Throwaway account here.
I was on staff briefly for 2 years in the 80s, and have been a pretty dedicated rank and file C of S public since the 80s. Mostly I just filter all the anti Scientology stories out. I almost quit reddit because of this, and all the click bait fuckery I have seen especially in the last year or so, but with the right subreddits it's still interesting so here I am.
By the way I am currently studying at the Flag service org in Clearwater, Florida. Sorry I can't give more details, but frankly some of the anti-scientologists on here are a bit nuts. I know they probably think I am nuts myself for continuing to support the church and continuing to do courses, but what the heck. The bottom line is I enjoy it, I enjoy the people, the staff, other scientologists that I know, I thin LRH is brilliant and that's the deal.
One thing I have learned from political rants on Facebook and reddit is that nobody is really going to change their minds from a post on the Internet, and I am not expecting to change anyone's mind here, but I would like to see a bit more tolerance on reddit, and people not be so quick to believe lots of the pretty blatant lies told about the church.
Because I've been a church member for so long though, I have a somewhat different perspective than a lot of other people, I'm happy when they at least refer to Scientology as a church! In the 80s the media didn't even do that! It took the Mormons 200 years before they could even get a presidential candidate, and even then people were talking about "magic underwear" and whether one of these "cultish Mormon nuts" should be allowed to be president. And while I have seen scientologists discriminated against in various ways, at least we had a much easier time of it than the early Christians and Moslems. It's only 60 years old. So new, that there just hasn't been time for everyone to adjust.
One theme I don't see mentioned, is that pretty much everyone on reddit is sold on peer to peer as the solution for everything from democracy to software, music, you name it, and C of S is pretty much heirarchical like almost any other organization founded in the 20th century. I see this theme played out all over reddit politics and world news quite a bit. Anything with this heirarchical structure like a government is resented, and this includes all established religions and corporations. Hey I get it. It's now the 21st century. But most of our organizations are rooted in the 20th, if not the Victorian age, and Scientology is no exception.
As far as openness and transparency goes, I don't see that changing soon either. Just look at Obamas experiences, he started out with the intention of having the most open administration ever, but the republicans venomously combing over everything, twisting things to suit their ends pretty much made him "clam up" (bad joke, sorry)
As much as I love open source, and peer to peer, and I resent the attempts of the NSA, Facebook, Google big cable companies and the like attempting to command and control everyone's identity, we really don't have great models to follow that really work well for distributing power well. Even "new" companies like uber and airbnb are really just old school command and control, just leveraging technology, and use peer to peer in their marketing. So what is going to happen when Misgavige dies? How can we navigate in the next generations and make sure the things that happened to other religions doesn't happen to Scientology? The current answer is copyright, but what is gonna happen 50-60 years from now when all of LRHs work goes into the public domain?
I'm not in charge and I don't have those answers. One thing I will say is that I see every year more scientologists, bigger churches, bigger events, service and courses getting better and better. I know this annoys the fuck out of a lot of people. Oh yeah, and more countries where Scientology is expanding. I get to see the growth bit by bit, because off and on for over a decade I have been taking courses in Clearwater, and the mix of different international students changes from time to time based on what is happening. So in spite of internal and external problems, things are improving.
I think there are a lot more scientologists on reddit that aren't willing to speak out, for fear of getting attacked, hacked, whatever. Thus, the throwaway account.
Since it's not my AMA, and I don't want to hijack this thread any more than I have, I will bow out now. And it's briefs. If you read this far, thank you.