A Volunteer Minister (VM) is a member of the Church of Scientology sent to a disaster area to spread the doctrine of Scientology during disaster relief efforts. but critics argue that Scientology uses the program to gain positive media attention and recruit new members (known within Scientology as "raw meat").

Objectives

According to Hubbard, the objective of the program is to "put basic Dianetics and Scientology technology into view and into use at the raw public level." In Hubbard's words, The Volunteer Minister's Handbook "will be broadly distributed on [Scientology] and non-Scientology lines, bought by the man on the street. He'll use some of the data, produce some miracles, save a marriage or two, rescue some kid from drugs, help his next door neighbor who's upset because her child's failing in school and couldn't care less, plus brighten up her yawning of Spring and teach him to study, and handle Aunt Martha's dizziness with assists." The book is called The Scientology Handbook and is 968 pages long.

Hubbard advised that "using his minister's card, an auditor need only barge into any non-sectarian hospital, get permission to visit the wards from the superintendent, mentioning nothing about processing but only about taking care of people's souls." The primary objective was simply to recruit more members for Scientology: "Some small percentage of the persons visited or their families will turn up in his group. Thus he will build a group and naturally from that group he will get a great many individual preclears."

VMs were sent to Southeast Asia after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Eight hundred were sent following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In 2012, news broke that Volunteer Ministers were providing purification rundowns in Vietnam to people who had been exposed to Agent Orange. Doctors and researchers criticized the treatments as unscientific and unproven, and warned that the high doses of niacin administered could be harmful. Marcella L. Warner, who studies the long-term health effects of dioxin exposure, said that "a treatment focused on exercise and sweating would not be an effective way to rid the body of the toxin".

Controversy

As with many of the Church of Scientology's programs, the Volunteer Ministers have generated controversy and criticism. They have been accused of attempting to take advantage of disasters in order to promote Scientology to a grief-stricken populace.

The Volunteer Minister program most heavily promoted by Scientology took place in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Critics of Scientology accused the organization of attempting to take advantage of the disaster in order to promote Scientology to the grief-stricken populace in the area. The National Mental Health Association issued a public warning in response to the conduct of Scientologists in the immediate aftermath of September 11, claiming that Scientologists were "Intentionally confusing [the] public" by presenting themselves as mental health service providers. According to NMHA President Michael M. Faenza, "The public needs to understand that the Scientologists are using this tragedy to recruit new members. They are not providing mental health assistance."

In the United Kingdom, Volunteer Ministers played a similar role in the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 London bombings, targeting the families of victims and emergency workers. As in the United States in 2001, this resulted in controversy, and it was reported that Volunteer Ministers had been removed from the vicinity of survivors of the bus bombing in Tavistock Square. It later emerged that the Metropolitan Police had agreed to give the Church of Scientology privileged access to the Police Message Broadcasting System, enabling the Church to dispatch Volunteer Minister rapid-response teams in the event of future emergencies in the capital.

Paul Fletcher, director of the London branch of CCHR and Stefania Cisco, a Director of Special Affairs for Scientology, in 2006 admitted to an undercover BBC reporter that the purpose of the volunteer ministers was to keep the psychiatrists away, and called this "spiritual security".

In the US, after the Virginia Tech massacre, April 16, 2007, 20 Volunteer Ministers were on the campus. Bulletins to Scientology members said that help had been requested by the university provost, the Salvation Army and the Red Cross, but these organizations denied that any requests had been made. The activities of the Volunteer Ministers at Virginia Tech was reported to have received strong criticism from local pastors.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Scientology produced and printed booklets titled How to Keep Yourself and Others Well for a campaign to contact businesses and government offices in many countries. Distributed in person by Scientologists dressed as Volunteer Ministers, local business owners in Switzerland sought information from a local activism group, [Free Anti-Scientology Activists] (FASA), because they had been told the booklet was produced in cooperation with the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (BAG). FASA contacted BAG, received a response, and posted online that BAG reported no such cooperation with Scientology. The Church of Scientology Basel sued FASA for slander; the case was dismissed after an evidentiary hearing in September 2023.

References

  • volunteerministers.org
  • Scientology example of a "locational" to make a drunk person sober in few minutes.