Auditing the Soul of Russia

Don’t venture into a foreign monastery with your own rules.

- Russian proverb

A heated conflict has broken out in Russia in the wake of the national legislature’s passage, and President Yeltsin’s veto, of a new law on religion. The law, which was spearheaded by the Orthodox Church and leftist-nationalist Duma lawmakers, was an attempt to curb the activities of cults and sects in Russia, while strengthening the position of “traditional” religions. Russian Life Executive Editor Mikhail Ivanov talked to supporters of the law and to those who would suffer if it passed, and offers ideas on what this all means for Russia today.

On July 4, the upper house of Russia’s parliament approved, by a vote of 112 to 4, the final draft of a bill, On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations. Eleven days earlier, the bill had been passed by the lower house, the State Duma, by a vote of 300 to 8.

The nearly universal reaction to the bill from abroad was vociferous denunciation. Pope John Paul sent a letter to President Boris Yeltsin saying that the law “would be a real threat not only to the usual activities of the Catholic Church in Russia, but also to its survival.” US President Bill Clinton “expressed concern” to Yeltsin. The US Senate amended a foreign aid bill threatening to cut off $200 mn in foreign aid to Russia if Yeltsin signed the measure. In Russia, the list of those who voiced their protest against the law included local religious organizations such as the Baptist Union, the Pentecostal Union, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, the Roman Catholic Church, Initsiativniki Baptists, the Russian Orthodox Free Church, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Old Believers.

On July 22, President Yeltsin vetoed the bill, calling it unconstitutional and in direct violation of international agreements and conventions to which Russia is subject, specifically those relating to freedom of conscience. “Many provisions of this law,” Yeltsin said in a radio address, “infringe upon the citizen’s constitutional rights, legalize inequality between different confessions, and are at variance with Russia’s international commitments ... This law will inevitably lead to the isolation of Russia’s traditional confessions and, most importantly, give rise to religious conflicts ...” And yet, Yeltsin said, using the veto “was a difficult decision to make,” indicating that, if the law were changed in certain ways, he would sign it.

Old Time Religion

The controversy surrounding the law centers mainly on a few key clauses (see box, page 12) which would have made some religions “more equal” than others and required less established religious groups to operate in Russia for 15 years before being allowed the status of legal entities – entitling them to own property, open a bank account, host visas, etc.

The genesis of the law is clear – it is rooted in Russians’ growing fear and distaste for foreign-based cults and sects, like Aum Shin Rikyo. Communist deputies, Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov, even members of the liberal faction Yabloko supported the bill, heralding it as “a barrier in the way of proliferation of destructive sects.” Said Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov, “they are trying to impose freedom of sects on us, without taking into account the Russian vision of the world,” Patriarch Aleksei wrote to President Yeltsin, urging him to sign the bill into law.

Some saw a political motivation in the law. Father Borisov, of the Moscow-based Kosma and Damian Church, called the bill “an attempt by the Communist deputies to put the President in a quandary,” and said that the “Patriarch supported the law because such is the mood of the majority of Russian priests.”

Vladimir Murza, head of Evangelical churches in Russia, and who was jailed from 1960-63 for his religious activities, offered an historical perspective. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Murza said that “this law has a discriminatory character and takes us back to the time of Brezhnev and Khrushchev, when we were harassed by the authorities ... We don’t understand the logic of the bill ... Missionary work is as old as the times of Jesus. It was missionaries who brought Christianity to Russia in the first place ...”

Suspended Archpriest Ioann Sviridov, in an interview with Kommersant Weekly, offered another ironic historical accent to the debate. “A law on religion can’t use such categories as ‘more ancient religion, traditional religion,’” Sviridov said. “If so, one may go even further. For Russian orthodoxy is also a religion brought in from outside. The traditional [Russian] religion should be defined as paganism, all the more so because this [Christianity] is a new phenomenon which was opened to us only a thousand years ago.”

