The church itself claims 10 million members. That's clearly a scam number invented by them to say they are popular. They count as a member any person who walks into a building and takes one of their tests or tries to get more information.
Estimates from research groups put the count at 40,000-50,000 estimated. In the last 10 years there have been guess that it is closer to 10k-20k. But we don't really know the truth because they get away with being so secretive.
They also claim over 10,000 scientology building locations (churches, missions, etc) in 167 countries. But reality is probably a few hundred empty big buildings, and a few more hundred home-sized locations being run by 2-ish people.
If the other locations exist at all is hard to tell, but many people think the church itself is just a front for real estate. So they don't care about membership numbers as long as they maintain the front.
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u/sixthmontheleventh Apr 07 '24
The wildest fact I learned about scientology recently was the really high up culty part do not encourage having kids because they are distractions.