Church of Scientology, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Love Has Won
"After a contentious 46-year history in Clearwater, three top city officials and Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige met this week to discuss how to start fresh.
The meeting on Monday [11/29/2021] at a church office on North Fort Harrison Avenue served as an introduction between Miscavige and Clearwater's two newest administrators: City Manager Jon Jennings, who took over on Nov. 8, and City Attorney David Margolis, who started on Oct. 25. Mayor Frank Hibbard also took part in the meeting.
"I heard loud and clear from (Miscavige) that he wants to partner with the city," Jennings said. "From my perspective, a partnership is really that we are going to put the past behind us in terms of any acrimony and so forth and that we are going to develop a place of trust where we can work collaboratively together."
That partnership would relate primarily to redeveloping downtown, where Scientology has had its international spiritual headquarters since 1975 and where companies connected to the church have purchased large tracts of real estate in recent years. During a sit-down that lasted 3½ hours, Miscavige reintroduced photo renderings and a video simulation of the downtown retail plan Scientology developed in 2017, according to Hibbard.
The plan, created without city input, included Scientology paying to renovate facades of buildings on four blocks of Cleveland Street and using consultants to recruit high-end retailers to empty storefronts. It also included building an entertainment complex along vacant land on Myrtle Avenue with a movie theater, bowling alley and dining.
Miscavige confirmed at the time the church used limited liability companies to purchase the Myrtle Avenue land, a vacant jewelry store and auto garage, a nine-story office tower and a historic theater on North Fort Harrison Avenue for the retail plan."
Religion News Service: Mormon tithing, revisited
"In this season of giving, I have been thinking about what has changed in my life in the last year since I published a column explaining why I had stopped tithing to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The short version of the story is that I was deeply disturbed two years ago by the revelation that the church had stockpiled more than $100 billion worth of investments and was not utilizing those funds for helping others, but rather to shore up business enterprises such as the City Creek Mall in Salt Lake City.
$100 billion is an almost unimaginable sum of money, and it is fair to say with the tremendous gains in the stock market in the last two years, that could have grown to $130 billion or even more, depending on how the assets are allocated.
I don't want to have the argument that "The church is already doing so much! Look at all it does for charity." It's true the church gives millions of dollars every year to charity. In 2020, it gave nearly a billion (though not, apparently, from the investment fund in question). I have been very proud this year, for example, of the church's involvement globally with ensuring a more equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to poor nations, to which it has donated more than $20 million."
"Amy Carlson, the leader of a New Age sect known as Love Has Won, died due to decline brought on by alcohol abuse, anorexia and dosing colloidal silver, according to an autopsy report from the El Paso County Coroner's Office in Colorado.
Mystery initially shrouded Carlson's death after her mummified body was discovered in April in a green sleeping bag with its eyes missing in a home in Crestone, Colorado, arrest affidavits revealed at the time. Police had raided the home after being alerted by a member of the group who said Carlson's body had been transported to a mobile home that served as the group's headquarters from across the country.
Several members of Love Has Won, who referred to Carlson as "Mother God," were taken into custody after her body, which had been decomposing for roughly one month, was found. In interviews with law enforcement, the group claimed Carlson was not dead, but was simply "out of communication."
But, in a report obtained by The Guru Magazine, Dr. Emily Russell ruled that Carlson "died as a result of global decline in the setting of alcohol abuse, anorexia, and chronic colloidal silver ingestion."
Corporal Steve Hanson of the Saguache County Sheriff's Office previously said that investigators found human remains with "what appears to be glitter type makeup on around the eyes."
While conducting an external examination, Russell similarly remarked on the body's missing eyes which she said were "not appreciated secondary to decomposition," but showed no evidence of trauma.
At a mere 75 lbs, Carlson had a tie-dye fleece shawl draped around her bony shoulders and a faux-fur scarf and bandana cradling the blue-gray skin around her neck, Russell wrote.
The 45-year-old wore two pairs of socks and donned a gold-colored headband encrusted with blue and green stones, several chains, and a pendant necklace, the report stated. A red scrunchie swept back her reddish-brown hair and she wore grey cotton pants with a "diaper containing red purge-type fluid," the report states.
County coroner Tom Perrin told The Daily Beast in May that there was nothing to indicate her death was caused by foul play. In July he told the Denver Post that autopsy results had been delayed due to challenges finding a lab that could test Carlson's body for metals."
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