Dr. Alexander Dvorkin, Russia’s most famous crusader against “totalitarian sects,” and director of the Saint Irenaeus of Lyons Center, an information and consultation center under the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, argues for protectionism. “I personally think that the European model of religious legislation is more democratic,” Dvorkin said. “As to criticism that this law brings us back to Brezhnev’s or Chernenko’s times, I say: at that time there were no Mormons or Scientologists at all here, period. This law will not evict them. It will somehow limit the activities of these sects. Because the competition between the Orthodox Church and the sects is unfair – the forces are uneven from the outset. The sects can buy TV time, plus they use dishonest forms of recruitment. The same Syoko Asahara [head of the Aum Shin Rikyo cult] unscrupulously told his Russian followers that Aum Shin Rikyo doctrine in fact coincided with the dogma of the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Dr. Paul Steeves, a foremost western authority on religion in Russia, also has doubts that the law is as pernicious as it has been made out by critics. “I have not been able to come to any clear conclusion of what would happen if the law were passed that would be undesireable,” he said in an interview with Russian Life. “The law doesn’t forbid any religious organization from functioning. It might make it inconvenient for some organizations to function. But they can set up and operate right away as a registered religious organization. They couldn’t own property, but not many of them, except the Orthodox Church, own any property now anyway.”

Dvorkin concurred. “The sects will not be barred, they will not have to go underground. They may keep meeting at homes, but their activities will be channelled within a rigid network. These organizations will not be legal entities anymore, they will not have real estate or a bank account, but this doesn’t stop them from preaching or praying.”

In vetoing the bill, President Yeltsin nevertheless pointed to the need to have such a law, “to protect the moral and spiritual health of the nation and raise reliable barriers to radical sects which inflict great damage on the physical and mental health of our citizens.” Patriarch Alexei, in a statement after the veto, concurred, pointing out that the bill’s intent was to create “pre-conditions for the effective protection of both the individual and society against the arbitrary actions of destructive pseudo-religious cults and foreign false missionaries.”

One Man’s Sect...

While there are, at present, some 13,500 registered religious organizations in Russia, the total number of cult or sect members escapes statistics, because the degree of individuals’ involvement differs. Yet, according to Dvorkin, “totalitarian sects” or “destructive cults” in Russia can be distinguished by many common traits. All employ mind control, all engage in deceit at the time of recruitment (providing wrong or incomplete information about their respective cults), and all use violence, ranging from psychological pressure to physical harassment and manslaughter.

According to his classification, the best known sects which operate nationwide are: the Aum Shin Rikyo doomsday cult, the Ukrainian-based White Brotherhood (which, even though decimated, still operates in small numbers underground), the Boston Church of Christ or the Boston Movement, the Church of Scientology, the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Unification Church, the Krishna Conscience Movement, the Mother of God Center, followers of Vissarion (Church of the Last Testament), Sahaji Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, the Roerich Society, Brahma Kumaris, Followers of Porfiry Ivanov or Detka, the Family (Children of God), the Local Church, Shri Chinmoy, Sai Baba, and various groups of so-called prosperity theology, like the Word of Life.

Another “litmus test” of cults, Dvorkin said, is the strong, vested interests – financial and material – that cults have in their followers.

In order to gauge the nature of the cult threat and groups’ opposition to the law, Russian Life decided to visit two groups in Moscow that have been criticized in debates related to the law, the Scientologists and the Mormons. Both have American roots.

L. Ron’s Students

Itogi, a well-respected local newsweekly, recently called Scientology “a cocktail of all kinds of American banalities.” Dvorkin, for his part, ranked Scientology as among the most odious and dangerous of religious organizations.

Central to Scientology are the principles of dianetics, based on the pseudo-psychotherapeutic principles propounded by L. Ron Hubbard – a mediocre pulp science fiction writer – in a 1950 book titled Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

At its most basic level, Scientology stresses the need to examine one’s life and use the “mental tools” of dianetics to overcome adversity. At its core is the act of “auditing” which initiates must undergo. This involves the initiate holding on to two “soup-can” electrodes which are hooked up to a weak lie detector machine (an “E-Meter”), then being cross-examined about life experiences by an “auditor.” The purpose of this auditing is to locate, and presumably eliminate, Overts (undisclosed acts), Body Thetans (evil spirits), and Engrams (moments of pain and unconsciousness). Without getting into the confusing detail of the science fiction-like myths behind these Overts, Thetans and Engrams, suffice it to say that Scientologists believe that these are “mental aberations” which can only be eliminated by further, costly counseling or auditing sessions.

