Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard once said, “The essence of all spiritual life is to assist those too weak to help themselves. Scientology helps people to help one another. This is the message of all prophets in all ages: Help one another. It is a formula for life that cannot fail. It is the message of Scientology.”
Accordingly, Scientologists view theirs as an active religion, dependent on what one does as a vital component to what one believes in. At each international event, then, the Church’s ecclesiastical leader David Miscavige encourages parishioners to participate and help—to do as well as learn. So even while one achieves a better understanding of oneself as an immortal spiritual being through studying Scientology, the proof of the pudding is the degree to which one then applies what one has learned to improve things here, there and everywhere. So, an “active Scientologist” would be someone who is out in the world making things better through the knowledge he or she has learned.
In 1954 Mr. Hubbard wrote, “We live in a society where dreadful and terrible weapons and controls are commonplace, yet which is without many of the benefits of compassion, mercy and charity.”
Responding to Mr. Hubbard’s call for “compassion, mercy and charity,” Scientologists do just that on a global level, attacking humanity’s plagues of immorality, suffering and drug addiction with unique and effective social betterment programs using the technologies developed by Mr. Hubbard for handling these scourges. Spearheaded by Mr. Miscavige, the Church of Scientology sponsors global humanitarian programs.
At the root of a society riddled with corruption, violence and chaos, Scientologists believe, is an erosion of moral values. To combat this the Church’s The Way To Happiness Foundation International, in partnership with thousands of volunteers and businesses, has distributed 130 million copies of The Way To Happiness, a non-denominational moral code based on common sense, translated into 112 languages, which has found its way into schools, prisons and virtually everywhere else.
Scientology’s religious social service, the Volunteer Ministers, established in the 1970s by Mr. Hubbard, is today one of the largest international independent relief forces in the world, numbering 2.1 million volunteers on call in 190 countries.
Most recently, the Volunteer Ministers have been a global presence during the pandemic, educating millions with Stay Well booklets and information, and with hands-on help, sanitizing public buildings, schools and places of worship to make them safe once again.
The Church supports the Foundation for a Drug-Free World, whose drug education booklet series, The Truth About Drugs, has reached close to 1 billion people through community outreach and partnership with governments and law enforcement. To date, more than 1,200 organizations, law enforcement and government agencies, and some 10,000 schools use The Truth About Drugs curriculum and materials.
The opening line of the Creed of the Church of Scientology reads, “We of the Church believe that all men of whatever race, color or creed were created with equal rights.”
Again, the people of Scientology have converted belief to an active verb under the banner of one of the world’s broadest human rights education and public information initiatives, United for Human Rights, and its program for young people, Youth for Human Rights. These two nonprofit, nonreligious organizations, partnered with over 6,000 organizations and government agencies, have educated over 700 million children and adults on their human rights as detailed in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The aims of United for Human Rights and Youth for Human Rights include the mandating of human rights education in schools around the world, and its enforcement by the governments of the world. With human rights a reality and not just a distant dream, such evils as human trafficking, poverty and injustice could become relics of the past.
The gift of the religion of Scientology, then, is its people—motivated by certainty in their own spirituality and immortality, and active in improving as many lives as possible.
Mr. Hubbard wrote that “religion is basically a philosophic teaching designed to better the civilization into which it is taught.”
Scientologists everywhere have taken that goal very much to heart and the world is benefitting.