exemplifies that at work.
Hubbard nominally rejected psychiatry, but plagiarized many of his basic techniques from early psychiatry and psychology, which had for instance experimented with abreaction/regression and psychometers, and thus there are close parallels. In some ways, Scientology looks more like 1940s psychiatry, than does modern psychiatry and psychology. Hubbard also said something to the effect that you become what you hate – cribbing yet another psychological principle – and indeed their rabid hate of old-fashioned psychiatry has left them re-creating their own version of it.
PM: That’s a really concise, accurate assessment of scienbollocky. The psychiactric/psychological concepts that Flubbard sloppily cribbed and intentionally made confusing date to the 19th century.
Scientology: consistently and uninitentionally ironic!
Hubbard condemned anything he piece meal poached from…labeling it evil so that the people he was running his con on would steer clear of it and not see the similarities.
Hey, since Tubby didn’t write about a renamed “freudian slip”, scns are free to use the wog term, knowing of course that it wasn’t a valid concept in the scn bubble.
And let’s not overlook the bizarre fantasy that every Scientologist on the list could bring in one ‘wog’ each every single week, and that each one could be ‘gotten’ into Scientology.
That might have been possible back in Scientology’s heyday in the 60s and 70s, when many of its adherents were young people circulating in the youth movement of the era and on college campuses – and when there were a lot of young “seekers” looking for non-traditional groups and gurus, who were open to the pitch of someone they’d only just met or even a gregarious person on the street. There are old accounts that confirm this, including that “body routers” sometimes would get more people into missions and orgs than the recruiters inside could even handle.
Come to think of it, the complete demise of Scientology recruiting on college campuses was either a bellweather, or a crippling blow. But that almost entirely has to do with social and generational factors that happened to work for Scientology at the time, and then later completely turned against them, and less with what they offered or what they did.
The most extreme solution ever. Bring in people to Scientology? I would have quit at the very mention of the idea. This is like selling life insurance.
No matter how you slice and dice it, whether it be 20K or 50K it can’t possibly be enough. I wonder how much it costs just to keep the Super Power Bldg’s lights on and then of course, the cost to keep the Ideal Orgs’ lights on and then the Class V Orgs’. The church has got to be going into reserves but then I can’t imagine what these numbers would be. I suppose that this is the main reason miscavige has taken to relying on “money for nothing.”
If they have, say, a billion dollars in reserves, properly invested at a standard 5% rate of return, that would yield $50 million per year, or about $350,000 to subsidize keeping each of the local orgs worldwide open – and that’s assuming no other sources of income, no matter how larger or small. Once an organization has accumulated those levels of assets, the sort of momentum that keeps them going is amazing if not bizarre – that’s why, for instance, Sears didn’t disappear decades ago, when it started making more money from its accumulated real estate holdings and financial services, than its faltering retail sales.
I suspect we will see Scientology’s idle morgues kept open by skeleton staffs of remaining true believers, supplemented by outside security contractors to man the doors and front desks (which there is already some of), so long that it becomes an irrational farce of historic proportions – unless unexpected “black swan” events, or IRS or other government action, intervenes to derail their momentum. The flagship buildings in LA and Clearwater can be kept open by selling off all the far-flung satellite properties that they have and doing token expansions at the main facilities to tout as “wins,” which the current clueless bubble-dwellers would not recognize as just a shuffling of Titanic deck chairs.
I agree with what you’ve outlined as the likely future of
Scientology and its orgs, Peacemaker.
Thanks, Peacemaker. I’m not a numbers person and your post helps me understand the church’s numbers a bit better. Sometimes I think the church has way more in reserves than anyone has predicted and way more staying power than I have predicted.
It is obvious watching the many YouTube videos how empty their Orgs and Missions are. We also see here on Thursdays how they are virtually begging people to join their staff. Anyone care to estimate what percent of $ci members are over 50 and what percent of $ci staff and sea Org are not from the US?
Gordon – don’t you live in St Louis? Why don’t you go in and get some photos and info and report back? I used to be a hard core kool aid member for many years.
I would like to know how empty it is.
They were always begging people to join staff. I never knew a time when as regards getting you to sign a staff contract they didn’t come across like the character depicting the “Needing Bodies” tone level in the Tone Scale film. Creepy. They were so needy, so pitiable. I’d feel like a terrible, selfish person for refusing. But I refused, anyway, repeatedly. Oh, wait, there’s an exception to their Needing Bodies stratagem which was considerable more uptone. Right after 9/11, the Sea Ogres descended from on high and ORDERED us to join staff. Ordered us, because it was their duty to do so and our duty and responsibility to obey and sign, now. With no guilt for a change, I told them to get f***ked. In a nice way 🙂
“ConsideraBLY” more uptone.