In the US and many European countries, the Church of Scientology is widely accepted by experts to be a dangerous cult. A 1991 TIME Magazine article called the Church “a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner.” Scientology, which likely has some 50,000 members, has been the subject of numerous law enforcement investigations and indictments worldwide. Spain’s Justice Ministry has called the sect “totalitarian” and “pure and simple charlatanism.” German authorities also branded Scientology “distinctly totalitarian,” saying the organization is aimed at “the economic exploitation of customers who are in bondage to it.”

The first emissaries of Scientology arrived in Russia in 1989. They are now active in more than 30 Russian cities. Dvorkin alleged that Scientology’s adherents in Russia are seeking to infiltrate the military-industrial complex. He cited the case of a secret “mail-box” (closed) enterprise in Yekaterinburg. Under what Dvorkin called a “typical strategy,” a Hubbard College for “management training” was established on the territory of the secret plant (in Moscow, a Hubbard College has been established at the journalism faculty of Moscow State University). Then the director of the plant and his deputies underwent “management training” and the number of adherents grew. “Now the Scientologists are even issuing written passes [to the secret enterprise] to all their visitors,” Dvorkin said. “The plant’s director, Eduard Yalamov, went through Hubbard college training ... I met him in the spring ... he suffers from all the symptoms of those who underwent Hubbardist training: very aggressive behavior, total lack of receptiveness to alien ideas, and, in spite of the real situation, total assurance in his ability to have everything under control.”

As if to contrast with the ominous portraits of the Church of Scientology, the representatives at Moscow’s Center of Scientology were very welcoming. But then the planned topic of discussion was the law on religion, not the practices of Scientology – as if the latter topic could really be avoided.

Sergei Putlyayev, who is responsible for legal issues at the Center, was quick to state that the proposed law “contradicts the constitution, and many of our parishioners signed letters of protest. I have processed thousands of such letters. It is a return to the old regime ... We were registered in January 1994 ... We would have to be reregistered. Plus, it introduces this notion of merely state, okay, ‘traditional,’ religions. This is inequity in faiths.”

What about accusations that Scientology is not a religion at all, that it is a cult?

“Scientology,” said Vera Zivik, head of the Public Relations Department, “has nothing to do with cults or sects.”

“It is just a religion,” added Putlyayev. “How can one talk of some kind of mind control?”

Which brought up the question of “auditing.” Dvorkin claimed to have seen “quite a few people who went crazy after Scientology’s infamous ‘auditing.’”

Zivik parried the question by reading from a thick pile of “success stories.” “A man born in 1925 who had some problems with his blood components confessed that, after the first session of auditing, he had his blood analyzed and it was normal for the first time in 15 years ... A young girl who said she took her life as a punishment and whose family was on the brink of collapse said her situation improved greatly.”

“This auditing is not a very simple thing,” Putlyayev added. “Sometimes a person does not see much happiness, though his life has changed much for the better. He is, say, reinstated at work, but he just doesn’t see anything happening to him.”

Putlyayev bristled in reaction to Dvorkin’s claim of infiltration in Yekaterinburg and a query about the Novgorod Duma chairman, who is a professed Scientologist.

“What is it with this ‘Scientologists infiltrate’?! Scientologists are simple people. They have tried it, they liked it, if they work some place – so what. Can they be persecuted for it?! This is persecution for religious motives. What are they guilty of? Have they killed someone, or have they indulged in some financial falsifications? We pay all our taxes legally”.

[Yet, the Russian press reported that St. Petersburg’s tax police found local Scientologists guilty of tax evasion. – Ed.]

“In America, it is all settled: Scientologists were recognized as a religion: they don’t pay taxes.”

[Not exactly true. In 1967, the IRS revoked Scientology’s tax-exempt status, a decision upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1988. Yet, in 1993, a much criticized, behind-closed-doors agreement between the IRS and the Church led to an IRS ruling that the Church of Scientology would be exempt from federal income taxes (not necessarily all other taxes) – despite the fact that the IRS had been chasing the Church for back taxes for several years. No government body has declared that Scientology is a religion. – Ed.]

