“Keeping Scientology Working”

This chapter introduces features of Scientology’s systematic theology as developed in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1959, L. Ron Hubbard established a headquarters at Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, England. This location became the international base of Scientology until the founding of the Sea Organization in 1967. The Saint Hill period was instrumental in the intellectual development of Scientology. During these years, Hubbard systematized Scientology’s educational methodology (Study Technology), theology of sin (overts and withholds), theology of evil (suppressive persons), and standards of orthodoxy and orthopraxy (“Keeping Scientology Working” or KSW). KSW serves to legitimate Dianetics and Scientology within the church because it self-referentially dictates that Hubbard’s “technologies” provide mental and spiritual benefits only insofar as they are uniformly understood, applied, and perpetuated by others.

Preliminary Conclusions from Interviews and Fieldwork

This chapter offers eight conclusions about Scientology, Scientologists, and the Church of Scientology that emerged in the course of the author’s interviews and fieldwork. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Scientology is not merely a religion of belief or faith—but self-knowledge; (2) L. Ron Hubbard is not God to Scientologists—but he is the model OT (Operating Thetan); (3) the path to Clear and OT is codified in the “Bridge to Total Freedom;” (4) materials from the OT Levels are confidential and copyrighted; (5) most Scientologists are on the lower half of the Bridge to Total Freedom; (6) movement up the Bridge usually costs money and always costs time; (7) the church is theoretically all-denominational but functionally sectarian—at least most of the time; and (8) most Scientologists are ordinary people seeking extraordinary potential for themselves and others—not staff members and certainly not Hollywood celebrities.

Conclusion

This conclusion offers reflections on the future of Scientology and its academic study. As the Church of Scientology advances further into the twenty-first century, it is likely that scholars of Dianetics and Scientology will include both insiders and outsiders, a trend that is also discernible in “older” and “newer” religious history. The rise and success of Mormon studies is taken up as one instructive example. In much the same way, Scientology studies may in the coming decades become an independent field of inquiry on the religious studies landscape, in which case there will be ample room for academic work along various disciplinary lines. Open areas of research are suggested, including an academic biography of Hubbard, forms of Dianetics and Scientology practiced outside the church, and fuller investigation of Scientology’s origins, theology, and practices.

“We Come Back”

This chapter surveys the founding and early years of the Church of Scientology’s religious order, the Sea Organization, from 1967 to 1975. During this period, Hubbard’s most dedicated adherents sailed the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Caribbean, which provided him the opportunity to write policies for the church and codify many of the confidential Operating Thetan (OT) levels beyond the state of Clear. This historical overview culminates with the establishment of a spiritual headquarters that exists to this day in Clearwater, Florida. Qualitative and quantitative data about the contemporary Sea Organization is analyzed, based on interviews with current Sea Org members who represent first- and second-generation perspectives. The process of leaving the Sea Org is also examined.

“Build a Better Bridge!”

This chapter surveys themes from 1976 to 2018 and begins with an overview of Hubbard’s final years that set the stage for the shape of the contemporary church. It was during this time that the controversial Guardian’s Office (GO) was disbanded. The institutional outcome of the GO’s expulsion was the reorganization of all Scientology organizations. David Miscavige currently heads one of these corporations, the Religious Technology Center (RTC), and is also considered the “ecclesiastical leader of the Scientology religion.” His influence on the post-Hubbard church is examined, including the victory to secure tax-exempt status from the IRS in 1993; debates over the “brainwashing thesis”; Scientologists’ engagement with the media; and, finally, recent theological developments and the church’s ongoing interface with the broader culture through social betterment and humanitarian programs.

Before the Religion

This chapter examines some of the psychological, philosophical, theological, and legal foundations of the Scientology religion in postwar America in the early 1950s. The process by which L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics movement transformed into the institutionalized religion of Scientology provides scholars of American religion a documented history of the birth and construction of a new religion in Cold War America—one that freely assimilated influences from Eastern and Western religion, popular psychology, and science fiction. In the 1950s, Dianetics organizations faced a major legitimation crisis when the legal rights to use “Dianetics” were temporarily lost to an outside investor. Before reacquiring them, Hubbard had already begun to brand “Scientology” as the spiritualized (and administratively centralized) outcome of Dianetics techniques. Two of the most central innovations during this transition were an emphasis on out-of-body experiences (“exteriorizations”) and especially the recollection of past lives, both of which informed Hubbard’s mental and spiritual counseling.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the methods and means by which historical, sociological, and theological research was conducted. Moving beyond debates over the nature of “religion” versus “sect” and “cult,” an approach is introduced that privileges the religious self-understandings of Church of Scientology members, who have been marginal players in the secondary literature. As such, the religious agents—Scientologists themselves—are allowed space to express themselves on their own terms and in their own words, while recognizing that other narratives and counternarratives exist. The chapter addresses methodological risks and rewards in the academic study of Scientology and describes how access to the Church of Scientology was gained, which led to fieldwork and sixty-nine formal interviews over a period of six years. Chapter summaries for the remainder of the volume are provided.