The Church of Scientology’s Celebrity Centre trades as much on the glory of the stars who stayed there when L. Ron Hubbard was just a junior thetan — Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Swanson, Ginger Rogers. That was before Scientologists bought the Château Élysée, a long-term residential hotel for movie stars, and filled it with the glamour of… Kirstie Alley’s fat jokes. But the Scientologists still sell the aura of the fallen stars. “It’s as if Falun Gong bought the Algonquin and advertised the gin Martinis that Dorothy Parker used to drink,” writes Dana Goodyearin the New Yorker. What makes her Scientology story stand out is her emphasis not on the oddities of the religion, but on the faded grandeur of its real estate. It’s the best thing the New Yorker has done on religion in a long time.