As if to stress the point, Putlyayev flatly declared that the Scientologists do not engage in commercial activities in Russia. “We are not a commercial structure,” he said, “we don’t conduct commercial activities. All we live on are donations, which are completely voluntary. And on book sales. We have a building which does not belong to us, we have to pay rent, we have to pay staff [the center numbers a few dozen employees].”

The Center’s office was littered with thin, proselytic brochures (a “donation” of 15,000 rubles was required for each); advertisements stated that week-long training seminars started at the equivalent of some $40. Meanwhile, salesman Igor Meleshko boasted that sales of Dianetics books were very good. “Last April,” he said, “we had record weekly sales of 1500 books (each book costs R20,000 – approximately $3.50) with a gross revenue of R30 mn ($5,000).” Given the state of Russian publishing (see Russian Life, July 1997), these single-title sales results are somewhat remarkable and would be the envy of any commercial publishing house.

Putlyayev’s claim that Scientology was “just a religion” was strained – most adherents of one religion do not also claim to be adherents of another. Indeed, in late 1994, the Bishop’s Council of the Russian Orthodox Church proclaimed that being a member of the Church of Scientology (as well of other, new religious movements) is incompatible with membership in the Russian Orthodox Church. Yet Zivik openly stated that she was also an Orthodox believer, that she felt that “Scientology doesn’t contradict Orthodoxy. We also have Muslims here,” she added.

“In America,” Zivik said, citing the authority of a friend of a friend just returned from there “dianetics is taught in schools ... Even children know how to use it on the preventative level,” she said admiringly. Zivik said the lady “told about some American children playing in a sandbox. One child hurt his finger and all the children immediately became silent ... they knew that, when someone feels pain, one must keep silent, so as not to cause harm. These children are literate in dianetics; they know that when someone feels pain, one must keep silent otherwise one can register effects on his reactive mind.”

Salt Lake Sokol

In March 1991, the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta published an article about Mormonism when the group was just becoming active in the former USSR. The article’s correspondent paid a visit to Salt Lake City and described the lifestyle and beliefs of Mormons in very enthusiastic terms. In particular, the writer praised the Mormons’ firmness of spirit and unyielding labor. Of course, these were precisely the qualities lacking in the decaying USSR. At the time the article was written, the Mormon community in Russia counted just 70 believers. Today, six years later, they claim 7,000.

Sitting in his office in the prestigious Moscow region of Sokol, Donald Jarvis, head of the Moscow Mormon Mission, echoed the theme of the 1991 article. “The Mormon religion,” he said, “is very pertinent and timely for Russia. We feel very strongly about the family, we don’t smoke, we don’t drink alcohol, coffee or tea, we practice marital fidelity and our life expectancy is on average higher than the rest of America. And I believe this will strike a chord with today’s Russia, whose citizens are victims of rampant alcoholism, drug addiction and the AIDS epidemic.”

Jarvis seems determined to fight the religion bill, which would deprive the Mormons of their status as a legal entity, in turn depriving them of their nice office space near the building of the powerful Kommersant publishing house. The actions of Russia’s legislators, he said, remind him of the phrase, “Daddy, get a hammer, there’s a fly on baby’s face.”

While not ready to wield a hammer, Russia’s sect fighter, Alexander Dvorkin, is concerned about the fly. “The Mormons,” he said, “do not have all the traits of a ‘totalitarian sect,’ but they do have some traits. They deceive their recruitees by calling themselves Christians, though they are polytheists. They have secret rites and ceremonies. The persons recruited do not have full information about the group he/she dedicates his/her life to.” Dvorkin also said he felt the required 10% tithe was economic coercion and that he is bothered by contracts the Mormons have signed with local archives to copy genealogical information onto microfilm to bring back to their headquarters in Utah. This information, Dvorkin said, is used to perform posthumous marriages, baptisms and “bindings” with deceased Russians, which he said he considers “a spiritual sacrilege.”

But Jarvis is quick to set the Mormons apart from those groups targeted by the bill. “We do not do what the lawmakers accuse the sects of,” he said, “that is, ‘zombying’ [turning someone into a zombie]. We say ‘the glory of God is intelligence’; we don’t believe in hypnosis. We never proselytize among underaged children, and parents have to give their consent. The Mormon doctrine is also good for business. The Mormons are good businessmen and some of the best-educated people anywhere.”

