Among the Scientologists : History, Theology, and Praxis
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The Church of Scientology is one of the most recognizable American-born new religions, but perhaps the least understood. With academic and popular interest on the rise, many books have been written about Scientology and surely more will follow. Although academics have begun to pay more attention to Scientology, the subject has received remarkably little qualitative attention. Indeed, no work has systematically addressed such questions as: what do Scientologists themselves have to say about their religion's history, theology, and practices? How does Scientology act as a religion for them? What does "lived religion" look like for a Scientologist? This is not so much a book about the Church of Scientology, its leaders, or its controversies, as it is a compilation of narratives and histories based on the largely unheard or ignored perspectives of Scientologists themselves. Drawing on six years of interviews, fieldwork, and research conducted among members of the Church of Scientology, this groundbreaking work examines features of the new religion's history, theology, and praxis in ways that move discussion beyond apostate–driven and exposé accounts.
Customer Reviews
Interesting. Not scholarly, though.
The premise of this book is welcome, which is to bring in the unfettered perspectives of the participants of a very controversial group in order to add to the general understanding of it. But this book is not scholarship. It is dense with unexamined details, particularly in regards to historic facts about Hubbard, his public statements and affirmations, the organizations he started and ran and its various well-documented actions and claims. There is such reticence to add to the volume of literature from critics of the church (including highly knowledgable former members) that the author has chosen to fill this book with factoids given him from the church itself, largely unexamined or without any objective analysis. Indeed, details that have been documented to be false are uncritically included here. Scholarly examination from the point of view of believers would be very interesting. This book is not anything near it, despite occasionally being a somewhat unpolished version of Scientology’s highly filtered narrative of reality.