This is a response to your response below posted here because understandably our thread was cut off having gone on past reasonable time allowed 🙂 So we don’t want to annoy Mike by twarting his understandable cut off. I just want you to know that what you said about all churches being a business is a statement with which I could not agree more! ALL churches are religious organizations run by people and as such ARE businesses which need and want to and indeed MUST keep their “customers” happy and satified and within the fold so that their organizations can continue to survive! Totally true!

This is why I don’t want to EVER be affiliated with any religious organization aka church EVER again.

Spiritual philosophy, yes, absolutely. I am intensely interested in learning about these and testing new theories to apply to my life.

But once a spiritual philosophy crystalizes into a religion, it becomes an organization, and that organization, to survive, MUST be, for all practical purposes, a business.

And yes, I, too believe that ALL religious organizations – churches, synagogues, mosques, whatever – shoud be taxed. Yes X 1000 to that! I’m not holding my breath for that, though.

I don’t know where you live but in the USA where I am religion is becoming more and more influential in government, and in that NO taxes are paid, I believe this to be a travesty of justice and fairness.

All of this being said, respectfully, please don’t respond at this time because I don’t want to annoy Mike; we have gone far afield and off – topic. We can continue this at some point later on if you like 🙂

Hmm okay…but doesn’t the average business host events/parties for its clients in exactly the same way? Yes, they’re fun…but the purpose is always repeat business, networking and lead generation.

Maybe I’ve mellowed. I’ve seen the church as nothing other than a “religious” business for some years now so things like this don’t bother me in the slightest. The church is a business. Public scientologists are its customers/clients. Yes, it is still a religion. And no, it should not be tax exempt.

Yes, you’re missing something 🙂 The point I’m making is not that there is anything at all wrong with hosting a non-religious festive banquet.

I cast a jaundiced eye on Scn Christmas events for the same reason that I have contempt for ALL Scientology events, large and small; because, notwithstanding the “PR” purpose for an event, the REAL purpose is covert and undisclosed and known beforehand only to the staff, and will always entail selling somethning (including a pre-targeted amount of whatever it is)) OR they want you to DO something, like join staff. Again, their true PURPOSE for holding the event is NOT EVER what they say it is.

To illustrate:
I invite you to a Christmas Party. I’m secular, one could call me a lapsed Christian. I cherry pick what I believe out of the Old Testament and New Testament. Ok, so that’s not what a Christian is supposed to do! The Bible is the word of God and every word in there is true, and mortals like me are not supposed to pick over the Word of God and decide what makes sense and what doesn’t…that’s not what a Christian is supposesd to do! So I’m pretty secular in that the world of philosophy is my bible, and I’ll believe what I damn well want to believe whether it in the New Testament, the Old Testament, the I Ching, The Vedic literature, the Talmud or L. Ron Hubbard, etc. I pick and choose what indicates as true and applicable for me wherever I find it, and I reject the rest. OK, so much for my secular credentials.

I love Christmas. I love the trees, decorating them, buying presents, wrapping them with beautiful wrapping paper, giving them, giving Christmas parties, myself, making refreshments from fresh fruit and vegetables that are red and green…I just like the aesthetics of this holiday and I feel happy around Christmas time and its fun to make others happy with gifts I know they’ll like…OK. So I’m this secular believer/non believer in Christianity who gives Christmas parties when I can, and my sole purpose in giving them is, frankly, to make people happy with good food, music thely enjoy, conversation they enjoy, gifts and some alcohol. That’s it! That’s my purpose! And my “product” is that my guests show up, enjoy themselves for real,, and leave happier than when they came. To me, this is a great product! And it can’t be forced. It has to just happen. And its a kick to me, when it does, which is most of the time, if I may say without meaning to brag.

Ok, but let’s say I invite you to my party and I have ANOTHER purpose, something I want from you that I don’t tell you. I don’t tell you because if you knew my real purpose for giving a party you wouldn’t come. So I actually CAN’T tell you. What I tell you is, “Hey, mwestern, how are you? I’m giving a holiday party and I’d love to have you come. It’ll be really special. Terrific refreshments, music, all our friends, it’ll be fun, hope you can make it!”

And you accept.

