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THE BONA FIDES OF THE SCIENTOLOGY RELIGION
Many scholars observed and commented upon the altruistic work performed by Scientologists. In one typical example, Dr. Alan W. Black, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia, wrote that, “agencies established by the Church of Scientology have been active in anti-drug campaigns, in rehabilitating drug addicts and criminals, in eradicating illiteracy and remedying educational disadvantaged, in improving the environment, in providing disaster relief and in defending human rights.”
A treatise by Michael A. Sivertsev, Chairman for New Religions of the Board of Cooperation with Religious Organizations in the office of the Russian president, provided an important cultural perspective.
“The religious message and the religious practice of the Church of Scientology,” he wrote, “come and are taught to mankind in a time [of] mass secularization of public consciousness [and when] traditional religious systems, doctrines and practices leave the majority of contemporaries uninspired.”
In his analysis he sought to examine, “what are the reasons...which make the image of Scientology attractive for independently thinking, active and distrustful persons in the post-totalitarian era?” And in part, he concluded that “Scientology is an open religious system [and] that at the center of spirituality of Scientology lies, first and foremost, one’s own personal experience of the realization of a spiritual identity, a new spiritual infinite self.”
Another equally fascinating perspective – of religion in general and Scientology in particular – was provided by Mr. Fumio sawada, the Eighth holder of the Secrets of Yui-itsu Shinto, the oldest religion in Japan. His predecessors include Emperor Tenmu of A.D. 673, who also ordered the first written historical record of Japan. Mr. Sawada is one of Japan's foremost authorities on religion and a former director at the distinguished Sophia University.
 
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