The Sandman author Neil Gaiman rarely discusses his relationship with Scientology. Although Gaiman himself does not identify as either a Scientologist or as Jewish, his family’s traditional religion, his family members are all longtime and prominent members of the Church of Scientology in the U.K.
Gaiman addressed the matter frankly during his recent interview with comedian and podcaster Marc Maron on Maron’s popular WTF podcast. When asked by Maron what his parent’s “thing” was, Gaiman answered frankly, “My parents’ thing was mostly Scientology when I was growing up, that was their thing. They were the first wave [of British Scientology] so that was their thing.”
Gaiman noted that his family still practiced Judaism in addition to Scientology, and confirmed to Maron that his parents treated the often-controversial religion as a self-help practice. Gaiman’s father, David Bernard Gaiman, was at one time the Church’s Public Relations Director during the ‘60s and ‘70s, and was often in the media at the time. His younger sister, Claire Edwards, is the head of Scientology Missions International. His other younger sister, Lizzy Calcioli, is the executive director of Wealden House Life Improvement Centre, a life coaching facility that uses Scientology counseling procedures. The family is of Polish-Jewish and other Eastern European-Jewish origins.
Asked about his own relationship with Scientology, Gaiman stated:
“I think what it gave me… I think that what was great for me, looking back on it, I don’t think I knew this at the time was, I’m going to a high Church of England School, very religious but Christian school, I’m a Jewish kid studying for my bar mitzvah and there’s Scientology going on at home and I’m, like … it gave me a wonderful sort of vantage point going, people believe all these different things, okay, but I don’t have to believe any of this because I can be over here and not believe that, I can be over here and not believe that which means that … it’s kind of like that thing with where you start talking to people about what gods they believe in and you go, ‘Isn’t it amazing that you don’t believe in all of these gods and they don’t believe in all of those gods but somehow out of all of the millions of gods human beings have come up with that didn’t exist you found the one that did.”
— Neil Gaiman
Gaiman was able to single out one benefit of his parents’ practice, noting Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard’s former career as a writer. “What I like best about that was just the idea of a lot of people who didn’t seem to think that being a science fiction writer was a failure as a profession.”
The Sandman will premiere this Friday on Netflix.