Church of Scientology launching TV station

The Telegraph ^ | 7/12/2012

[markomalley]

The centre, located near the church's West Coast headquarters in Hollywood, would occupy the nearly five-acre studio property the church bought last year from Los Angeles public TV station KCET for $42 million (£27 million).

The station would elevate the public profile of a religion that has mostly relied on pamphlets and books by its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, to proselytise for new members.

"The church plans to establish a central media hub for our growing world network of churches and to move into the production of religious television and radio broadcasting," said Karin Pouw, a spokeswoman for Church of Scientology International, in an email.

She said there is no timetable for when operations would begin.

Scientology TV could be similar to Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network or the Trinity Broadcast Network. Trinity creates Christian programming at a production centre in Irving, Texas, and airs it on TV stations and cable channels, said Rick Ross, whose non-profit Rick A. Ross Institute in Trenton, New Jersey, maintains an online archive of data on cults and controversial movements.

[Cronos]

[BCW]

Is there a list somewhere that names all of the Hollywood Stars that are part of this train wreck...so I don’t go watch their movies...apparently having money means joining cults and reeking havoc on the rest of us...there’s so much more important stuff that needs to be reported - but for now - I have to see Katie getting divorced...she should have known up front!

Just wondering....

[samtheman]

mogulfield

Could we please have a Hollywood blockbuster based on Scientology along the style of the old Biblical epics of the 1950s??

I look forward with relish to the depiction of the Xenu, the tyrant leader of the Galactic Confederacy bringing billions of people to earth on a DC-8 style spaceship 75 million years ago. And I'm itching to know what a true Thetan really looks like.

--from the comments at the end of the original article

[iowamark]

Sober people should boycott Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and other Scientology plants.

[Average Al]

Check this link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scientologists#List_of_members

[silverleaf]

Will Smith

sadly :-(

[apillar]

Scientology. The “religion” that proves there really is a sucker born every minute, created by a second rate science fiction author as a tax dodge in the 1960’s. I doubt he or anybody else really thought the load of crap would really be taken seriously someday. But who knows? Look at Islam. In a few hundred years, Scientology might have a billion followers and be consider a major religion.

[onedoug]

One would think that with all their so-called advanced technologies they could just enter our minds and would have no need of an old fashioned TV station to communicate their messages.

How primitive.

[Erasmus]

I was once commended to the toasty confines of hell on this form, several years ago, for suggesting that the legitimacy of a religion is proportional to its age.

There are arguably a number of of reasons for this:

1. The passage of time obscures the invariably tumultuous and controversial events surrounding its founding.

2. Epochal improvements in historical documentation make it more difficult to obscure the origins of more recent religions (e.g., Mormonism, Scientology). It may take even more time for these to be accepted into the mainstream, assuming they survive long enough to do so.

Sometimes a religion gains a sort of acceptance by merging with, or grafting onto, an established one. For example, Mormonism and Christianity; an attempt at a merger that is presently far from universally accepted.

3. Said passage of time also allows for a religion’s theology to be molded into a form that is acceptable and useful to later generations. These latter-day believers may have to rationalize various questionable aspects of the founding times of their faith, to the degree that these are known.

In the case of Christianity, it grew up with modern civilization, and deserves credit, in a smaller or greater degree, for the shape of that civilization.

With regard to Islam, it remains to be seen by future generations whether it will ever truly integrate with (modern, Western) civilization, on the assumption that this civilization somehow survives its looming dangers.

[justlurking]

The “religion” that proves there really is a sucker born every minute, created by a second rate science fiction author as a tax dodge in the 1960’s.

There's a persisting rumor that it all started as a bar bet with Robert Heinlein.

[BCW]

Nothing like being part of a group that Charles Manson advocates...

Greta Van Susteren - I always wondered about her and her character - it makes sense...then again all those listed make sense...

I wonder how many of those actors listed do it for networking and the attempt to make their acting careers more so?

In the end, movies with those actors/actress I usually don’t watch due to their public character anyway...I can’t buy into their on screen character - because their public one is overwhelming.

thanks for the list