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Sunday Express, 25 August 1996 Emma Forrest, covering for the holidaying Julie Burchill, offers her opinion on Scientology: ----- START QUOTED ARTICLE ----- TOM'S SECT DISCRIMINATION [picture of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman with the caption "WEIRD WORSHIP: Tom Cruise and wife Nicole"] Members of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union have called for Germans to boycott Mission: Impossible because Tom Cruise is a Scientologist. Little is known about the church other than that it was invented by sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard in the Fifties. The religion's plot, as it were, is that 35 billion years ago an evil lord called Xenn [sic - SH] solved the problem of overcrowding on his planet by sending two billion Thetans to earth. Every human now contains a Thetan element which must be liberated from earthly encrustations. When that is done, humans are immune to illness, nuclear radiation and homosexuality. Now why would Tom Cruise need that? The sect is as hip as snowboarding, counting among its members, Tom and his charming wife Nicole Kidman, John Travolta and Lisa Marie Presley. /In fact, one theory as to why the already abundantly wealthy Presley married Wacko Jacko was she had been ordered to convert him to Scientology./ But he wasn't having any of it. If I may reiterate: this is a cult that was /too weird/ for Michael Jackson to join. [transcribed by Steve Holroyd]
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