Join the NASDAQ Community today and get free, instant access to portfolios, stock ratings, realtime alerts, and more Join Today. To sign up for Beckers Infection Control Clinical Quality EWeekly and all of our other EWeeklies, click here. Archived Beckers Infection Control Clinical. As if they hadnt already grafted themselves onto a significant portion of your own childhood memories damn your catchy classics, Elton John and Phil Collins, the. Nearly every photo online has been edited in some way, whether through cropping, filtering, compressing, colorcorrecting, or other generally innocuous touchups. But. Inside Scientology Rolling Stone. The faded little downtown area of Clearwater, Florida, has a beauty salon, a pizza parlor and one or two run down bars, as well as a bunch of withered bungalows and some old storefronts that look as if they havent seen customers in years. There are few cars and almost no pedestrians. There are, however, buses a fleet of gleaming white and blue ones that slowly crawl through town, stopping at regular intervals to discharge a small army of tightly organized, young, almost exclusively white men and women, all clad in uniform preppy attire khaki, black or navy blue trousers and crisp white, blue or yellow dress shirts. Some wear pagers on their belts others carry brief cases. The men have short hair, and the women keep theirs pulled back or tucked under headbands that match their outfits. No one crosses against the light, and everybody calls everybody else sir even when the sir is a woman. They move throughout the center of Clearwater in tight clusters, from corner to corner, building to building. This regimented mass represents the Sea Organization, the most dedicated and elite members of the Church of Scientology. For the past thirty years, Scientology has made the city of Clearwater its worldwide spiritual headquarters its Mecca, or its Temple Square. There are 8,3. 00 or so Scientologists living and working in Clearwater more than in any other city in the world outside of Los Angeles. Digital Literacy Productivity Programs Answers In Genesis' title='Digital Literacy Productivity Programs Answers In Genesis' />From millions of real job salary data. Average salary is Detailed starting salary, median salary, pay scale, bonus data report. Scientologists own more than 2. Clearwater. Members of the church run schools and private tutoring programs, day care centers and a drug rehab clinic. They sit on the boards of the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce and the Boy Scouts. In July 2. 00. 4, The St. Petersburg Times dubbed Clearwater, a community of 1. Scientologys Town, On the newspapers front page was a photograph of Scientologys newest building, a vast, white, Mediterranean Revival style edifice known within Scientology circles as the Super Power building. Occupying a full square block of downtown, this structure, which has been under construction since 1. Scientology church in the world. When it is finally completed presumably in late 2. Scientology museum. The crowning touch will be a two story, illuminated Scientology cross that, perched atop the buildings highest tower, will shine over the city of Clearwater like a beacon. Scientology the term means the study of truth, in the words of its founder and spiritual messiah, the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard calls itself the worlds fastest growing religion. Born in 1. Scientology churches, missions and outreach groups across the globe. Its holdings, which include real estate on several continents, are widely assumed to value in the billions of dollars. Its missionaries known as volunteer ministers take part in cavalcades throughout the developing world and have been found, en masse, at the site of disasters ranging from 91. Asian tsunami to Hurricane Katrina. Within the field of comparative religions, some academics see Scientology as one of the must significant new religious movements of the past century. Scientology is also Americas most controversial religion widely derided, but little understood. It is rooted in elements of Buddhism, Hinduism and a number of Western philosophies, including aspects of Christianity. The French sociologist Regis Dericquebourg, an expert in comparative religions, explains Scientologys belief system as one of regressive utopia, in which man seeks to return to a once perfect state through a variety of meticulous, and rigorous, processes intended to put him in touch with his primordial spirit. These processes are highly controlled, and, at the advanced levels, highly secretive. Critics of the church point out that Scientology, unique among religions, withholds key aspects of its central theology from all but its most exalted followers. To those in the mainstream, this would be akin to the Catholic Church refusing to tell all but a select number of the faithful that Jesus Christ died for their sins. L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology. Express NewspapersGetty. In June of last year, I set out to discover Scientology, an undertaking that would take nearly nine months. A closed faith that has often been hostile to journalistic inquiry, the church initially offered no help on this story most of my research was done without its assistance and involved dozens of interviews with both current and former Scientologists, as well as academic researchers who have studied the group, Ultimately, however, the church decided to co operate and gave me unprecedented access to its officials, social programs and key religious headquarters. What I found was a faith that is at once mainstream and marginal a religious community known for its Hollywood members but run by a uniformed sect of believers who rarely, if ever, appear in the public eye. It is an insular society one that exists, to a large degree, as something of a parallel universe to the secular world, with its own nomenclature and ethical code, and, most daunting to those who break its rules, its own rigorously enforced justice system. Scientologists, much like Mormons or Christian evangelicals, consider themselves to be on a mission. Adobe Indesign 2015 Cc Crack. They frequently speak of helping people, and this mission is stressed in a number of church testaments. Scientologists see themselves as possessors of doctrines and skills that can save the world, if not the galaxy. Stephen Kent, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta, in Canada, who has extensively studied the group. Church officials boast that Scientology has grown more in the past five years than in the previous fifty. Some evidence, however, suggests otherwise. In 2. 00. 1, a survey conducted by the City University of New York found only 5. United States who claimed to be Scientologists. Worldwide, some observers believe a reasonable estimate of Scientologys core practicing membership ranges between 1. U. S., Europe, South Africa and Australia. According to the churchs own course completion lists many of which are available in a church publication and on the Internet only 6,1. Clearwater organization in 2. According to Kristi Wachter, a San Francisco activist who maintains an online database devoted to Scientologys numbers, this pattern is replicated at nearly all of Scientologys key organizations and churches. To some observers, this suggests that Scientology may, in fact, be shrinking. But discerning what is true about the Church of Scientology is no easy task. Tax exempt since 1. IRS after a long legal battle, Scientology releases no information about its membership or its finances. Nor does it welcome analysis of its writings or practices. The church has a storied reputation for squelching its critics through litigation, and according to some reports, intimidation a trait that may explain why the creators of South Park jokingly attributed every credit on its November 2. Scientology to the fictional John and Jane Smith Paramount, reportedly under pressure, has agreed not to rerun the episode here or to air it in England. Nevertheless, Scientologys critics comprise a sizable network of ex members or apostates, in church parlance, academics and independent free speech and human rights activists like Wachter, who have declared war on the group by posting a significant amount of previously unknown information on the Internet. This includes scans of controversial memos, photographs and legal briefs, as well as testimonials from disillusioned former members, including some high ranking members of its Sea Organization. All paint the church in a negative, even abusive, light.