http://www10.nytimes.com/2001/09/20/nyregion/20CHAN.html?searchpv=nytToday
NY Times, NY Region - 20 september 2001 - By AMY WALDMAN

Religious Leader Takes His Calling to Ground Zero :

CHANGED LIVES :

Amid faces gray with grief and grime, theirs are fresh, even smiling.
Among blackened uniforms and sooty equipment, their yellow T-shirts are
bright buoys. They are clean.

At any time, well over 100 volunteer ministers from the Church of
Scientology mill around the remains of the World Trade Center. On the
day of the attack, they took in food to workers. Since then, they have
taken the mind-altering techniques developed by the church's founder, L.
Ron Hubbard. 

When rescue workers stagger from the wreckage, the ministers, identified
by their T-shirts, try to focus the workers' minds and revive their
bodies. In "locationals," workers are told to look at the sky, or at
water bottles on a table — anything to ground them in the present, the
outside world, rather than the horror within the rubble.

"They bring people back, so to speak, so they are in control of their
mind and environment," said the Rev. John Carmichael, the president
of the Church of Scientology of New York. "You want to help get rid of
the fatigue and the fuzziness." 

At 54, Mr. Carmichael has the blond hair and blue eyes of a surfer, and
the craggy face of a Mick Jagger or a Willem Dafoe. The result is an
uncanny resemblance to "that congressman from California," Gary A.
Condit, as one woman who saw him in a coffee shop yesterday put it. 

He grew up in Illinois and Florida, a Presbyterian by birth who had
"gone atheist." He discovered "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental
Health," Mr. Hubbard's best-selling book, at a roadside stand while a
college student at Cornell University, and never looked back. He became
an ordained minister in 1973. 

He has given half his life to the religion, he said, because "it works,"
and because it is not based on the promise of salvation, but on the
premise that there are practical ways to improve lives. His work for the
church has taken him to San Francisco, Paris and Munich, among other
places. He has been president of the New York church for 13 years. 

The volunteer corps of ministers has been active in disasters, from
earthquakes in Los Angeles to the bombings in Oklahoma City and Atlanta,
since 1988. But the disaster this time far surpasses those in scale, and
it is in Mr. Carmichael's front yard. 

At least 800 ministers have cycled through the scene, many coming from
Quebec, Florida or California, he said.

Yesterday, Mr. Carmichael's 19-year-old son manned the busy front desk
at the church's building on 46th Street. Signs out front proclaimed it a
"Disaster Relief Headquarters" and encouraged volunteers to ask how they
could help.

Though many religious organizations are supplying assistance for the
disaster, few are as well-organized as the Scientologists, or as evident
at the scene. When many volunteers were asked to clear out over the
weekend, the Scientologists were allowed to stay, working alongside
groups like the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

When he drove down to the site on Tuesday, Mr. Carmichael said, a police
officer waved him through. "You're a Scientologist," he recalled the
officer saying. "You're good."

Scientology is growing rapidly, Mr. Carmichael said, and "growth
bespeaks popularity." Others worry that disaster assistance could mask
proselytizing. Dissidents have accused Scientology of having cultlike
overtones, and of preying on members financially.

One woman who on Saturday received a "nerve assist," in which fingers
are run over the body in a way that Scientologists believe unblocks
nerve channels and restores energy flow, said she was asked whether she
would like a "little Dianetics session." Mr. Carmichael said that when
people ask, "What was that?" after the assists, they are told it is
Scientology, and given a "little piece of something" to answer
questions. 

"It's not proselytizing," Mr. Carmichael said. "It's us trying to help."


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