Introduction

Introduction Foolishly perhaps, but determined none the less, I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form…. l. ron hubbard And so it seems that L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology’s founder, is getting his wish to have his name carved into history, but not in the way he imagined. To the general public, the Church of Scientology (CoS) is the worst kind of brain- washing cult, founded by a science fiction writer who decided to get rich by inventing a fake religion. Beyond the general cult stereotype, what most people know about Scientology’s belief system is often confined to what they learned from the South Park episode which focused on CoS’s confidential teachings about the cosmic dictator Xenu. Additionally, the public is aware that Tom Cruise and other celebrities are Scientologists, especially other celebrities in the film industry. Since 2009, many people have heard about the accusations of physical abuse certain high-level ex-members experienced at the hands of the current leader. More recently, people have become familiar with the audit- ing (Scientology therapy) process from the film The Master (2012) and from the documentary film version of Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear (2013). Finally, younger individuals active on the Internet are aware that Anonymous, a decentralized hacking collective, was vigorously attacking the Church of Sci- entology in 2008–2009. This, unfortunately, is the full extent of what most people know about Scientology. Though other non-traditional religious groups that have been involved in dramatic incidents have attracted more public attention for short periods of time, the Church of Scientology is arguably the most persistently controversial of all contemporary New Religious Movements (nrms). As a consequence of its involvement in numerous legal conflicts, Scientology has acquired a reputa- tion as a litigious organization, ready to sue critics or anyone else who portrays the Church in an unfavorable light. Partly as a consequence of this fierce repu- tation, and partly because in the past CoS has tried to interfere with relevant scholarship (Cowan 2009), academicians tended to avoid publishing studies about Scientology outside the esoteric realm of specialized scholarly journals until relatively recently. Thus, prior to 2009, there existed only a handful of scholarly, English-language books about the Church: Roy Wallis’s The Road to Total Freedom (1976), Harriet Whitehead’s anthropological study, Renunciation © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi �0.��63/978900433054�_00� <UN> 2 LEWIS AND HELLESøY and Reformation: A Study of Conversion in an American Sect (1987), and J. Gor- don Melton’s short (80 pages) treatment, The Church of Scientology (2000). However, CoS changed its tactics around the time of the now-famous episode of South Park in 2005, “Trapped in the Closet”, which not only caricatured Scientology’s once-secret teachings (Rothstein 2009; Raine 2015), but which also had the fictive president of the Church of Scientology describe the Church as a global money-making scam (Feltmate 2011, 347). This program represented an important threshold in that, contrary to expectations, CoS did not sue the producers of South Park (Urban 2010). On the one hand, as the Church’s en- emies have grown, perhaps CoS no longer has “the resources to sic private eyes on all its critics” (Nocera 2015), and no longer has the resources to harass critics with trivial lawsuits. On the other hand, some observers argue that the new hesitancy to use lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits to silence critics represents a strategic shift (Urban 2010). More evidence that the Church of Scientology had changed tactics was CoS’s response to “The Truth Rundown”, the first article in a series of critical pieces published by the St. Petersburg Times in 2009. These articles interviewed a group of high-level defectors, “who testified that David Miscavige controlled CoS through violence and humiliation…” (Cusack 2012, 309). Although the Church responded in various ways, it again did not sue. In the same year, James R. Lewis’s anthology, Scientology, appeared. While CoS hated certain chapters (one executive in the Office of Special Affairs described the volume as ‘blas- phemy’), once again there were no threats of lawsuits. Finally, though Hugh Urban’s 2011 book on the Church was somewhat less controversial, it was not exactly a friendly study either; nevertheless, CoS did not sue Hugh Urban’s publisher over his The Church of Scientology. We recount this history as a partial explanation for why, on the one hand, there had been so little scholarship on this important movement for so long. On the other hand, the topic of Scientology has become white hot in recent years as a consequence of the Church’s (losing) battle with the Internet, and increased – and often scandalous – news media coverage. As a consequence, we are on the verge of experiencing a small tsunami of new scholarship on Sci- entology in the form of new articles, dissertations, monographs and antholo- gies. There was even a specialized academic conference on Scientology held in Belgium in 2014 that both of us attended. The Brill Handbook of Scientology is but one part of this larger explosion of academic treatments of the Church. Because so much has been written about CoS that provides the basics about Hubbard and Scientology, we asked ourselves how much background informa- tion we should provide here. There are enough chapters in this collection on the Scientology controversies that it is unnecessary to rehearse that part of <UN>.

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