Mike, waaaaa bring back the edit button, please, please, waaaaaa 🙂
Even 20,000 Scion fooled is too many. Looking forward to seeing $cientology listed on Wikipedia under “dead cults” and COB cult despot l’il davey miscavige serving a life sentence in San Quentin – and all the involuntary bent-over joys therein.
I think 19,000 is being very generous. There are so many people out of Scientology but pretending to be in Scientology (waiting until things change…they know something is off but because they are indoctrinated to NOT LOOK – they wait…and wait…and wait). I know several people from our Org who are hiding and pretending. More like a dozen. This is a world wide situation so I think the actual number of Scientologists is around 6,000.
Stat, that 6,000 number sounds about right. When Mike said we have 20,000 Scns worldwide, how many of that are SO or Org Staff?
My definition of “active” includes being on course or auditing at least a few months a year since “training” is pretty cheap. BUT, it excludes S.O. So, in the USA that # could not be higher than ~3,000. A significant % of THAT number being people battling imaginary demons on OT 7 at home.
Wynski, that kind of fits with my calculation that the 35 to 50 people we see in pictures of events at local orgs, assuming that’s average at the approximately 45 of those in the US, extrapolates to 1600 to 2,250, plus about 1,000 in Clearwater who go to Flag or the Belaire mission – and possibly a few more across the country who only go to advanced orgs.
And I think we’ve seen figures indicating that the number on OT 7 is around 1,000, which would about a third of the total active.
Sounds about right Peace. Add to that the core, wealthy members tend to be born between 1945 – 1955 and that leaves the avg age of those ~69 years old…
Wynski, that’s the other thing we see in those photos – all the grey haired members who form much of the hard core that still turns out for local org events. They are sprinkled with somewhat younger members, but the average age at such an event is probably at least 50-55, which means it’s really more of a retiree gathering.
Scientology is facing a demographic cliff, and the aspect of that which I think will hit particularly hard before long, is going to be all the cases of people left broke as they become old and infirm, and ending up in the social welfare system or nursing homes. It’s to Scientology’s advantage in a way that they’re so small that it’s only going to be a couple thousand people, but in places like California and Clearwater where they’re concentrated, Scientology’s tendency to get disproportionate publicity is going to work against them.
That also makes me think, among their myriad of front groups pretending to offer help for all sorts of things, I can’t think of one aimed at seniors and aging. But that’s not a demographic they can even tenuously claim to help, or get much out of for themselves.
Off-topic. By order of the Flag MAA, my sister sent me a disconnection letter two weeks ago. She also told me not to communicate with her two grown sons, one of which is not even a Scientologist.
Sucks! What do your nephews think of this? I take it she is selectively NOT disconnecting from her non-Sci son, but threatens to do so if he talks with you.
My non-Scn, nephew doesn’t like Scn. I posted this to let people know that as of 2 weeks ago
,Flag still enforces the disconnection policy.
Christopher,
I am sorry you have to deakl with that crap, but thanks for sharing the information. I sincerely hope that your sister wakes up and leaves sooner than later.
Best Wishes!
It’s disgusting and I hope you are reunited on the outside soon!
Christopher, I am so sorry for your loss due to disconnection. This is the only club the church has to keep its member in line and try to keep them from looking and leaving. And yes, disconnection is alive and well even now, all these years after little Tommy Davis said it was no longer used. I got a disconnection letter about a month ago on Facebook. Yes they practice that policy now even if they claim they don’t.
Darn it Christopher. I am so sorry. Thank you for publicizing it. Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant.
I’m so sorry to hear this Christopher. If the non-Scientologist son is grown, seems to me you could still check if he feels that way. Or is it that she will be forced to cut off from him if he doesn’t cut off from you? This policy is so malicious and harmful. I hope you have community and friends and other family to help you get through this loss.
Her sons are grown? Your nephews are legal adults, one of whom is not even a Scientologist? Who the hell does this bitch think she is to decide such things on behalf of her adult children? I would ignore her and communicate with them if I felt like it and they said nothing to the contrary. Unless of course this is thisnot a Scientology thing but a millennial thing, with her kids living at home and under Mom and Dad’s thumb financially and otherwise until they’re 48. if that’s the case, they’ll likely obey her.
I’m so sorry, Chris. This is just so evil. I am astounded that she forbids you to speak with her adult sons, and yet not, because inside her is the fear and panic that the cherch could make her disconnect from them if they are in contact with you, or worse, swayed by you (specifically the son still in). If you are close to your nephews, I say stay in contact. Just be the good person you are and treat them well. You will be a safe harbor if things get weird inside the bubble, and may help keep the other son out or make the other one begin to look… My hope is your sister figures out this is all BS and leaves so your family can be whole again. I am blessed in that my brother and I figured things out at the same time which brought us closer. Hang in there.
20.000 scientologist left in 2019 seems quite generous but ok.
How many do you think?
15,000.