What the Moonies Have to Teach Us about Scientology

The Church of Scientology is a difficult organisation to study. It is secretive, and typically responds to requests from academics to observe its activities with refusal, suspicion and hostility.

However, all New Religious Movements are not like this. In its early days, the Unification Church (AKA ‘the Moonies’) allowed sociologists free access to its activities.

Two classic studies of the Unification Church were made during this period. Both closely examined the process of  ‘conversion’  – that is, how outsiders are persuaded to think of themselves as believers.

Both studies made interesting observations about the process of ‘conversion’ and collected reliable figures about the success rates of Unification Church Missionaries. These insights can help to make good estimates of how successful Scientology’s recruitment efforts are  – something Scientology keeps strictly secret.

The French & German vs. American Debate over ‘New Religions’, Scientology, and Human Rights

2001 The French & German vs. American Debate over ‘New Religions’, Scientology, and Human Rights
Stephen A Kent
Marburg Journal of Religion Volume 6, No. 1 (January 2001)
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Abstract: This article critically examines the allegations of religious intolerance that United States officials and governmental staff have levelled against France and Germany (along with other European countries) for their policies on, and actions toward, Scientology and other controversial groups. It argues that American officials appear to be poorly informed about the bases for the Europeans’ critical positions, and that those officials have been the recipients of selective information provided by Scientology itself along with Scientology’s supporters. It concludes by offering a preliminary analysis of this Euro-American debate in the context of ‘international social movements’ theory within the social sciences.

Bad (Social) Science – The Book”Scientology” and James R Lewis vs ‘Private Eye’

  2009 | Scientology | Edited by James R Lewis

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ISBN-10: 0195331494
ISBN-13: 978-0195331493

Academics are not activists. Their job is to present an objective account of their object of study – to provide the truth. This makes the work of people like James R Lewis particularly galling.

Lewis edited this book, which is a compilation of articles about the Church of Scientology –  supposedly from a Sociological perspective. However, it suffers from a number of fatal flaws, any one of which is sufficient to bring its objectivity and the editors’ professional standards into serious question. These shortcomings are clearly laid out in a book review by Terra Manca (quoted below)  Read Online | Download as .pdf

(Edit: and addressed in detail by Stephen A Kent – in this later post)

This book was so bad, it attracted not only the disapproval of the academic community, but also the astonished attention of “Private Eye”, a popular UK satirical magazine.

Understanding the Scientology Mindset Pt 2 – Social Conformity

We have seen that at least 90% of the people who join Scientology leave within two years-  principally because The Church does not deliver on its promise to improve their lives, and ‘the ‘tech’ does not work.

Cognitive dissonance theory (discussed in Part 1) can explain how the remaining 10% can rationalise these failures – but it does not explain why. What motive do the people who remain Scientologists  have for wanting to believe in Scientology’s claims, despite clear evidence that they are false?

Studies of social conformity provide one possible answer to this question. A group exerts powerful social pressures upon  Individuals to conform with their values and beliefs  in order to fit in. A classic experiment performed by Solomon Asch demonstrates just  how powerful this influence is  – and it provides considerable insight into the early career of a Scientologist.

The Creation of ‘Religious’ Scientology

 

 

1999 The Creation of ‘Religious’ Scientology | Stephen A Kent
Religious Studies and Theology 18 No. 2 (December 1999): 97-126
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Abstract: Among the most complex and mysterious ideologies of the so-called new religions today is Scientology. A multinational conglomerate dedicated to the propagation and implementation of L. Ron Hubbard’s beliefs and ideas, Scientology operated missions in approximately twenty-five countries and had an active membership of at least 75,000 in the early 1990s (Kent, 1999a: 147 and n.2). (More precise and recent figures are exceeding difficult to acquire.) Aspects of its elaborate ideological system relate to business practices (Hall, 1998; Passas, 1994; Passas and Castillo, 1992), educational techniques, mental health (Wallis, 1976), drug rehabilitation, moral values, environmentalism, and religion. Its religious theology and accompanying cosmology are poorly understood by researchers (for an exception see Meldgaard, 1992), who fail to appreciate how they motivate members, identify societal opponents, and reflect the social and financial pressures that plagued its founder and sole theologian, L. Ron Hubbard, in the early 1950s.

