“It honestly doesn’t have anything to do with anything that I’ve ever learned about the group or organization,” the actress and practicing Scientologist said in a new interview.
Erika Christensen has no interest in ever watching Leah Remini’s Scientology and the Aftermath or 2015’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. During a recent interview with Dax Shepard for his Armchair Expert podcast, the actress and practicing Scientologist explained why she steers clear of programs that criticize her faith.
“It honestly doesn’t have anything to do with anything that I’ve ever learned about the group or organization. To be specific about [Going Clear], if somebody has read a book, read Dianetics or some Scientology book and wants to philosophically tell me what they disagree with it, cool,” Christensen told her former Parenthood co-star. “That is a totally different thing. But, specifically with that documentary, the documentary was based on a book. The book was not even published in some English-speaking countries because the libel laws are stricter than they are here.”
She added, “There’s so much that is actually talking about sources. They have proved themselves to be irrelevant. There’s no relevance in what they’re saying.”
Despite the unfavorable lens that Scientology is seen through in Going Clear and Leah Remini’s Emmy-winning A&E docuseries (which is expected to return for a third season), Christensen told Shepard that she had a positive experience being raised by Scientologist parents.
“It’s hard to raise someone as a Scientologist because it’s something that you do, it’s not something that you believe. My parents definitely are Scientologists, approached parenting from a Scientology viewpoint,” she continued. “I can see that in the way that they approached me as a kid and really tried to do what I’m doing now, which is trying to temper absolutely necessary discipline and rules and structure with fostering independent thought and freedom of personality. It has to be true for you.”
Christensen went on to say that Scientology — famously practiced by Tom Cruise, Elisabeth Moss, John Travolta and more stars — allows her to “always [drive] towards my best self.”
“I was a kid. I was like, ‘Sounds cool to me, fine,'” she also recalled, revealing that she was fascinated by the religion from a young age. “When I was 12, I started doing a bunch of the little introductory courses that they still have now that are maybe a few hours each.”
Listen to Christensen’s full interview with Shepard here.
PGM.createScriptTag("//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.6&appId=303838389949803");
Source link