Quiz: Can You Match the Celebrity with the Obscure or Controversial Religion?
Last week, actress Leah Remini opened up about her experiences as a longtime member of the church of Scientology. As she explained in A&E’s Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, she spent years of her life and millions—yes, millions—of dollars trying to achieve the highest levels of wherever the heck you’re supposed to get to in Scientology, all the while suffering abuse, violence, and harassment at the hands of fellow Scientologists whom she called family and friends. She even opened up to the Reddit community for an Ask Me Anything session about her experiences.
This type of religious abuse is nothing new. Fear is an effective tool used to enslave peoples’ minds in a particular belief system. But exposing the abuses in such belief systems takes bravery, and I commend Remini’s courage in exposing Scientology and its many problems involving curbing freedom of expression for its members.
But it makes you wonder—considering the number of high-profile celebrities (Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Allie, and many others), how does Scientology attract and keep such public individuals and rope them into becoming so heavily involved, especially considering Scientology’s reputation that some would describe as being “cult-like”? Then again, are the beliefs in Scientology any different than the beliefs that, say, a man was born of a virgin and turned water into wine?
As I researched, I discovered plenty of other movie stars who have donated their time and money to promoting religion, and you may be surprised at who is on the list. Can you guess which celebrity belongs to which religion? Take our quiz here, and let us know how you scored in the comments!