A Volunteer Minister (VM) is a member of Scientology sent to the disaster zone to spread the doctrine of Scientology and provide disaster relief. This program was created in 1970 by Scientology founder, L. Ron Hubbard. In 2016, ministerial volunteers have a network of 200,000 trained ministries.
The Church of Scientology says the program is "the only effective way to capture and reverse the world's damage," but critics argue that Scientology uses the program to gain positive media attention and recruit new members (known in Scientology as 'raw meat' ).
Controversy over group goals and activities though, a local official in India welcomes their help.
Video Volunteer Ministers
Destination
According to Hubbard, the goal of the program is to "put basic Dianetics and Scientology technologies in view and used at the public level raw." In Hubbard's words, The Volunteer Minister's Handbook will be widely distributed on Scn and non-Scientology channels, bought by men on the street He will use some data, produce some miracles, except one or two marriage, saving some kids from drugs, helping her next-door neighbor get upset because her son failed at school and did not care, plus brightened up the spring eve and taught her to learn, and tackled Aunt Martha's dizziness by helping. "
Each Voluntary Minister pays to attend a two-week course and purchase Scientology materials; in 1994, these materials cost $ 435. The book is called the The Scientology Handbook and is 968 pages long.
Scientology spokeswoman Eric Roux wrote: "A Scientology minister volunteers are trained to provide spiritual support to anyone in any aspect of life, whether to improve his communication skills, study skills, help raise children or save marriages, and dozens of other intervention domains. "
Maps Volunteer Ministers
Origins
This program is the successor of previous Scientology outreach efforts, particularly the "Victim Contacts" program to recruit new Scientologists (called "preclears") from hospitals, accident scenes and other places where people may experience trauma. As Hubbard writes, "One takes every paper daily he can get his hands and cut from it every story where he may have a preclear. [...] He must represent himself to the person or family of the person as a minister of compassion forced by a newspaper story about the person. [...]. "
Hubbard suggested that "using a ministerial card, an auditor should just barge into any non-sectarian hospital, get permission to visit the ward of the inspector, not to mention anything about processing but just about taking care of people's lives." The main goal is to recruit more members to Scientology: "Some small percentage of the people visited or their families will appear in groups, so he will build groups and naturally from that group he will get a lot of individual preliminaries." However, this is not how the program will be presented to the general public: "Many miracles will follow behind him and he then becomes the subject of the press himself, but in dealing with the press we should only say that it is the Church's mission to help those in need."
The Minister's Volunteer Program is also intended to operate as a recruitment activity. As Hubbard puts it,
- As the benefits of the Volunteer Minister's program begin to spread throughout the community, the rank and file of people who have been helped will begin to accumulate. These people will start feeding the mission and Church of Scientology from wherever the Ministry of Religion has worked.
Organizational aspects
In recent years, the Church of Scientology has promoted and greatly increased the profile and size of the Volunteer Minister's programs. Church publications say that there are more than 95,000 Volunteer Ministers - more than a combined Peace Corps, Americorps and United Nations programs. The Church has set a target to recruit many Volunteer Ministers because there are police in each of the major countries where Scientology is active. In 2001, the Church announced a number of target quotas for the recruitment of the Minister of Volunteers, as follows:
However, the ARIS demographic study by City University of New York (CUNY) estimates in 2000 that there may be only 55,000 Scientologists throughout the United States.
Recent activity
Volunteer Ministers are often sent to major disaster sites, where they distribute Scientology pamphlets and are intended to heal or relieve pain using Scientology techniques such as "Local," "Neural Help" and "Touch Assistance."
Volunteer Ministers had been sent to relief efforts in Southeast Asia after the December 2004 tsunami and to the London Underground station which was attacked in the July 7 London 2005 bombings. Eight hundred were sent to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. In 2012, news broke that the Volunteer Ministers provided ration of purification in Vietnam to people who had been exposed to Agent Orange; doctors and researchers criticized Agent Orange's treatment as "unscientific and unproven" and said that they "can be dangerous".
Volunteer Ministers have provided assistance to aid personnel after the September 11 attacks in New York.
The Volunteer Ministers have also worked in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina and Rita, in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, in Pakistan's floods in 2010, at the Fukushima earthquake in 2011, and flooded in May 2014 in Bosnia.
Controversy
Like many Church of Scientology programs, Volunteer Ministers have produced controversy and criticism. The hospital provides "spiritual help" parallel to medical care, but also performs simple tasks such as helping to cleanse or take food and generally help disaster efforts as shown. They have been accused of trying to take advantage of the disaster to promote Scientology to a grieving society. The Church of Scientology insists that assistance is provided parallel to medical care, not in that place; The Handbook for Scientific Aid emphasizes its basic guidance: "Always ask for first aid and medical attention if necessary Help not a substitute for medical care or care by a qualified physician First, call your doctor, then help the person as you can."
The Ministry's most promoted Volunteer Program took place immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Scientology critics accuse organizations of trying to take advantage of the disaster to promote Scientology to the grieving people in the area. The National Mental Health Association issued a public warning in response to the behavior of Scientologists immediately after September 11, claiming that Scientologists "Deliberately confuse the public" by presenting themselves as mental health service providers. According to NMHA President Michael M. Faenza, "People need to understand that Scientologists use this tragedy to recruit new members, they do not provide mental health assistance."
In Russia, following the tragedy of the Beslan school hostage crisis in 2004, the Department of Health ordered Scientologists out of the area, saying "that the various psychological tactics that groups use, including so-called hypnosis, may be harmful not only to adults, a child who has experienced severe mental shock. "
In the UK, the Volunteer Ministers played a similar role after the July 7 London 2005 bombing, which targeted families of victims and emergency workers. As in the United States in 2001, this caused controversy, and it was reported that the Volunteer Ministers had been expelled from around the survivors of the bus bombing at Tavistock Square. It later emerged that the Metropolitan Police had agreed to grant privileged access to the Church from Scientology to the Police Messenger Broadcasting System, which enabled the Church to send the Rapid Response team of the Voluntary Minister in the event of a future emergency in the capital.
Paul Fletcher, director of the London branch of CCHR and Stefania Cisco, Director of Special Affairs for Scientology, admitted to BBC undercover correspondents that the purpose of the volunteer ministers was to keep psychiatrists away, calling this "spiritual security".
After the Virginia Tech massacre, April 16, 2007, 20 Volunteer Ministers were on campus. The Bulletin for Scientology members says that assistance has been requested by university rectors, Salvation Army and Red Cross, but these organizations deny that requests have been made. The activities of the Volunteer Ministers at Virginia Tech are reported to have received harsh criticism from local pastors.
References
External links
- Official website
- The official website of the European Volunteer Minister
- Scientology Today: Latest News VM
- The Minister's Voluntary Handbook
- Scientific examples of "locational" to make people drunk drunk within minutes.
- Danish author and photographer Thorsten Overgaard follows the Scientology Volunteer Ministers in Asia after the tsunami
- BBC Radio Transcript Five Live Reports on Volunteers, 2 July 2006
- The Minister Volunteers are part of Hubbard's plan for grassroots movement
- Church of Scientology Volunteer Ministers Humanitarian Programs
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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