54 Critics of Scientology

Jason Deneen Beghe is an American actor. He starred in the 1988 George A. Romero film Monkey Shines, playing a quadriplegic in a performance that was positively received, appeared as a police officer in the film Thelma & Louise, and played Demi Moore's love interest in G.I. Jane. Beghe starred opposite Moira Kelly in the television series To Have & to Hold, and has had recurring roles on Picket Fences, Melrose Place, Chicago Hope, American Dreams, Cane and Californication. Since 2014, he has portrayed Hank Voight in the NBC TV series Chicago P.D..

Richard Behar is an American investigative journalist. Since 2012, he has been the Contributing Editor of Investigations for Forbes magazine. From 1982 to 2004, he wrote on the staffs of Forbes, Time and Fortune. Behar's work has also been featured on BBC, CNN, PBS, FoxNews.com and Fast Company magazine. He coordinates Project Klebnikov, a media alliance to probe the Moscow murder of Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov. He is writing a book about Bernard Madoff. Behar is editor of Mideast Dig.

Jeremy Blake was an American digital artist and painter. His work included projected DVD installations, Type C prints, and collaborative film projects.

Mark Bunker, is an American politician, broadcast journalist, videographer and documentary filmmaker. He won a Regional Emmy Award in 2006 from the Pacific Southwest Emmy Awards division of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He is the city councilman for Clearwater Florida's 2nd district.

William Seward Burroughs II was an American writer and visual artist, credited as a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians and made many appearances in films. He was also briefly known by the pen name William Lee. Burroughs created and exhibited thousands of paintings and other visual artworks, including his celebrated 'Shotgun Art'.

Ursula Caberta y Diaz is a German politician, former State of Hamburg government official and was the Commissioner for the Scientology Task Force of the Hamburg Interior Authority. She graduated in political economy. According to Deutsche Welle she is considered an expert on the subject of Scientology, and has been observing the organization since 1992. Her book Schwarzbuch Scientology was published in 2007. Caberta is also an official in Hamburg's authority for interior affairs.

Diana Canova is an American actress, director, and professor. Best known as Corinne Tate in Soap (1977-1980).

Gabriel Cazares was a mayor of Clearwater, Florida, a Pinellas County commissioner, a civil rights advocate, and a critic of the Church of Scientology. He died September 29, 2006 in Clearwater at the age of 86.

Tory Christman is a prominent American critic of Scientology and former member of the organization. Originally brought up a Catholic, Christman turned to Scientology after being introduced to the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health authored by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard while staying with her parents in Chicago. She identified with concepts described in the book including the idea of attaining the Scientology state of clear, and became a member of the organization in 1969. She hitchhiked from Chicago to Los Angeles, in order to begin the process of studying Scientology, and initially felt that it helped improve her life. In 1972, she joined the religious order within Scientology called the Sea Org. After being a member of the Scientology organization for ten years, Christman reached the spiritual Operating Thetan level of OT III, and learned the story of Xenu. She subsequently rose to a higher Operating Thetan level of OT VII, the second-highest within the organization. Her medical condition of epilepsy caused difficulty while in Scientology, as the organization did not approve of taking medication in order to manage her condition.

Paulette Cooper is an American author and journalist whose writing against the Church of Scientology resulted in harassment from Scientologists. An early critic of the church, she published The Scandal of Scientology in 1971. She endured many years of attacks from church leadership and their agents, including lawsuits, smear campaigns, overt and covert surveillance, outright threats, and even a criminal frame-up. Church founder and leader L. Ron Hubbard was reportedly obsessed with her and personally plotted against her.

Mitchell Elias Daniels Jr. is an American academic administrator, businessman, author, and retired politician. A Republican, Daniels served as the 49th Governor of Indiana from 2005 to 2013. Since 2013, Daniels has been president of Purdue University.

Eric Cunningham Dax, AO, FRACP, FRANZCP, HonFRCPsych was a British-born Australian psychiatrist.

Jamie DeWolf is an American slam poet, film director, writer, spoken word artist, and circus ringmaster from Oakland, California.