And at the party I take you aside after you’ve had a few drinks and plenty of tasty food, and I tell you about something I’d like you to invest in. I need seed money for a new business venture and I want to give you the opportunity to realize 15% on your investment. And I’m pretty intense with you about this and you start to feel uncomfortable. You don’t want to invest large sums of money in this business venture of mine. You don’t want to hear about it so you make some excuse that now is not a good time, etc., but I press you and suggest that we meet for lunch during the week to talk about it. Now you’re not only uncomfortable but pissed as well. But you contain it. Somehow you get away from my clutches and on your way home you realize that I only invited you because I wanted something from you and that I must have planned in advance to spring this proposition on you and that there are likely others who were invited who I’m hitting on with this proposition, and long story short, it dawns on you that the purpose of my party was not what I told you it was at all.

And over the next few days you decide that you’ll never come to one of my parties again.

Cult members don’t have that option. They are coerced, pleaded with nagged and lied to in order to get them to agree to attend an event.

They KNOW, you see, that the ostensible purpose of the party (fun Easter, fun Christmas, Chanukkah, Halloween, whatever) is NOT going to be the real purpose. EVER.

Scientologists believe delivering scientology to the world is, to put it crudely, a nice thing to do for people. Having a specific purpose does not negate any perceived positive outcome, even if said purpose is deemed “questionable” by others. (Look at the history of the British Empire, for example).

It is certainly true the church misleads people about its beliefs, including those regarding other religions. But what does that have to do with a non-religious festive banquet? Am I missing something? 🤪

Yes, and I’ll tell you why. Nothing Co$ does is to just do something nice for people. NOTHING. Every action, every task and absoluteley EVERY event large and small has a PURPOSE attached to it , and that purpose is to get a PRODUCT, a product that EVERY staff member KNOWS and is drilled on before the event itself!

Lightheartedness? ” Let’s just have a party and relax for a bit? ” No. Not in the Church of Scientology. “Fun” is NEVER just fun. You and I give parties so that people can relaz and have fun. Not CO$!

There are all types of events but if they’re promoting an event as sheer fun and relaxation, thats window dressing for some quite specific, NAMED AND KNOWN (by the staff) PRODUCT. There is always something they want you to do, or promise to do or promise to buy. Always. This is POLICY. Named purpose and named product for EACH event. No exceptions.

Agreed. But on it’s own, the church hosting a non-religious pagan banquet seems a bit of a nothing burger. One could view it as rather a nice thing to do, particularly for those who find themselves alone at this time of year. Does absolutely everything they do have to be viewed through such a hypercritical lens?

I understand, and I respect your integrity regarding this, but the fact is that millions of non-devout and/or lapsed Christians celebrate Christmas, just as a great many “non-observant” Jews celebrate Chanukkah and Passover!

mwestern, almost none of Christianity’s traditions are uniquely Christian. They were long ago co-opted from pagan rituals by the Church of Rome so as to more easily, comfortably, painlessly convert the pagans to Christianity. I’ve met many Christians who have no clue about the actual sources of their Christian holidays, that these practices existed centuries, possilbly millenia, before Jesus Christ came on the scene. So your argument is valid. Lots of people love and enjoy and practice the rituals of Christmas – giving gifts, having a Christmas tree, singing carols, etc., while not actually believing. I’m one of them – a lapsed Christian, you could call me. But I enjoy the holiday. I’d bet there are millions like me. So you’re right about that.

So you’re right however you are arguing a point that Mike is not making.

His objection and that of most of us who’ve left CO$ is the Big Lie the Church tells non-Scientology public as well as Scientologists on the Lower Bridge; to wit, that one can be and practice another religion AND be a Scientologist. THAT is patently untrue. A HUGE lie.

Oh, it is TOLERATED by Co$ when one is on the lower bridge, and that its ok to be any other religion AND be a Scientologist is definitely used as a ploy to draw in new people to Co$, however once a Scientologist hits the OT Levels, it is most definitely NOT OK to be engaging in “other practices” and/or Xenu forbid, BELIEVING anything and I do mean ANYTHING other than what L Ron Hubbard says you can believe. OTs very quickly give up their former beliefs (aka “false data” ). Those sec checks every 6 months are expensive.

Typo: “…to the Jews of Judea” – under Roman rule at the time.

Yes, all true. Long before Christ, long before it became the holy symbol of Christianity, the cross was simply an execution device for the very worst criminals. The Romans crucified Jesus even as Pilate admitted that he “found no fault with this man” because they wanted, or thought they needed, to send a very strong message to the Jews of Jude. Politics!

The late, Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce quipped that instead of 2000 years ago, if Jesus had lived and been executed in the 1950s all the Catholic kids would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks 🙂