Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [159]
Now Natalie was preparing to go to college, though several of her Scientologist friends, and some Scientologist adults, including her boss at her summer job, thought it was unnecessary. What could a person learn that couldn't be picked up simply by studying L. Ron Hubbard? "I said excuse me, and I left," Natalie said, and she moved to a position with more supportive supervisors. "Keeping Scientology Working never says you shouldn't be educated in other things," Natalie said. "I mean, LRH obviously knew other things." Was he as educated as he claimed to be? Natalie confessed that she had gone on the Internet and read a bit about Hubbard's biography. She doubted the truth of everything she found there, but whatever his education had been, she liked what he said about learning. "I don't think LRH would be okay with people thinking that all you have to learn is Scientology." She referred to one of the Founder's statements, a personal favorite of hers: "One doesn't learn about life sitting in an ivory tower, thinking about it. One learns about life by being part of it."
Natalie was determined to live Hubbard's words. Over the next few years, she would—at the University of Tampa she joined a sorority, majored in economics, and graduated summa cum laude in May 2010. Her world had broadened with each step out of the Scientology bubble, a development that her parents supported. And she continued to remain a dedicated Scientologist, perhaps even more dedicated, she said, because of her diverse experience. "One thing I've noticed," she said recently, "is that there are kids who've grown up in Scientology and have never really seen anything else. I think that bubble can be a problem."
Kendra Wiseman grew up in Scientology's bubble in Los Angeles. A few years older than Natalie, she left the bubble—and Scientology—during her teens. Kendra is the daughter of two of the most prominent Scientologists in Los Angeles. Her father, a former president of the U.S. branch of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, is an outspoken anti-psychiatry activist, and her mother was one of Scientology's most successful FSMs during the 1990s. Kendra's uncle is another key Scientology figure: the president of Narconon International, which now operates more than 120 drug rehabilitation and education centers around the world.
The church caters to Scientologists of this elite stature and they receive treatment much like that of celebrity members. Indeed, as "opinion leaders," which Hubbard defined as "any person important in their field," they are considered "celebrities" by the Scientology rank and file. Many of them have been in Scientology for decades, contributing steadily to most of its key campaigns. Because they are Scientology's most dedicated, great care is taken to ensure they have a positive, not a punitive, experience.
In exchange for this treatment, all opinion leaders are expected to promote Scientology in the secular world, and many do by talking about the church to non-Scientologist acquaintances or business associates. But unlike the Hollywood celebrities, who often maintain independent social networks (according to the journalist Lawrence Wright, who has written about the screenwriter-director Paul Haggis for The New Yorker, some of Haggis's friends maintain they had no idea he was a Scientologist, despite his affiliation with the church of more than thirty years), Scientology opinion leaders, and their children, tend to live in a world rigidly focused on their faith. In Kendra's case, all of her childhood friends were Scientologists, as were her