Ronald Edward "Ron" DeWolf, also known as "Nibs" Hubbard, was the eldest child of Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard by his first wife Margaret Louise Grubb, and highly critical of his father and of the Church of Scientology.

Alexander Leonidovich Dvorkin is a Russian anti-cult activist. From 1999 to 2012 he was professor and head of the department of the study of new religious movements (cults) at Saint Tikhon's Orthodox University. He is currently professor of department of missiology at that university.

Aylsworth Crawford Greene III is an American attorney, political leader and three-time Mayor of San Anselmo, California. Greene is noted for having successfully conducted litigation against the Church of Scientology and the Unification Church of the United States. Greene is serving his fourth-term as an elected San Anselmo town council member. He was voted to the position of Mayor in 2010, 2015 and 2019.

Paul Edward Haggis is a Canadian screenwriter, film producer, and director of film and television. He is best known as screenwriter and producer for consecutive Best Picture Oscar winners: Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Crash (2005), the latter of which he also directed. Haggis also co-wrote the war film Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and the James Bond films Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace (2008). He is the creator of the television series Due South (1994–1999) and co-creator of Walker, Texas Ranger (1993–2001), among others. Haggis is a two-time Academy Award winner, two-time Emmy Award winner, and seven-time Gemini Award winner. He also assisted in the making of the "We Are the World 25 For Haiti"

Steven Alan Hassan is an American author, educator, PhD, and mental health counselor specializing in destructive cults. He has been described by media as "one of the world's foremost experts on mind control, cults and similar destructive organizations," though social scientists are divided on his work. He is a former member of the Unification Church, founded Ex-Moon Inc. in 1979, and in 1999 founded the Freedom of Mind Resource Center. He has written on the subject of mind control and how to help people who have been harmed by the experience.

Andreas Heldal-Lund is a Norwegian anti-Scientology activist best known for operating the website Operation Clambake.

Howard Keith Henson is an American electrical engineer and writer. Henson writes on subjects including space engineering, space law, memetics, cryonics, evolutionary psychology, and the physical limitations of Transhumanism. In 1975, Henson founded the L5 Society with his then-wife Carolyn Meinel to promote space colonization. In 1987 the L5 Society merged with the National Space Institute to form the National Space Society.

Maynard James Keenan is an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, actor, and winemaker. He is best known as the singer and primary lyricist of the rock band Tool, with whom he has released five studio albums, A Perfect Circle, with whom he has released four studio albums, and Puscifer, with whom he has released four studio albums.

Stephen A. Kent, is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He researches new religious movements, and has published research on several such groups including the Children of God, the Church of Scientology, and newer faiths operating in Canada.

Andrew Robert Nielsen, known professionally as MC Lars, is an American rapper, producer, teacher, cartoonist, and podcaster. Lars is one of the self-proclaimed originators of "lit-hop", and is the founder and CEO of the independent record label Horris Records. Lars is one of several people who claim to have coined the term "iGeneration", which he was credited with doing in 2003.

Arnaldo Pagliarini "Arnie" Lerma was an American writer and activist, a former Scientologist, and a critic of Scientology who appeared in television, media and radio interviews. Lerma was the first person to post the court document known as the Fishman Affidavit, including the Xenu story, to the Internet via the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology.

The Lisa McPherson Trust was an organisation created in 1999 by Bob Minton. The trust was named after Lisa McPherson, a Scientology member who died in 1995 after being in the Church of Scientology’s care for 17 days. Their stated goal was to "expose the deceptive and abusive practices of Scientology and help those victimized by [the Church of Scientology]."

Carmen Llywelyn, also known as Carmen Lee, is an American actress and photographer.

Shawn Lonsdale was a videographer and prominent critic of the Church of Scientology. He resided in Clearwater, Florida, and regularly videotaped members of Scientology coming and going from church activities in Clearwater. Lonsdale had initially intended to do a photography project on homeless people in Clearwater, but after an experience at a City Council meeting, he began to research Scientology. Lonsdale got into an argument with a Scientologist at the City Council meeting, and the Scientologist followed him home and the next day Lonsdale observed a van waiting for two hours outside his home. After researching the Church of Scientology on critical websites, he decided to expose information about the organization. He established a website, and filmed video footage of Scientologists going about activities in Clearwater, and aired edited footage on a local Public-access television cable TV station. After getting into a physical altercation with a Scientologist while filming, the Scientologist was arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery, but was later released and the charges were dropped.

