How a police raid in Detroit prompted the creation of the Church of Scientology

[Early Scientology had several raids, including the FDA in 1963, pictured]

The Bunker marked the auspicious 70th anniversary of the Church of Scientology yesterday with birthday wishes from its contributors. Today, historian Chris Owen brings us the previously unreported story of the events that prompted L. Ron Hubbard to take the momentous step of declaring Scientology to be a religion.

For a man who was so concerned with the ‘reactive mind,’ L. Ron Hubbard’s decision-making was itself remarkably reactive. Again and again through his career as the founder of Dianetics and Scientology, he took far-reaching decisions in reaction to things that were happening at the time. Few, however, were more impactful than his decision to declare Scientology to be a religion on December 18, 1953. But what prompted it?

Scientology had been launched in April 1952, at a point when Hubbard had temporarily lost the rights to Dianetics to Wichita businessman Don Purcell in bankruptcy proceedings. Having established the Hubbard Association of Scientologists in Phoenix, Arizona, he established offshoots in Camden, New Jersey and London in England, as well as franchises in a number of other locations. One such was in Detroit, Michigan, where a ‘Dianetics and Scientology School’ was being run by Earl Cunard and Rita Postel.

At the time, Hubbard was very explicit about Dianetics and Scientology being healing practices. In his original 1950 book on Dianetics, Hubbard wrote: “Psychosomatic ills such as arthritis, migraine, ulcers, allergies, asthma, coronary difficulties (psychosomatic — about one-third of all heart trouble cases), tendonitis, bursitis, paralysis (hysterical), eye trouble (non-pathological) have all responded …. without failure” to Dianetic therapy.

Such claims were continued into early Scientology. Although Scientology’s doctrines were more metaphysical than those of Dianetics, Hubbard still made sweeping claims about its ability to relieve medical conditions. When he began awarding “Doctorates of Scientology” to his followers, applicants for such a doctorate were required to submit a paper “demonstrating his application of Scientology to one particular illness and proving Scientology as efficacious on that illness.”

This was a risky thing to do. Many of those attracted to Dianetics and Scientology came looking for solutions to physical or psychological problems — anything from depression to marital difficulties to cancer. Inevitably, many were disappointed when the promised solutions failed to materialize and complained to local law enforcement agencies, medical authorities, and consumer organizations. It was inevitable that the authorities would take an interest, as many jurisdictions took a dim view of people making false medical claims.

The first such threat came with a January 1951 lawsuit filed by the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners against the original Dianetic Foundation. A prosecution had been avoided in that instance when the Foundation moved to Kansas. Two years later, however, Scientology’s franchise in Detroit became the subject of the first successful prosecution of a Scientology operation.

On March 26, 1953, Detroit police raided the city’s Dianetics and Scientology School and arrested its two staff, Cunard and Postel. The ‘school,’ which had been established the previous year, was evidently quite a profitable operation. It reportedly had 50 ‘students’ and made $1,500 a month, equivalent to about $25,500 now.

Cunard and Postel had made extravagant healing claims that led to a complaint from the city’s Board of Health. Nine police officers conducted an investigation that included two policemen going undercover and posing as Dianetics students for two weeks to gather evidence. After their colleagues moved in to make the arrests, the two staff members were charged with conspiracy and with practicing medicine and operating a vocational school without a license.

The first two charges were eventually dropped by the prosecutor, but the pair were convicted on the latter charge. They were fined $50 and sentenced to two years of probation, with the court ordering them to stay out of the healing business or go to prison. The police regarded the outcome as a failure and were particularly disappointed by the lack of support from the American Medical Association and the local Wayne County Medical Society, who would not back them up on the illegal medical practice charge. The Medical Society did write to the AMA’s Bureau of Investigation to pass on a police request for information, but it is not clear if there was any response from the AMA.

Hubbard reacted furiously and took pains to emphasize to his followers that “the fight is about RUNNING A SCHOOL WITHOUT A LICENSE, not about Dianetics or Scientology, no matter what the papers are printing.” He blamed the Detroit school’s operators for failing to get their licensing situation in order, and claimed falsely that bills against Dianetics and Scientology “have now been defeated in EIGHTEEN STATE LEGISLATURES in three years.” (No such bill is known to have been proposed in any jurisdiction.)

After the convictions were announced, he put a brave face on the situation with the claim that “the cops got bit in the form of an increased interest [in Scientology] in Michigan like you never saw before.” He explained that the Detroit Police Department’s interest in Scientology was due to it being “a hotbed of communism.”

The Detroit case contributed to Hubbard taking one of the most consequential decisions of his career as Scientology’s leader. Two weeks after the police raid, he sent a letter to Helen O’Brien, who was then managing the Philadelphia Scientology org. He complained about his lack of resources for fighting threats to Scientology and wrote: “If you think Detroit would occur or continue to be if I had a couple thousand, think again – newspapers are for sale in any direction, not just to the AMA. And I can’t even support a press agent!”

Hubbard told O’Brien that aimed to establish a facility that would function as a clinic “in operation but not in name,” suggesting that it should instead be called a “Spiritual Guidance Center” or something similar. He asked her advice on “the religion angle,” as “we couldn’t get worse public opinion than we have had or have less customers with what we’ve got to sell. A religious charter would be necessary in Pennsylvania or NJ to make it stick. But I sure could make it stick.”

His approach was somewhat conflicted: his letter referred to the new clinic providing treatment through Scientology, suggesting that he had not yet given up on the idea of providing medical assistance through Scientology auditing. Hubbard later acknowledged that some would consider that by converting itself into a religion, “it would seem that Scientology is simply making itself bulletproof in the eyes of the law.”

