Via NY Post:

It’s been one week since Going Clear, the harrowing HBO documentary about L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, premiered. In that time, it’s set off a firestorm of criticism directed at the religion, and in particular, two of its most prominent faces: Tom Cruise and Church of Scientology leader David Miscaviage.

To their credit, last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live did not fail to acknowledge this watershed cultural moment. The program aired a flawlessly executed three-minute parody video called “Always Believe,” a song performed in 1990 by the members of the Church of Neurotology.

You can tie almost everything in “Always Believe” back to this 1990 video for “We Stand Tall,” shot by and for the Church of Scientology and prominently featured in Going Clear:

Watching both in succession, the brilliance of SNL’s parody becomes even clearer. It’s all there: Acolytes entering Dianetics/Diametrics seminars, stock footage that misappropriates patriotism, dolly shots focused on overly zealous parishoners, e-meters/brain machines, and even some tres creepy black-and-white footage of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard/Neurotology founder Bobby Moynihan. Also, Taran Killam is quite clearly portraying the maniacal Miscaviage, who also appears in the “We Stand Tall” video. All hail Meepthorp!

For those that haven’t seen the movie or don’t understand the background, Scientology started out claiming to be a medical practice. When the AMA looked askance at that, Scientology sat down with their officials to deliberately cloak themselves as a religion, even to the point of for a period adopting the Roman collar of the priest, to both to avoid trouble of practicing medicine without a license as well as to avoid taxes. They were involved in a legendary fight where they actually defeated the IRS to whom they owed millions and got that status, after their leader, David Miscavige had a private meeting with the head of the IRS.

They have been accused of torture, child abuse, forced abortions, kidnappings, people going ‘missing’, questionable deaths and locking their members up in the “Hole”. Two of their more notorious actions involved federal convictions for loosing thousands of agents to infiltrate the U.S. government to stop negative information on Scientology, Operation Snow White, and setting up and stalking a journalist who wrote critical things about them, Operation Freakout.