Jarvis’ assessment of the downside of the bill showed up his own business acumen. “If the law had not been vetoed by Yeltsin, the Mormons would not be a legal entity for another seven years, they would have to return to worshipping in homes, have no way to invite people to Russia and would not be able to carry out 18 humanitarian projects ... We are delighted that Yeltsin defended the Constitution, but I don’t think we are out of the woods. It is only the beginning of a long fight. But I am optimistic. Russians has always had a deep sense of sympathy for the underdog and they don’t like the state to tell them what to think ...

“We found people in Yeltsin’s administration who were completely clueless about this law – it was definitely a precipitous act. This law stems from the fear of Aum Shin Rikyo type cults. But they don’t operate here anymore. They have been destroyed by the FSB [Federal Security Service]. They have tackled the problem already ... A civil society has certain prices – one is openness to some ideas not shared by the majority ...”

Later, in a phone interview, Elder Spencer from the Mormon Mission in Moscow rejected Dvorkin’s comment that the Mormons are using Russia’s archives for sacrilegious rites. “We are using archives,” he said, “to do ordinances only for church members – I mean, for their relatives.” As to the secrecy of rites, Spencer said that “the Mormons’ rites are sacred, not secret. True, we don’t tell anyone about the contents of these rites, but that is just because we don’t want them to be ridiculed.”

In Search of Consensus

Jarvis is right when he says that this is only the beginning of this conflict. The religious freedom wrought by the collapse of Soviet totalitarianism has brought about an influx of foreign missionaries, a phenomenon which is troubling to many sectors of Russian society. And it will take some time to develop societal consensus as to how to deal with this.

Here are some admittedly subjective thoughts on the nature of the consensus that is emerging.

Agreement is Inevitable

In all likelihood, a compromise bill will be drafted and agreed upon. The first signs of this were evident at press time. In a ceremony in downtown Moscow to consecrate the newly-rebuilt Church of Saints Boris and Gleb, located right in front of the huge defense building, President Yeltsin and Patriarch Alexei warmly embraced and kissed each other. Yeltsin declared that “no obstacle shall separate us.” Alexei, in turn, stood by the law, which he said “is not in any way discriminating and doesn’t squeeze any of our faiths ... We should know who is preaching on our territory and who is teaching their ideology to our children.”

Implementation is Everything

As is often the case in Russia, practical implementation of a law is difficult to assess. John Bukovsky, an opponent of the law as the Vatican’s ambassador in Moscow, is concerned about strictly defining what is encompassed in the preamble’s notion of “other” traditional religions (i.e., is Catholicism included or not?).

Dr. Paul Steeves noted that a “traditional” religion in Russia “is very difficult to define. [Patriarch] Alexei recently said that even Catholicism is not a traditional religion, because it was always on non-Russian territory, like the Baltics ... You could say the same about Buddhism. It is actually interesting that Judaism is mentioned in the preamble – until the time of Catherine, a Jew could not even spend a night on Russian soil ... And, interestingly, institutionalized paganism (Russia’s most “traditional” religion) is growing in Russia as fast as any of the western religions they are concerned about.”

What is more, there is federal law, and then there are other laws. A respected observer of Russia’s religious scene, Lawrence Uzell of the Keston Institute, testified before the US Congress in January that one-fourth of Russia’s regions have adopted laws regulating religious activities that are in violation of both the Russian constitution and the Helsinki agreements on human rights (several regions, Steeves noted, have laws explicitly forbidding proselytizing, which is not a provision of the federal law). That same month, a human rights council working under the Russian presidential administration reported that other parts of the Russian government were infringing on citizens’ constitutional rights of freedom of religion. Among actions cited were “police surveillance of non-Orthodox religions as part of a ‘war on crime,’ creation of a ‘specialized service for aid to victims of several religious organizations’ by the Russian Ministry of Health, and official categorization of certain sects as ‘totalitarian’ and ‘destructive.’”

Return of the Church

Steeves noted that it was the Orthodox Church that set the tone for the present law. “The Church wanted a stricter law than what was passed in first reading in June,” he said. “That got the legislators to be more strict at a time when political realities [tensions between Yeltsin and the parliament] led them to want to bring the Orthodox Church into their camp as an ally.”

