Volunteer Ministers
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The Volunteer Minister program of the Church of Scientology dispatches groups of Scientologists to assist people in distress, using techniques developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. According to the Church, "It is a worldwide movement that has for more than 25 years worked across national, racial, political and religious boundaries in more than 150 countries to help people deal with upheavals and has helped them put their lives back together." Its slogan is "Something can be done about it." The Church claims that the program constitutes "the only effective steps to arrest and reverse the deterioration of [the] world.".[1]
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[edit] Objectives
According to Hubbard, the objective of the program is to "put basic Dianetics and Scientology tech[nology] into view and into use at the raw public level.".[2] The Church of Scientology has compiled instructions on how to use Scientology methods to resolve personal issues into a book, The Volunteer Minister's Handbook. In Hubbard's words, "this book will be broadly distributed on Scn and non-Scientology lines, bought by the man on the street. He'll use some of the data, produce some miracles, save a marriage or two, rescue some kid from drugs, help his next door neighbor who's upset because her child's failing in school and couldn't care less, plus brighten up her yawning of Spring and teach him to study, and handle Aunt Martha's dizziness with assists." [2]
Volunteer Ministers are trained in a two-week Volunteer Minister Course which instructs the individual in how to "do such things as preserve marriages, get delinquent children back in the fold, handle dissident elements in the society, get families out of the red by better cooperation, solve human conflict and other such positive actions." [1]
[edit] Origins
The program is the successor to earlier Scientology outreach efforts, notably the "Casualty Contact" program for recruiting new Scientologists (called "preclears") from hospitals, the scenes of accidents and other places where people might have experienced trauma. As Hubbard put it, "One takes every daily paper he can get his hands on and cuts from it every story whereby he might have a preclear. [...] He should represent himself to the person or the person's family as a minister whose compassion was compelled by the newspaper story concerning the person. [...]."[3]
Hubbard advised that "using his minister's card, an auditor need only barge into any non-sectarian hospital, get permission to visit the wards from the superintendent, mentioning nothing about processing but only about taking care of people's souls.".[4] The primary objective was simply to recruit more members for Scientology: "Some small percentage of the persons visited or their families will turn up in his group. Thus he will build a group and naturally from that group he will get a great many individual preclears.".[3] This was, however, not how the program was to be presented to the general public: "A great many miracles will follow in his wake and he is later to become a subject of the press himself. However, in handling the press we should simply say that it is a mission of the Church to assist those who are in need of assistance." [4]
The Volunteer Ministers program is also intended to operate as a recruitment activity. As Hubbard puts it,
- As the benefits of the Volunteer Minister program begin to spread throughout the society, a rank and file of people that have been helped will begin to accumulate. These people will begin to feed into missions and Churches of Scientology from wherever the Volunteer Minister has been at work. [1]
[edit] Organisational aspects
In recent years, the Church of Scientology has heavily promoted and greatly increased the profile and size of the Volunteer Ministers program. Church publications claim that there are over 60,000 Volunteer Ministers - more than the Peace Corps, Americorps and United Nations volunteer programs combined.[5] However, this figure presumably represents the number of Scientologists who have been through the Volunteer Minister Course, rather than the number of Volunteer Ministers who have actually been deployed at any one time.