Robert Schenk Minton was a banker who helped the country of Nigeria manage its debt and a well-known critic of Scientology.

Paul Robert Morantz is an American attorney and investigative journalist. He is known for taking legal cases alleging brainwashing by cults, self-help groups and for sexual misconduct by psychotherapists. He is considered an expert on these subjects. His successful prosecution of Synanon led to an attempt against his life, by means of a rattlesnake.

Andrew David Morton is an English journalist and writer who has published biographies of royal figures such as Diana, Princess of Wales, and celebrity subjects including Tom Cruise, Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Monica Lewinsky; several of his books have been unauthorised and contain contested assertions.

Alec Nevala-Lee is an American novelist, biographer, and science fiction writer. He is a Hugo and Locus Award finalist for the group biography Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, which was named one of the best books of 2018 by The Economist, and which the science fiction writer Barry N. Malzberg called "the most important historical and critical work my field has ever seen." Nevala-Lee's next book will be a biography of the architectural designer and futurist Buckminster Fuller.

Operation Clambake, also referred to by its domain name, xenu.net, is a website and Norway-based non-profit organization, launched in 1996, founded by Andreas Heldal-Lund, that publishes criticism of the Church of Scientology. It is owned and maintained by Andreas Heldal-Lund, who has stated that he supports the rights of all people to practice Scientology or any religion. Operation Clambake has referred to the Church of Scientology as "a vicious and dangerous cult that masquerades as a religion". The website includes texts of petitions, news articles, exposés, and primary source documents. The site has been ranked as high as the second spot in Google searches for the term "Scientology".

Anthony "Tony" Ortega is an American blogger who is best known for his daily blog about the Church of Scientology called The Underground Bunker. He was executive editor of The Raw Story from 2013 until 2015. Previously, he had been a journalist at the New Times LA, the editor-in-chief of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times from 2005 to 2007 and the editor-in-chief of The Village Voice from 2007 to 2012. In 2015 he was executive editor of the YouTube channel TheLipTV. He is author of the non-fiction book The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, about journalist Paulette Cooper and the Church of Scientology's attempts to silence her after her own book was published.

Randolph Severn "Trey" Parker III is an American actor, animator, writer, producer, director, and composer. He is known for co-creating South Park (1997–present) and co-developing The Book of Mormon (2011) with his creative partner Matt Stone. Parker was interested in film and music as a child and at high school, and attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he met Stone. The two collaborated on various short films, and starred in the feature-length musical Cannibal! The Musical (1993).

Project Chanology was a protest movement against the practices of the Church of Scientology by members of Anonymous, a leaderless Internet-based group. The project was started in response to the Church of Scientology's attempts to remove material from a highly publicized interview with Scientologist Tom Cruise from the Internet in January 2008.

Mark C. "Marty" Rathbun is a former senior executive of the Church of Scientology who last held the post of Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center (RTC), the organization that is responsible for the protection and enforcement of all Dianetics and Scientology copyrights and trademarks.

Christopher D'Olier Reeve was an American actor, director, and activist, best known for playing the titular main character in the film Superman (1978) and its three sequels.

Leah Marie Remini is an American actress and activist. She starred as Carrie Heffernan on the long-running CBS sitcom The King of Queens (1998–2007) and as Vanessa Celluci in the CBS sitcom Kevin Can Wait (2017–2018), both alongside Kevin James.

Michael John Rinder is an Australian-American former senior executive of the Church of Scientology International (CSI) and the Sea Organization based in the United States. From 1982 to 2007, Rinder served on the board of directors of CSI and also held the post of executive director of its Office of Special Affairs, overseeing the corporate, legal and public relations matters of Scientology at the international level.

Leo Joseph Ryan Jr. was an American teacher and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the U.S. Representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until his assassination during the Jonestown massacre in 1978. Before that, he served in the California State Assembly, representing the state's 27th district.

