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The Faith Factory
Despite its reputation for carnality and narcissism, Los Angeles has always been a
spawning ground for new religions. In 1906, a one-eyed black preacher named
William Seymour set up a church in a livery stable on Azusa Street and began a
revival that lasted for three years. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims came to hear his
message. Stigmatized as Holy Rollers and decried because of their interracial worship,
Seymour’s followers gave birth to the Pentecostal movement, which quickly spread
across the world, becoming an enduring force in modern Christianity. In 1912, a
theosophist colony called Krotona took root just below the current Hollywood sign,
where the hills were said to be “magnetically impregnated.” An organization called
Mighty I AM Presence began in Los Angeles and expanded all across America, gaining
about a million followers by 1938. The founders were Guy and Edna Ballard, who
claimed to be able to communicate with “ascended masters.” Guy wrote a popular book
titled Unveiled Mysteries, in which he related his travels through the stratosphere,
visiting great cities of antiquity and unearthing buried loot—much as Hubbard
attempted to do several decades later. Writers William Butler Yeats, D. H. Lawrence,
Christopher Isherwood, and Aldous Huxley passed through the city, all drawn by its
reputation as a center for spiritual innovation.
One of the most famous preachers in American history, Aimee Semple McPherson,
built the Angelus Temple near Echo Park in 1923, where she married Pentecostalism
with Hollywood theatricality. She created sets for her sermons on a stage designed for
her by Charlie Chaplin, who may have been one of her secret Hollywood paramours
(Milton Berle claimed to be another). Anticipating the garb of Hubbard and the Sea Org,
McPherson liked to dress in an admiral’s uniform, while her disciples wore nautical
outfits. As a teenager, Anthony Quinn played the saxophone in the church and
translated for Sister Aimee when she preached in Mexican neighborhoods. After he
became a movie star, Quinn would compare her to the great actresses he worked with,
including Ingrid Bergman and Katharine Hepburn. “They all fell short of that rst
electric shock Aimee Semple McPherson produced in me.”
And so when the Church of Scientology was ocially founded in Los Angeles, in
February 1954, by several of Hubbard’s devoted followers, there was already a history
of religious celebrities and celebrity religions. The cultivation of famous people—or
people who aspired to be famous—was a feature of Hubbard’s grand design. He foresaw
that the best way of promoting Scientology as a ladder to enlightenment was to court
celebrities, whom he dened as “any person important enough in his eld or an opinion
leader or his entourage, business associates, family or friends with particular attention
to the arts, sports and management and government.” It was not surprising that