Scientology: Up Stat, Down Stat (original) (raw)
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Scientology, from controversy to global expansion and recognition - Eric Roux
The story of Scientology, a religion relatively young at sixty years old, is quite a rich tale. This chapter focuses on the past twenty-five years, but with a prologue from the early 1980s, just before the death of Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, giving a broad overview. It covers the "struggling for survival times" of Scientology, the stressing of the religious mission of the Church, the work to deliver Scientology to parishioners in its purest form, the "Ideal Churches" program, the humanitarian programs and the passage from being a struggling controversial new religion to being a recognized religion steadily expanding.
Scientology: Religion of the Stars – A Christian Perspective
2020
Depending on your perspective, Scientology was either discovered or invented by the successful pulp and science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. He and his followers claimed to have uncovered deep secrets of the mind and spirit. But while adherents say Hubbard’s discoveries can eradicate most of what ails humanity, critics argue that Hubbard invented a new religion with the same creative mind that fashioned popular works of science fiction. Hubbard’s critics add that this new religion was formulated to make its founder and close associates very wealthy.
New Directions in the Study of Scientology – Transcript
Implicit Religion, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2020, pp. 89-101.
David Robertson: So we’re here at the BASR Conference 2018, in Belfast. And I have gathered several colleagues together today to have a discussion about Scientology: the idea of new directions in the study of Scientology, and how do we move the conversation about Scientology forward? There’s a large number of different directions we can go in that conversation, so I’m not going to constrain it at this point by saying exactly what I mean by that. But we’re going to start off by looking at some interesting data and approaches and move into a discussion of the larger methodological issues about the study of Scientology in relationship to NRMs and other more established religious traditions. And then we’ll end the conversation by opening it out to some interesting responses, in the coming week. But for now I’m going to start by going round the table and asking my colleagues to introduce themselves.
„Scientology – A New Age Religion?“
Jim Lewis (ed.), Scientology. Oxford University Press. Oxford 2009, 225–243, 2009
In the German context, the term "New Age" has almost vanished completely from the discourses in society as well as in academics. 1 This is due to the fact that the New Age label has been replaced by a broader use of the term "esotericism" (Esoterik), and even in academia the term is used only in a narrow sense nowadays, with reference to the "historical" and formative phase of a relatively distinct movement or "discourse" in the seventies and eighties of the last century. 2 Accordingly, and different from the usage of the term in Anglophone contexts, contemporary people with alternative or esoteric religious orientations would not refer to themselves as "New Agers" in Germany at all, as it would still be possible in, for example, Great Britain. Accordingly, the title of this essay is referring to the wider and unspecific notion of "New Age" as it is still established in the Anglophone context. Scientology has often been put into question with regard to its "religious" nature, and several scholars in the new religious movements area have even refrained from a closer study of Scientology. If Scientology is viewed as a religion at all-an issue which is again and again debated both in academic religious studies as well as in the quarrels about the legal status of this organization in various countries-it is mainly perceived as a candidate which might fit into this 'alternative' realm of modern religiosity denoted by such labels like "New Age" or "Esotericism". Following its formal beginning in the 1950ies, the "Church of Scientology" has gradually surfaced as the most hotly debated movement during the second half of the twentieth century, and it is stimulating ongoing discussions until today. For a differentiated and unbiased answer to the question concerning the religious "nature" or "function" of Scientology, it is therefore necessary to recapitulate the historical formation of Scientology, its basic anthropological, soteriological and cosmological convictions, as well as its rituals and institutions, and to relate these findings to the wider realm of contemporary, or older, religious movements-a task, which obviously exceeds the scope of this essay. Certainly, several aspects of Scientology don't fit easily into "traditional" concepts of religion, whereas others appear definitely "religious" again.-The question of this essay therefore is, whether Scientology could be perceived as a typical esoteric or "New Age"-version of religion and "Weltanschauung" within the context of our postmodern industrial society.
Postscript Subsidia IV - Scientology in a scholarly perspective
Scientology in a Scholarly Perspective, a collection of academic papers by a wide range of international scholars, was released January 25 in Antwerp by the Faculty for Comparative Study of Religions and Humanism (FVG). The bilingual work, in English and French, is the 2017 edition of the FVG’s annual publication Acta Comparanda. It contains papers by religion scholars from the United States, Belgium, France, Italy and Australia delivered at the 2014 International Conference “Scientology in a Scholarly Perspective.” This is the english version of the postscript written by Rev Eric Roux.
Brill Handbook of Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis and Kjersti Hellesøy, pp. 485-506, 2017
The Church of Scientology, following the example of its founder L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986) has been notorious for the extent to which it has striven to keep teachings (particularly the controversial OT Levels) secret, and for the virulence of the reprisals it has visited upon those who have taken the ‘Tech’ and used it for purposes other than those Hubbard mandated, or in a context outside CoS. Yet since 1954 when the Church of Scientology was founded, there have been a number of notable individuals who were briefly Scientologists, then broke away to form their own groups, whether religious, spiritual or secular. Within CoS these people are termed ‘squirrels’, a name coined by Hubbard. This chapter examines three of these ‘squirrels’: Werner Erhard (b. Jack Rosenberg, 1935), founder of est (now Landmark Education); Ken Dyers (1922-2007), founder of Kenja; and Harvey Jackins (1916-1999), founder of Re-evaluation Counselling (or Co-Counselling). Both Erhard and Dyers were insistent that their movements were not religious, yet they have nevertheless been accused of leading ‘cults’ and of sharing many of the behaviours characteristic of abusive charismatic leaders of NRMs. Harvey Jackins’ adoption of Dianetics led to a different application of Scientology ‘Tech’, which for several decades hovered at the fringe of respectable psychology. Yet the reputation of Jackins too, has been tainted by stereotypical NRM/’cult’ leader behaviours, including sexual predation on young girls in RC. It is concluded that the biography and career of L. Ron Hubbard, in addition to the teachings he developed, had a disproportionate influence on these three men, and that to a large extent each replicated LRH and CoS in their own careers and groups.