AUTHOR
Leland Thoburn
Leland has been a Scientologist for 45 years. His writings have been published in numerous magazines and literary journals, including Foliate Oak Review, Writers’ Journal, Feathertale Review, Calliope, Vocabula Review and others. Formerly an executive at EarthLink Inc., he works as a business consultant.
MEDIA & ETHICS
Author’s Note: For years, the National Enquirer has taken shots at Scientology and at other religions, benevolent organizations, and charitable groups whose names exceeded the two-syllable maximum that its editors could pronounce.
TOLERANCE
What hatred and intolerance look like: The charred remains of 4-year old Melissa Morrison, recovered from the ashes of the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, after the inferno of April 19, 1993 ended the FBI’s 51-day siege.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
On August 3, 2013, Kayla Mueller was kidnapped by ISIS fighters outside of a hospital in Northern Syria. She had traveled from her home in Prescott, Arizona to help Syrians displaced by that country’s civil war.
TOLERANCE
He is an expert on this hellish road you travel, and would teach us its history, and the history of those who’ve gone before.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
The theory of evolution postulates that the many different forms of life all descended from a common ancestor, with the many and diverse genetic detours caused by natural selection, mutation, and other factors.
TOLERANCE
Hysterical cheers swept through the flock like gusts of wind across a wheat field. Krak stood silent, smiling, soaking in the sounds as if each was a cry of adoration for him personally. In the frenzy, three innocent gulls were pecked to death.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Somewhere, thousands of years before Christ, deep in China, a spark was lit. We don’t know if it was a man or a woman but someone looked away from the pain, toil, and terror of life and saw a light. Religion was born.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Until the mid-1300s, witchcraft and magic had been quietly accepted as part of the mystic melting pot that was Europe. That now changed. Early inquisitions in France targeted witches as the source of the catastrophes.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
Last October, eleven worshippers at the at Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania were murdered during Shabbat morning services by a man whose only knowledge of his victims was that they were Jewish. And he hated Jews. [i] It was the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history.
TOLERANCE
The world can be very cruel. Certainly if you sit back and let mass media and pop culture swamp you, it can seem that way. But look closer. Good people are doing good things all around us.
