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 the Gulf Coast of Florida are shuttered. The streets are mostly barren, and at the sight of strangers, the few passersby quicken their pace and avert their eyes. Outwardly, Clearwater has all the hallmarks of an unexceptional beach community—there’s a Starbucks on the corner, and new construction projects dot the shoreline. But today the cranes are still and the scaffolding is empty. No one is lining up for lattes. Everyone, it seems, has disappeared.
“There’s one!” says Patricia Greenway, my guide, as we drive past a dark-haired woman in black slacks and a short-sleeve white shirt. When she notices us eyeballing her through the car window, she raises her hand like a scandalized starlet confronting the paparazzi. “See—she’s hiding her face,” Greenway says quietly, sounding like the host of an Animal Planet safari special. “They feel that if they’re exposed to entheta, they’ll lose their bridge.”
Their “bridge” is the “Bridge to Total Freedom,” the path to enlightenment, levitation, time travel, and all-around invincibility peddled by L. Ron Hubbard under the name Scientology. “Entheta” is us. The enemy.
Disclaimer;
Although the name Patricia Greenway is prominently mentioned on this page, it is in no way connective that anyone associated with the Empire of the Odd. No person from this publication has ever met or assisted entities from a defunked organization known as the Lisa McPherson Trust. Any attempt at litigation or motion in such a direction will be thought as further harassment from the organization known as Scientology.
Let me also point out how utterly stupid I feel when I write crap like that, it’s SO unnecessary since I am simply ECHOING a piece written in another place. (gaaaa!)