Actress Leah Remini was a Scientologist for many years and was a public supporter of the cult. But in private communications she asked questions about some of its activities and the leadership responded by trying to push her back into line. She resisted and the pressure put on her to conform grew stronger.
Remini decided she had enough and announced that she has left the church.
Other celebrity Scientologists are upset. If Remini quits, what does it say about them for being dumb enough to stay?
This tells me Leah Remini is smarter than I thought, and Kirstie Alley is as dumb as I thought.
You might also enjoy reading about how screenwriter/director Paul Haggis left the Church of Scientology a few years ago. Long article from The New Yorker:
I’ve no idea who Leah Remini is, but I love this line from the article: “She’s from Brooklyn. The Church can’t hurt her.” 
I just saw this earlier tonight. I gained some respect for her when I learned her family was involved in Scientology and she grew up with it. In my mind that makes her a little less pathetic than the people that get sucked into it as an adult. So good for her for finally breaking free of them.
Perhaps it means she’s one of the few they don’t have anything on . . .
Scientologists have already started a website www.whoisleahremini.com. There’s no content on it yet. This is similar to other websites they’ve created featuring outspoken ex-scientologists to discredit them.
just a caveat - from what I’ve read, it’s the Church of Scientology as an institution she’s left and she still believes all that Dianetics crap, as far as anyone can tell. So only semi-sane.
As a religion, it’s no stupider than most. It’s the organization that’s the problem - and the best way to bring down that kind of organization is to show believers that they don’t need it in order to believe. By remaining a believer, she’s actually doing the CoS *more *damage.
She’s like a Scientologist Martin Luther. Maybe there’ll be a split in the church with the formation of a Protestant Scientology movement.
It already exists. Google “freezone Scientology”
Is that why she was fired from The Talk?
Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Dianetics has a lot of crap in it, but just the fact that it involves a lot of talk therapy means that it can be, well, therapeutic. Even if it had absolutely no redeeming value, the patient could benefit from the placebo effect, as well as I forget the term for it, but basically studies have shown that just putting yourself in the mindset of seeking help is beneficial, separate from any benefits of the method of help you choose.
There is no redeeming value if said “therapy” is used against you if you try to leave.
Let’s stay on (Cafe Society) topic here, please – a specific celebrity leaving the church. If you want to discuss the pros and cons of the church and its belief system, start a thread in GD.
Thanks,
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
Objection, the OP brought up the issue of sanity.
Great, she can nail 95 head shots to the door of William Morris.
(Can there even BE a placebo effect in psychology/therapy? I mean, isn’t it predicated around the fact that it DOESN’T objectively work? How do you even apply that to mental sciences?)
You just create an experiment that involves telling the patient that the therapy has a high rate of success while having them experience something with no rational basis for working. You can also do it with working therapies - tell one group that the therapy has a high rate of success and another group that it has a low rate of success. The actual rate of success will vary somewhat depending on expectations.
I watched an interview with Jeffrey Tambor (George Bluth on Arrested Development,among many other things) in which he said the two things people most often get wrong about him are
1- he’s not Dr. Phil (apparently he’s mistaken for Dr. Phil a lot, especially when he has facial hair)
2- he’s not a Scientologist
He said he did once attend Scientologist courses and auditing but decided it wasn’t for him, and that was many years ago, yet for some reason his name appears on lists of celebrity Scientologists.
He had a sort of “not that there’s anything wrong with that” implied afterward, but it’s info I’d definitely want to correct. Having seen a couple of those lists I was actually glad to learn he isn’t one.
I was beginning to wonder if there were any Scientologists outside of Hollywood, and then I was in St. Louis and drove by a Scientology temple. I was quite surprised to see that.