Channel 4 News - Anonymous news from around the world

After an embarrassing string of high-profile defection and leaked videos, Scientology is under attack from a faceless cabal of online activists. Has America’s most controversial religion finally met its match?
Clearwater is prepared for its enemies. It’s a warm, if overcast, Saturday in February, but all the storefronts lining the sidewalks of this sleepy town on […]

One clue to this interpretation can be seen in other protesters’ signs: “Religion Is Free, Scientology Is Not” and “Trade Secrets Are For Business, Not Religion.” I’m a scientist who studies belief systems for a living, so take it from me: Scientology is unlike any other religion in history. Although the Church of Scientology is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt religion (despite years of litigation by the IRS to collect taxes on its income), no other religion I know of considers theological doctrines and core religious tenets to be intellectual property accessible only for a fee.

Envision converting to Judaism but having to pay to learn the story of Abraham and Isaac, Noah and the flood or Moses and the Ten Commandments. Or imagine joining the Catholic Church but not being told about the crucifixion and the resurrection until you have reached Operating Theological Level III, which takes many years and many tens of thousands of dollars.

The pay-off line to a 2005 episode of South Park said it all. The show was a satire on Scientology in which a cartoon Cruise was exposed to near-continuous ridicule. In the final scene, he cries: ‘I’m going to sue you… in England!’

The real Cruise can’t sue the makers in the US, where freedom of speech is protected but, like his cartoon counterpart, he could be confident our judges would gladly shelter him under our authoritarian libel laws if he found an excuse to come here. The same thought struck TV executives and the Scientology episode of South Park has never been shown by a British station. Even though you can see it on the web, lawyers would turn pale if I suggested repeating South Park’s running gag at Cruise’s expense in a British paper.

Last year the Cheers foil donated $5m to the Church of Scientology. That’s more than big tippers Priscilla Presley ($50,000), or John Travolta ($1m), and nudges her ahead of Scientology’s poster boy, Tom Cruise, who donated the same amount over four years.

But all of them have been dwarfed by a contribution from a celebrity more famous and loved than any of them: Bart Simpson.

It’s upsetting enough that the Fresh Prince has been reportedly handing out Scientology personality tests to his film crew, but it has emerged that the voice of Bart Simpson, Nancy Cartwright, once the idiot savant voice of reason in a world gone screamingly wacko, donated $10m to the Church in 2007.

In July, 1968, following a governmental review, the Minister of Health told Parliament that the organisation “alienates members of families from each other” and had “authoritarian principles and practices” that were a “potential menace to the personality and well being of those so deluded as to become its followers”.

The famous eyes stare and his head lolls about at the wonder of it all while gibberish pours from his lips. Tom Cruise is extolling the glories of Scientology. “It’s rough and tumble. It’s wild and woolly and it’s a blast,” he declares, throwing his carefully dishevelled head back and roaring with laughter. “It’s really […]

The brilliantly slick My Name Is Earl carries the karmic principle through to its logical/absurd conclusion with reformed felon Earl Hickey making up for past wrongs by doing good deeds. It’s a feelgood kind of show. Yet there’s something rotten at the heart of Earl if you believe the whispers. Critics claim there’s an unholy influence by the Church of Scientology on the show with jobs for the boys and a crypto religious subtext just two of the allegations. I thought it was all about making a better world?

“If they hadn’t put this episode back on air… we wouldn’t be doing anything else with them,” South Park co-creator Matt Stone told trade magazine Variety.

The channel denied pulling the March show to appease Scientologist Cruise.

Cruise also denied reports suggesting he threatened not to promote his film Mission Impossible: 3 if the episode was broadcast.

South Park has exacted revenge on its former star Isaac Hayes by turning his character Chef into a paedophile and seemingly killing him off.

The opening episode of the 10th series, screened in the US on Wednesday, appeared to be a satire on Scientology.

Hayes, a Scientologist, quit the animated comedy after a different episode ridiculed the religion.

South Park’s creators have renewed their “battle” with Scientology, after a US TV channel dropped a show which mocked its church and actor Tom Cruise.

“So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!” Trey Parker and Matt Stone told trade paper Variety.