Aaron Saxton is a former Scientologist and member of the organisation's elite group called the Sea Org. He contacted Senator Nick Xenophon of Australia, who quoted statements by Saxton about Scientology into the parliamentary record of the Australian Senate in November 2009. That speech caused a furor according to The Courier-Mail, The New Zealand Herald and other media.

The Scientology Task Force for the Hamburg Interior Authority was founded in 1992 to monitor the activities and publications of Scientology, raise public awareness about the organization, and serve as a resource to Scientology members who may wish to exit the group. The Hamburg government made the decision to form the task force in 1991, after claiming in public statements that the Church of Scientology's aims included world domination and the destruction of society. Other German politicians stated that Scientology planned to infiltrate businesses and the government.

ScienTOMogy was a New Zealand-based parody site lampooning actor Tom Cruise's involvement with Scientology. Initially hosted at the domain name scientomogy.info, the site was created in 2005 in response to the extensive media publicity surrounding Cruise's appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Today Show.

The Secrets of Scientology is a documentary which was broadcast on 28 September 2010 as part of the BBC's Panorama documentary strand. Presented by John Sweeney, it is a follow-up of his 2007 investigation into the Church of Scientology and features interviews with former high-ranking members of the organisation.

Margaret Thaler Singer was an American clinical psychologist and researcher with her colleague Lyman Wynne of family communication. She was a prominent figure in the study of undue influence in social and religious contexts, and a proponent of the brainwashing theory of New Religious Movements. She was prohibited from testifying as an expert in American courts as a result of the Fishman case, due to the lack of scientific validity of her theories.

Karin Spaink is a journalist, writer and feminist.

Matthew Richard Stone is an American actor, animator, writer, producer, and composer. He is known for co-creating South Park (1997–present) and co-developing The Book of Mormon (2011) with his creative partner Trey Parker. Stone was interested in film and music as a child and at high school, and attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he met Parker. The two collaborated on various short films, and starred in the feature-length musical Cannibal! The Musical (1993).

John Paul Sweeney is a British investigative journalist and writer. He worked for The Observer newspaper, and the BBC's Panorama and Newsnight series. Sweeney ceased working for the BBC in October 2019.

David S. Touretzky is a research professor in the Computer Science Department and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a BA in Computer Science at Rutgers University in 1978, and earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. (1984) in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Touretzky has worked as an Internet activist in favor of freedom of speech, especially what he perceives as abuse of the legal system by government and private authorities. He is a notable critic of Scientology.

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, better known as Gore Vidal, was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and essays interrogated the social and cultural sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He twice sought office—unsuccessfully—as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the United States House of Representatives, and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate.

William Grady Ward is an American software engineer, lexicographer, and Internet activist who has been prominent in the Scientology versus the Internet controversy.

Bonnie Woods is an American former Scientologist and critic of the Church of Scientology. Woods resides in Britain. She was a member of the Sea Org within Scientology, and left in 1982. She and her family were monitored by a private investigator. The Church of Scientology spread pamphlets around her East Grinstead neighbourhood making negative claims about her. Woods sued for libel against the organization – in response Scientology filed three libel suits against her. Her case eventually reached the High Court of Justice. Scientology paid her for costs and damages, and admitted that the claims it had made about her were false.

Lawrence Wright is an American writer and journalist, who is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. Wright is best known as the author of the 2006 nonfiction book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Wright is also known for his work with documentarian Alex Gibney who directed film versions of Wright's one man show My Trip to Al-Qaeda and his book Going Clear. His 2020 novel, The End of October, a thriller about a pandemic, was released in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, to generally positive reviews.

Nicholas Xenophon is an Australian politician and lawyer who was a Senator for South Australia from 2008 to 2017. He was the leader of two political parties: Nick Xenophon Team federally, and Nick Xenophon's SA-BEST in South Australia. In October 2017, Xenophon resigned from the Australian Senate to contest a seat in the House of Assembly at the 2018 South Australian state election. From 1997 to 2007, he was a member of the South Australian Legislative Council, serving as an independent on a No Pokies policy platform. When the Nick Xenophon Team changed its name to Centre Alliance, Xenophon himself ceased to be directly involved with the party.