'The Handmaid's Tale' star Elisabeth Moss says people need to "educate themselves" about the Church of Scientology before they criticise it.
Elisabeth Moss
The 36-year-old actress was introduced to the bizarre faith - which was created by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard - by her family and after deciding to investigate the teachings in the book 'Dianetics' for herself she committed to the belief system.
Moss accepts that Scientologists are misunderstood by many people outside of the organisation but she urges anyone ready to dismiss the pseudoreligion to learn about it first before making up their mind.
In an interview with website The Daily Beast, she said: "Listen, it's a complicated thing because the things that I believe in, I can only speak to my personal experience and my personal beliefs. One of the things I believe in is freedom of speech. I believe we as humans should be able to critique things. I believe in freedom of the press. I believe in people being able to speak their own opinions. I don't ever want to take that away from anybody, because that actually is very important to me. At the same time, I should hope that people educate themselves for themselves and form their own opinion, as I have."
Moss welcomes open discussions about Scientology and all faiths and insists any censorship of free speech or the right to practice your chosen religion is comparable to Gilead, the totalitarian society ruled by a fictional fundamentalist regime in 'The Handmaid's Tale'.
She added: "People should be allowed to talk about what they want to talk about and believe what they want to believe and you can't take that away - and when you start to take that away, when you start to say 'you can't think that,' 'you can't believe that,' 'you can't say that,' then you get into trouble. Then you get into Gilead.
"Whatever happens, I'm never going to take away your right to talk about something or believe something, and you can't take away mine."
The former 'West Wing' actress has been reluctant to speak publicly about her Scientologist beliefs, much in the same way that Tom Cruise and John Travolta have been, because she doesn't think it is possible to convey the teachings properly in a short interview.
She said: "It's funny, there's two things you're never supposed to talk about at a dinner - politics or religion - and of course I'm doing 'The Handmaid's Tale', which is politics and religion, so it's a strange situation where you're going to be asked about these topics. I choose to express myself in my work and my art. I don't choose to express myself about it in interviews. I don't choose to talk about not just religion, but my personal life - who I'm dating and that kind of thing. So for me, it's so hard to unpack in a sound bite or an interview, but I will say that the things that I truly believe in are the things that I've mentioned, and I think that they're very important."
Scientology was created in 1952 by author Hubbard and is based on the belief that human beings are immortal, that a person's life experience transcends a single lifetime.
Bizarrely, Hubbard claimed that billions of extra-terrestrial beings were sent to Earth by Xenu - the dictator of the 'Galactic Confederacy', comprised of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth - who gathered them around volcanoes and then destroyed the aliens with hydrogen bombs.
The aliens' souls attached themselves to chosen humans, known as thetans, who will be one day be saved from their life of spiritual harm.
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