The Church has set a target of recruiting as many Volunteer Minister as there are policemen in each of the principal countries in which Scientology is active. In 2001, the Church announced a number of target quotas for Volunteer Minister recruitment, as follows: [6]
| Country | Total inhabitants | Quota for VMs |
| Australia | 18,783,551 | 58,229 |
| Austria | 8,139,299 | 5,231 |
| Canada | 31,006,347 | 6,118 |
| Denmark | 5,356,845 | 6,603 |
| France | 58,978,172 | 82,831 |
| Germany | 82,087,361 | 254,469 |
| Italy | 56,735,130 | 175,878 |
| Sweden | 8,911,296 | 27,624 |
| United States | 272,639,608 | 845,184 |
However, only 55,000 Scientologists have been recorded in the United States, according to the United States Census.[7]
The activities of the Volunteer Ministers are largely funded by the International Association of Scientologists, which has sponsored a worldwide advertising campaign with the slogan "SOMETHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT - Call a Volunteer Minister." [8]
[edit] Recent activities
Volunteer Ministers have frequently been sent to the scenes of major disasters, where they distribute copies of a pamphlet authored by L. Ron Hubbard entitled The Way to Happiness and offer therapy that is claimed to calm or relieve pain, using techniques known in Scientology as Assists, such as "Locationals," "Nerve assists" and "Touch assists." [9][10] They have also undertaken work to improve local facilities and activities such as providing manpower to assist flood defense efforts.[11]
Volunteer Ministers have been sent to the site of relief efforts in Southeast Asia in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami and to London Underground stations that were attacked in the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Eight hundred were sent to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina and [12] The Volunteer Minister program most heavily promoted by the Church of Scientology took place in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when approximately one thousand Scientologists were sent to New York City to participate in the relief efforts there. [13]
As with many of the Church of Scientology's programs, the Volunteer Ministers have generated controversy and criticism. While the Church points to a commendation by the New York Fire Department for their September 11th relief efforts, critics of Scientology accuse the organization of offering medically dubious therapy (Hubbard's "assists" have gained negligible credibility among the medical or psychological professions) and of attempting to take advantage of disasters in order to promote Scientology to a grief-stricken populace.
The National Mental Health Association issued a public warning in response to the conduct of Scientologists in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, claiming that scientologists were "Intentionally confusing [the] public" by presenting themselves as mental health service providers. According to NMHA President Michael M. Faenza, "The public needs to understand that the Scientologists are using this tragedy to recruit new members. They are not providing mental health assistance."[14]
In Russia, after the Beslan school hostage crisis tragedy in 2004, the Health Ministry ordered Scientologists out of the area, saying "that various psychological tactics the groups use, including what it called hypnosis, may be harmful not only for adults, but for children that have already suffered severe mental shock."[15][16]
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c Hubbard, "Volunteer Ministers", HCO Policy Letter 22 February 1991
- ^ a b Hubbard, "The Volunteer Ministers Program", Flag Bureau Data Letter 424, 11 July 1974
- ^ a b Hubbard, "Three methods of dissemination", Professional Auditor's Bulletin 73, 28 February 1956.
- ^ a b Hubbard, "Dissemination Tips", HCO Bulletin 15 September 1959
- ^ The Bridge, Magazine of the Church of Scientology of Sydney. Issue 385, April 2006
- ^ "Cause" magazine, Magazine of the International Ecclesiastical League of Pastors (I HELP), December 2001
- ^ Kosmin, Barry A. American Religious Identification Survey (accessed April 20, 2006)
- ^ "Volunteer Minister Dissemination Program", brochure issued by International Association of Scientologists, 2001
- ^ Tsunami - India - January 2005 (Washington Post)
- ^ Explanation of a touch assist from the Scientology Handbook
- ^ "Scientology Volunteer Ministers of Budapest helping to protect the city", Church of Scientology press release, 21 April 2006
- ^ Associated Press, "Scientology missions spring up in hurricane-damaged areas". 15 May 2006
- ^ United States - New York - September 11 (Scientology.org)
- ^ "Beware Scientologists Claiming To Be Mental Health Professionals," official statement, National Mental Health Association, September 17, 2001
- ^ Health Ministry Asks Police to Shut Down Church of Scientology in Beslan. MosNews (2004-10-12). Retrieved on 2006-10-21.
- ^ Scientologists Sent Packing from Beslan — Police. MosNews (2004-10-22). Retrieved on 2006-10-21.
[edit] External links
- Official Scientology Volunteer Ministers site
- Scientology Today: VM latest News
- Volunteer Ministers Handbook
- Scientology example of a "locational" to make a drunk person sober in few minutes.
- Critical view of the Scientology Volunteer Ministers program
- Danish writer and photographer Thorsten Overgaard followed the Scientology Volunteer Ministers in Asia after the tsunami
- Websites about the Volunteer Ministers at the Open Directory
- "Reporter Elodie Harper goes undercover to reveal the tactics used by Scientology followers in the immediate aftermath of traumatic events." (Real Audio (45 min)), Five Live Report, BBS Radio, 2006-07-02. Retrieved on 2007-02-14.
