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EVEN THOUGH MEMBERSHIP in the church has been declining for years, according to polls and
census gures, money continues to pour into Scientology coers in fantastic sums.
Donors are accorded higher status depending on the size of their gifts to the
International Association of Scientologists—Patron Maximus for a $25 million pledge,
for instance. Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, became a Patron Laureate
for her $10 million gift to the association in 2007. The IAS now holds more than $1
billion, mostly in oshore accounts, according to former executives of the church.
Scientology coursework alone can be very pricey—as much as $400,000 to reach the
level of OT VIII. That doesn’t count the books and materials or the latest-model E-Meter,
which is priced at $4,650. Then there is the auditing, which ranges in price from $5,000
to $8,000 for a twelve-hour “intensive,” depending on the location and the level of the
auditor. Services sold in Clearwater alone amount to $100 million a year.
Despite the frequent cost overruns on construction, Scientology undertook a
worldwide building campaign, kicked o by Miscavige’s decision to use the occasion of
9/11 to issue a call for a massive expansion of the church. “Bluntly, we are the only
people of Earth who can reverse the decline,” he announced. “The way to do better is to
get big.”
In some cases, the building projects have become signicant moneymakers for the
church. Across the street from Scientology’s Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater is the
Super Power Building, intended to be a training facility to enhance the perceptions of
upper-level thetans. The fund-raising kicked o with a $1 million gift from the Feshbach
brothers. Despite years-long construction delays and nes imposed by the City of
Clearwater, the 380,000-square-foot Super Power Building has proven to be a bonanza
for the church, which has taken in at least $145 million in donations to complete the
project—$120 million more than it was projected to cost when rst proposed, in 1993.
The church explains that the plan has been enlarged from its original goals, which has
created delays and additional expenses. Tom De Vocht, who worked on the construction
for years, said that the building remained unnished for so long because no one knew
what super power was.
Under Miscavige’s leadership, the church has aggressively launched a program called
Ideal Orgs, which aim to replicate the grandeur of Hubbard’s Saint Hill Manor. A
number of the Ideal Orgs have been shuttered—including Seattle, Boston, and New
Haven—because the local Scientology communities were unable to support them. Other
notable churches and missions are now boarded up or unloaded—including one in Santa
Monica that Paul and Deborah Haggis raised money to establish.
THE INTENSITY OF the pressure on Sea Org members to raise money for the church—while
working for next to nothing—can be understood in part through the account of Daniel
Montalvo. His parents joined the Sea Org when he was ve, and the very next year he
signed his own billion-year contract. He says that he began working full-time in the
organization when he was eleven and recalls that, along with other Sea Org members,
including children, his days stretched from eight in the morning until eleven thirty at