Posted on 12/13/2013 12:02:05 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
...The five justices’ 84-point judgment was strewn with references to 19th-century parliamentary debates and semantic disputes, but their verdict on Wednesday afternoon was clear. The couple would now be free to marry in a Scientology chapel in London, surrounded by their families and the church’s volunteers...
[SNIP]
There are significant practical benefits, according to Linda Woodhead, a professor of religion at Lancaster University. “There are a lot of political and economic advantages in being categorised as a religion,” she says. “Equality legislation gives protection on the grounds of religion. And if you want to set up a free school, your application will be looked upon more favourably, and you might get government assistance.”
Places of worship pay lower business rates, while accountants believe the ruling will make it hard for the Charity Commission to refuse Scientology charitable status. Winning such recognition would enable the church to take advantage of Gift Aid on donations, and to forgo tax on its investment income.
Yet such gains are insignificant compared to the ruling’s potential effect on public perception, according to Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who regards Scientology as “at best dubious and dangerous”. “It is to do with getting itself credence in the public arena,” he says. “I am worried that it will make it more respectable. It wants to move away from being a cult.”
For him, there is no question of abandoning this label. “Any group of people can claim to be a religion [but] a religion is defined by its relationship to hope and what it says about man’s destiny and the Almighty. Scientology falls into the bracket of being a cult by the secrecy with which it surrounds itself. It is for the enlightened, for special people. It is claiming far more than Christianity claims.”.......................
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Why must we choose just one?
D: All of the above.
“It’s CRAP!” ping
A cultic corporation that worships their founder with a religious style of behavior.
Faux religion, country club for the rich celebs and sci-fi nerds, and 501C corp set up as religious organization to keep all the dough.
It’s a tax shelter for a “religion” that says God is irrelevant to the human situation.
They have “scriptures” (training materials) that you only get to see if you pay thousands of dollars. Punishing a former scientologist for releasing those materials to the public made for interesting testimony as the scientology lawyer had to explain why a religion’s “scriptures” were only available to those who purchased them.
I am working on forming a religion based on the writings of Kurt Vonnegut. I think I’ll use the name Tralfamadorians.
Once you’re in, your odds of eventual escape are very, very low.
I'm curious what the status of Buddhism was in UK during those 158 years. Many varieties of Buddhism do not have anything resembling a deity.
“.....But even in the 1970 case Lord Denning observed that Buddhist temples were already treated as an “exception”.”....
From the linked source in Post #1:
Money making cult.
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