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List of contents
Preface
1. Introduction: Researching ‘Scientologies’
Part 1: From Scientology to Scientologies
2. The Church of Scientology and the ‘Free Zone’: A Complex Relationship
3. Auditing and the ‘Tech’: The Basics
4. ‘You are YOU in a body’: Negotiating the Self in Scientology
Part 2: Fluidity and Boundaries
5. Authenticity and Innovation: The ‘True Tech’ and ‘Mistakes by Hubbard’
6. ‘Doing Scientology’: E-Meters, Objects, and Material Culture
7. Moving Forward: Reflections on Free Zone Scientology and the Wider Study of Religions
8. Conclusion
Appendix A
Appendix B
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Aled Thomas is a Teaching Fellow in the Study of Religion at the University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of Free Zone Scientology: Contesting the Boundaries of a New Religion (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Summary
In this novel academic study, Aled Thomas analyses modern issues surrounding boundaries and fluidity in contemporary Scientology. By using the Scientologist practice of ‘auditing’ as a case study, this book explores the ways in which new types of ‘Scientologies’ can emerge. The notion of Free Zone Scientology is characterised by its horizontal structure, in contrast to the vertical-hierarchy of the institutional Church of Scientology. With this in mind, Thomas explores the Free Zone as an example of a developing and fluid religion, directly addressing questions concerning authority, leadership and material objects.
This book, by maintaining a double-focus on the top-down hierarchy of the Church of Scientology and the horizontal-fluid nature of the Free Zone, breaks away from previous research on new religions, which have tended to focus either on new religions as indices of broad social processes, such as secularization or globalization, or as exemplars of exotic processes, such as charismatic authority and brainwashing. Instead, Thomas adopts auditing as a method of providing an in-depth case study of a new religion in transition and transformation in the 21st century. This opens the study of contemporary and new religions to a series of new questions around hybrid religions (sacred and secular), and acts as a framework for the study of similar movements formed in recent decades.
Foreword
By exploring a contemporary religion in transition and transformation in the 21st century, this book contributes to our understanding of fluid and fixed religions.
Additional text
Aled Thomas gives us an ethnographic look into a fascinating phenomenon on the alternative religious landscape: Scientology as interpreted and practiced among those who left the Church of Scientology or were never members in the first place. This book is highly recommended for scholars of new religions and is a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship on Scientology and Scientologists.