Scientology, Human Rights and Apologist Academics

2003 | Scientology and the European Human Rights Debate: A Reply to Leisa Goodman, J. Gordon Melton, and the European Rehabilitation Project Force Study |Stephen A Kent | Marburg Journal of Religion Volume 8, No. 1 (September 2003)

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The link above leads to an academic paper by Stephen A Kent, who is a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta in Canada.  He has extensively studied Scientology, and a number of other ‘high control’ groups.  The Church of Scientology has mounted a number of extra-legal operations against Kent, with the apparent object of damaging his reputation in order to undermine the credibility of these findings.

Kent accused Scientology of human rights abuses in an earlier paper, Brainwashing in Scientology’s Rehabilitation Project Force (which should be read first, as this paper defends the conclusions he came to there).

Kent addresses attacks from a small group of academics, and the “independent scholar” J Gordon Melton. Their view of the regime of forced labour,  sleep deprivation, and restricted diet imposed upon members of the ‘Rehabilitation Project Force’ (RPF) is that it is an example or religious devotion no different that that expected from a monastic order, and they have attacked Kent on this basis.

Brainwashing in Scientology’s Rehabilitation Project Force

Title: Brainwashing in Scientology’s Rehabilitation Project Force

Author: Stephen A Kent

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Published by: German InteriorMinistry Behörde für Inneres — Arbeitsgruppe Scientology und Landeszentrale fuür politische Bildung

Abstract: This study examines the confinement programs and camps that Scientology operates as supposedly rehabilitative facilities for “deviant” members of its “elite” Sea Organization. These programs, known collectively as the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), put coerced participants through regimes of harsh physical punishment, forced self-confessions, social isolation, hard labour, and intense doctrinal study, all as part of leadership-designed efforts to regain members’ ideological commitment. The confinement that participants experience, combined with forms of physical maltreatment, intensive ideological study, and forced confessions, allows social scientists to speak of the RPF as a “brainwashing” program.

The Globalization of Scientology: Influence, Control, and Opposition in Transnational Markets

Title: The Globalization of Scientology: Influence, Control, and Opposition in Transnational Markets

Author: Stephen A Kent

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Source:
May 3, 1998 [corrected November 13, 2001]. Revised Version of a Paper Presented at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, November, 1991; Subsequent version published in Religion 29 (1999): 147-169.

Abstract:
Locating itself within a sociological perspective that analyses religiously ideological organizations as transnational corporations, this study examines the global activities of Scientology. It summarizes the organization’s resolution of its international conflict with Interpol, its take-over of its internationally influential opponent, the Cult Awareness Network, and its heightened rhetoric against psychiatry. It also highlights its international marketing strategies that attempt to further the teachings of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and gain political and social influence. Despite Scientology’s efforts to adjust its approach to fit the cultural realities of the countries that it enters, its apparent successes in some formerly Iron Curtain nations is counterbalanced by its growing opposition in Western Europe.

Scientology – Is This a Religion?

Title: Scientology – Is This a Religion?

Author: Stephen A Kent

Source: Marburg Journal of Religion, Volume 4, No. 1 (July 1999)

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Abstract:

Although some social scientists insist that Scientology is a religion, the more appropriate position to take is that the organization is a multi-faceted transnational corporation that has religion as only one of its many components. Other components include political aspirations, business ventures, cultural productions, pseudo-medical practices, pseudo-psychiatric claims, and (among its most devoted members who have joined the Sea Organization), an alternative family structure. Sea Organization’s job demands appear to allow little time for quality child rearing. Most disturbing, however, about Sea Organization life is that members can be subject to extremely severe and intrusive punishments through security checks, internal hearings called “Committees of Evidence,” and a forced labour and re-indoctrination program known as the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) and its harshest companion, the RPF’s RPF. Taken together, these harsh and intrusive punishments likely violate a number of human rights clauses as outlined by two United Nations statements.

The Future of New Religious Movements

Title: The Future of New Religious Movements

Author: William Sims Bainbridge

ISBN-10: 0865542384
ISBN-13: 978-0865542389

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Description:

The paper “Science and Religion: The Case of Scientology” constitutes a chapter in the book “The Future of New Religious Movements”. It discusses Scientology’s self-presentation as a ‘scientific religion’ and examines Hubbard’s relationship with the science fiction subculture when he was an active pulp fiction writer.

Bainbridge statistically analyses the results of a survey at a popular science fiction convention to assess Hubbard’s popularity among the fan subculture of the time.