However, as he put it in his letter to O’Brien, it was a “problem of practical business.” It offered irresistible advantages – tax exemption, better marketability and greater legal protection. He had written in 1950 that Dianetics “needs about as much licensing and regulation as the application of the science of physics. Those things which are legislated against are a matter of law because they may in some way injure individuals or society.” By the time he wrote to O’Brien, he had evidently decided that the best way forward was to move Scientology into a realm where he believed it would not be regulated at all.

In December 1953 Hubbard incorporated the Church of Scientology, the Church of American Science, and the Church of Spiritual Engineering in New Jersey. The latter two other corporations seem to have gone unused. Their creation may indicate that Hubbard was keeping his options open about whether to adopt a religious identity for Scientology, or perhaps saw them as fallback options in case the creation of the Church of Scientology attracted too much opposition from his followers.

One of Hubbard’s subordinates established the Church of Scientology of California in February 1954 and a “Founding Church of Scientology” was established in Washington, D.C. in 1955. Hubbard also urged Scientology franchises worldwide to convert themselves into churches. The Washington franchise became the worldwide headquarters of Scientology for a time after 1955. According to the Church itself, this was because Hubbard regarded it as being safer legally for Scientology’s headquarters to be under Federal rather than State jurisdiction.

While he viewed a religious designation as a “problem of practical business” that would achieve the aim of “knock[ing] psychotherapy into history” and keep his organisation solvent, Hubbard also identified a doctrinal justification: “We’re treating the present time beingness, psychotherapy treats the past and the brain. And brother, that’s religion, not mental science.”

Shortly after establishing the three church corporations, he presented Scientology as being a fusion of science and religion: “[I]t gives us little choice but to announce to a world, no matter how it receives it, that nuclear physics and religion have joined hands and that we in Scientology perform those miracles for which Man through all his search has hoped.”

He justified the move in similar terms in a message to Scientologists the following year, when he told them that Scientology fully deserved the label of a religion because any religion is “basically a philosophic teaching designed to better the civilisation into which it is taught.” On that basis, he wrote, “a Scientologist has a better right to call himself a priest, a minister, a missionary, a doctor of divinity, a faith healer or a preacher than any other man who bears the insignia of ‘religion’ of the Western world.”

He also noted the practical advantages: “Amongst them is that a society accords to men of the ‘church’ an access not given to others. Prisons, hospitals, and institutions, and those who manage them, cannot do otherwise than welcome men of the ‘church’.”

It was perhaps significant that he put the word ‘church’ in inverted commas, suggesting that he saw the designation as merely a flag of convenience. Indeed, in jurisdictions where religious affiliation was not seen as so important – such as Australia – Scientology continued to claim secular status until as late as the mid-1960s.

Another clue that Scientology’s self-proclaimed religious status was merely nominal is provided by the fact that its practitioners continued to promote it as a science – rather than a religion – capable of healing physical ailments. One typical example was Clem W. Johnson, the operator of a Scientology franchise in Orlando, Florida, who wrote to a prospective client in November 1954 to claim that using Scientology, “any disease or illnesses that you now have, will just vanish through processing.”

He cited several examples of supposed miracle cures: his wife’s hair had turned from “completely gray to only about one third as much now,” a woman’s diseased kidney had been saved, a man with severe arthritis was now “standing straight,” a deaf boy was able to hear after only forty minutes of processing, and a woman who had been completely blind for 37 years was seeing “flashes of light” during processing. Johnson wrote: “She is sure she will be seeing again within a few more weeks. She plans to return home before Christmas with her sight. We believe she will too.”

The Scientology organizations under Hubbard’s direct control were more discreet, but likewise still focused on advertising Scientology’s benefits for individual wellbeing. Their advertisements offered to “fit you for better jobs, better pay and increase your ability” (making no mention of religion) or “make you more able, physically, mentally, spiritually.”.

Such claims were bound to get Scientology into trouble with the authorities. Sure enough, Hubbard soon found that claiming religious status did not immunise Scientology and its members from prosecution for making false medical claims. Public agencies around the United States launched investigations of Scientology, prompted in some cases by complaints from members of the public and medical organisations.

Eventually, this led to Hubbard making another reactive decision that ended in disaster: to respond in kind, as he saw it, and retaliate against the government agencies, medical bodies, and individuals whom he saw as threats to Scientology. But that’s another story.

— Chris Owen

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Scientology takes out permit for January Ideal Org ceremony in Austin

At his speech at the IAS gala in November, Scientology leader David Miscavige gave the impression that he would finally begin opening new “Ideal Orgs'“ with a new facility in Paris.

And Mike Rinder, at his blog, showed messages from Scientologists indicating that they expected that opening to happen in January.

However, another Ideal Org project that has long been ready to open is the one in Austin, Texas, and one of our readers noticed that Scientology has now requested street-closure permits for a grand opening to take place on January 13.

Mike has also pointed out that activity has finally picked up in Chicago, where another long-ready project has been waiting to open.

Could Miscavige be planning a three-Ideal Org ceremony blitz in January, to follow his resurrection of the IAS gala in England in November and the New Year’s event in Los Angeles?

Miscavige began the Ideal Org program in 2003, with the goal of replacing every org on the planet. He had opened 68 of them when he opened the facility in Ventura, California, in February 2020.

But then the pandemic shut down the project. At the beginning of 2023, Miscavige told his New Year’s crowd that he would open four new Ideal Orgs in the first quarter of 2023.

Now it looks like he’s going to attempt something like that in the new year of 2024.

We’re sure we’ll never hear the end of it from Scientology’s PR machine.

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Chris Shelton is going Straight Up and Vertical

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

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