Beyond Belief

March 4, 2013
Hillâs candid memories of growing up inside the Church of Scientology are notable not just for their detail but for the light they shed on an environment that fosters isolation, powerlessness, and privacy loss. The Church takes precedence over family to the extent that Hillâwhose parents were Church executivesâspent just one hour a day with them, decreasing as they moved up in the Church hierarchy. Although most of Hillâs extended family has left Scientology, her uncle, David Miscavige, is currently head of the Church. Hill recalls she "didnât know what normal looked like," and that her life was "owned by the Church." In fact, after her engagement to a fellow Scientologistâone that Church officials tried mightily to preventâher desire to have children motivated her to leave the Church. (As "thetans," many members "canât really be the parent" of another thetan). Those looking for a glimpse into the celebrity side of Scientology will be disappointed; Hill primarily relates how celebrities are treated differently from the rest. Some readers may have difficulty believing such insular Scientology communities can exist in this age of access, but memoirs like Hillâs cast light on their internal practices.

March 1, 2013
An ex-member of Scientology's inner elite bolts--understandably, to trust this undistinguished but still valuable memoir. If Charles Dickens had been a sci-fi author, he might have dreamed up something like Scientology and its weird workhouses. Hill, born to parents who had been longtime members of sci-fi author L. Ron Hubbard's organization, and whose uncle is now its de facto leader, recounts a life resolutely within the realm of the thetans. "Everyone I knew was in the Church, and as a third-generation Scientologist, my life was Scientology," she writes. That life included absolute obedience to dictates that seem crafted to strip away any autonomy from the individual, if any individuality at all. At the age of 4, Hill was already an adept, while her parents were members of "Sea Org," the inner sanctum; one requirement was that families be separated and that "children over the age of six would be raised communally at locations close to Sea Org bases." Family visits dwindled, and Hill scarcely saw her mother unless on "special Scientology/Sea Org occasions...[when] I would get to see her for a whole day." Hill's break from the sect in 2005, after years of control, coincided with the publication of an unauthorized bio of Tom Cruise, perhaps its best-known member, which she found to be accurate. Hill's emotional turmoil is wrenchingly authentic, but even the help of well-credentialed writer Pulitzer (co-author: Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church, 2013, etc.) does not save the book from a limping prose style full of expressions such as "incredibly special" and "I got pretty emotional that Dallas's family was there to make it special." Despite the uneven prose, readers with an interest in the psychology of religion, among other subjects, will find this rare insider's account to be of value--less so than Lawrence Wright's Going Clear (2013), but of value all the same.

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