In short, the Russian Orthodox Church has once again become a serious political force in the country. Small wonder that future presidential hopeful, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, was one of the first to side with the Patriarch and the Russian Orthodox Church in this conflict. Perhaps he recalled how the Patriarch threw his weight behind Yeltsin in 1996, calling on Orthodox Church members to vote for Yeltsin in the presidential polling.

Spiritual Protectionism

Many observers compare the Russian Orthodox Church with domestic producers who ask the government to protect them against foreign competition with import tariffs. Yet, the sphere of spiritual relations has been traditionally regarded as a somewhat more subtle issue than competition with imported goods. Film director Nikita Mikhalkov, who knows how to strike a cord with both foreign and Russian audiences, agrees. “It is not economics,” he said, “but culture which has been the fundamental factor of life in Russia for centuries ... And the basic culture in Russia was not etiquette – the ability to hold one’s fork correctly and dress properly – but faith. The Orthodox faith.”

Whence the Threat?

The rapid shift from atheism to religious pluralism has been trying. Seventy years of regulating the church, including the Orthodox church, as an enemy of the regime does not give Russia much experience on how to regulate religious activities in these new times.

The Orthodox Church, which is having a hard time recovering from 70 years of Communist rule, is in turn tempted to win the hearts and minds of Russians by the preventive legislative measures of past eras, rather than by force of conviction and persuasion. And the forces of reform and ecumenism in the Orthodox Church do not seem to augur well for the Church becoming more flexible in reaction to the current, rapid social changes.

But self-criticism is on the agenda of some. Father Oleg Stenyaev, Head of the Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Totalitarian Sects, said that he felt the church should not be involved in classficiation of religious groups. “I don’t think this will be impartial,” he said. “It is the state which should do this ... One can end up engaged in religious polemics. We think that the majority of today’s sectants were Christians who left the church for one reason or another. And if we have any complexes in this respect, they should be connected with the questions: why did they leave us, what was that they didn’t like in our church, what were we doing wrong with respect to these people?”

According to the Russian Institute of Personality Development, “it is precisely the transitionary, crisis character in which the society finds itself which contributes to the dissemination of sects and to the growing influence of sects and occult-mythic orientation at a time when communist values have disintegrated and the revival domestic spiritual culture is confronted with objective difficulties.”

Steeves concurred. “What causes cults to thrive,” he said, “is some sort of percieved disorder and chaos, and there is plenty of that in Russia. There will always be cults as long as these types of conditions exist. So the answer is really to work on fixing those problems, getting rid of those conditions.” In fact, he noted, “the situation with cults in Russia is really not much worse than many other places.”

Foreign Pressure Can Boomerang

Some of the loudest hue and cry in the Russian press after Yeltsin’s veto of the religion law was from those accusing him of bowing to western, particularly American, pressure. While this assessment can be debated, it cannot be denied that this interpretation resonates with a large segment of the Russian population. Whatever the case, overt pressure from the Vatican or arm-twisting resolutions from US lawmakers ignore a simple fact: public opinion in Russia is mature enough to take care of itself.

And then there is the glass houses argument. As former Russian Ambassador to the US Vladimir Lukin noted, “there is some sort of naive faith by American senators to the effect that, in their country, the religious legislation is impeccable ... [but] the problem of aggressive totalitarian sects whose activities have claimed hundreds of lives is quite acute in America ...”

Or, as one recent headline in the papers quipped: “We in Russia don’t write God’s name on our banknotes.”

There is a Russian saying that, “a holy place is never empty.” Which may explain why missionaries rushed into the ideological vacuum left by the collapse of Communism – it was fertile ground in the global battle for souls (never mind the fact that Russia had just celebrated 1000 years of her Christianity).

Of course, Russians should enjoy not just political pluralism, but spiritual pluralism as well. After all, perhaps, despite medical and scientific evidence to the contrary, dianetics could help “normalize the blood” without drugs, which are unaffordable for many Russians anyway. And perhaps teaching New Russians the Mormon work ethic and moral creed would have its benefits. But these would seem issues for Russians, in the pain of transition, to decide. Observers, senators and religious leaders, for their part, might want to take the example of the dianetically-literate children in the sandbox, and consider holding their tongue for a time, to see if that can help lessen this pain, instead of making it worse.  RL