Give Scientology a break!

Preconceptions can blind you, so you see what’s festering in the back of your mind rather than what’s shining right in front of your eyes.

Take stories about the opening of a new Scientology center in the South Loop. The accounts focused on the accusations directed at the church, that it is a “criminal enterprise.”

Scientology stories always trot out the controversies.

While downplaying what is, to me, the bigger news: Somebody opened something in downtown Chicago. The corpse is twitching! The headline in the Sun-Times was “Church of Scientology expands in Chicago,” which is like topping a story on the Resurrection with “Ex-carpenter goes for walk.”

I should show my hand here. All religions are scams, to one degree or another. Which is not to say they are without value. People can derive deep emotional moral satisfaction from being defrauded — the past decade of American history proves that. Life is squishy, painful and short. Why not embroider existence with some mystic hoo-ha?

Look at the charges outlined in the Sun-Times story: “The California lawsuit, filed by former Scientologists, accuses the group of, among other things: unpaid child labor, identity theft, covering up sexual assaults ...”

Are there not well-established churches — no names, please! — also regularly rocked with at least a few of those accusations? I believe there are.

That said, Scientology does have a way of standing out from the crowd.

“An anti-democratic authoritarian personality cult that will not tolerate critical comments (however justified) about its policies or leaders,” is how Stephen A. Kent, sociology professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, described Scientology.

In Scientology’s defense, there’s a lot of that going around.

Of course, opening a new business isn’t the hard part. It’s the staying open part that is the trick. And here, like any hopeful restaurant or internet startup, Scientology’s new center faces challenges, as Kent explained when we spoke.

“Few if any of them seem to be succeeding,” he said. “The buildings are gorgeous, but the number of staff in them is very low. It does not appear that members of the public are flocking to these attractive buildings to take the courses that Scientologists are offering.”

The same slough facing mainstream religion weighs down newbies like Scientology.

“That’s what all the evidence indicates,” Kent said. The church claims 10 million members, and in a letter to the Sun-Times reacting to the paper’s March 7 story on the opening of the center, calls suggestions it is shrinking “ludicrous.”

Kent says accurate figures are hard to find.

“Getting official stats about the numbers of Scientologists is very difficult,” he said. “Many indications suggest the number of active Scientologists has plummeted since the 1980s and 1990s, perhaps as low as 20,000 people.”

Why?

“Scientology has gotten a lot of bad publicity from critical former members,” he said. “Its message is locked in a peculiar interpretation of the world from the 1950s, created by the narcissistic L. Ron Hubbard. Any religion that claims to be a fixed revelation has tremendous difficulties adjusting to change, and Scientology insists that Hubbard’s words are gospel. So it has problems.”

Even its reputation of harassing critics — a fellow reporter warned me that writing this is sticking my head in the lion’s mouth — has been watered down by social media. I’ll be very, very surprised if Scientology musters a response anywhere near the numbers or venom that offended Aldi fans displayed this summer.

“The internet democratized criticism against Scientology,” Kent said. “So many critics came forward, the group has a difficult time going after all of them. The sting and the danger from criticizing Scientology has diminished greatly.”

We’ll see. Though for the record, I am not criticizing Scientology. Frankly, I feel it is unjustly maligned. If a new Protestant church opened in the Loop — wouldn’t that be news! — I doubt accounts of the debut would include how organized Christianity just kneecapped the reproductive rights of 45 million Americans and is dragging the country, kicking and screaming toward theocracy.

Whatever damage Scientology might cause is chump change in comparison. Besides, its scary reputation seems to be a relic, a Cheshire Cat smile, lingering as the thing itself fades.

“Almost all new religions die,” Kent said. “Often it takes several generations for the death to occur. It’s hard to see in the future how groups like Scientology will have long-term staying power. Probably Scientology is in its early days of decline.”

If you disagree, well, no need to yell at me. I’m not the Delphic Oracle laying out the future based on reading the entrails of ducks. As I like to say, we don’t have to argue, we can just wait and find out.