Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.
They signed a contract for a billion years -- in keeping with the church's belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.
Check this conclusion:
Ms. Collbran says she still believes in Scientology -- not in the church as it is now constituted, but in its teachings. She still gets auditing, from other Scientologists who have defected, like Mr. Rathbun.
Mr. Davis said there is no such thing: "One can't be a Scientologist and not be part of the church."
Mr. Collbran, for his part, wants nothing to do with his former church. "Eventually I realized I was part of a con," he said, "and I have to leave it and get on with my life."
Despite all they have been through together, Ms. and Mr. Collbran are getting a divorce. The reason, they agree sadly, is that they no longer see eye to eye on Scientology.
No surprise that some individuals who are abused by Scientology want to "reform it." Look at the history of Millerism.
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I hope so much that Ms Collbran can put of the divorce decision for a few months while she gets her bearings. Decompressing from Scientology comes in stages. It is drilled into the heads of Scientologists that nothing is more important than saving the tech, and it takes some time to shake off that concept.
When I was in High School, I knew a group of students who were the children of Scientologists, and I picked up some of the lingo. I clearly (pun not intended) recall one of the kids saying that he was going to join the SEA ORG on one of those billion year contracts when he was old enough.
For that matter, I think that the kid's father once tried to proselytize me. He saw me reading DUNE and asked me if I thought that SF writers were actually writing about the past, not the future. I fobbed him off by talking about DUNE and the rise of Islam, etc. He was probably planning on invoking the Scientology concept of Space Opera, that SF is a distorted memory of actual events.