Free Zone Scientology

Contesting the Boundaries of a New Religion

Aled Thomas

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781350232990
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350182561
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

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.

1

Introduction

Researching ‘Scientologies’

One evening in October 1983, a meeting was held at the Crown Hotel, a short distance from the Church of Scientology’s British Headquarters in East Grinstead (UK). Captain Bill Robertson, a highly influential Scientologist and personal friend of Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, had gathered a group of Church of Scientology (CoS) practitioners. A gifted and charismatic speaker, Robertson passionately argued that the CoS had been infiltrated by government agents. Urging his fellow Scientologists to protect the work of Hubbard from corruption, he advocated the application of Scientology away from the institutional CoS. Insisting on what he viewed as ‘authentic’ Scientology according to Hubbard, Robertson claimed to offer no new approach to Scientologist praxis, simply an ‘alternative way to be free’ ([1983] 2012: online).

Fortunately for those interested in the subject of Scientology, much of Robertson’s speech was captured on film and has been circulated online. The recording makes for compelling viewing, not least because it marks a significant moment in the history of Scientology. Independent groups using Scientologist practices had been emerging since the 1960s, yet Robertson’s departure from the CoS marked the movement’s first major schism, leading to what has now become known as the Free Zone. For Free Zone Scientologists (or ‘Freezoners’), this is when ‘Free Zone Scientology’ truly began – with the idea that Scientology could be practised, understood and applied outside the institutional CoS. Robertson would go on to establish Ron’s Org, which remains one of the largest and most successful Free Zone groups to this day, yet the category has become a broad umbrella term, usually encompassing all Scientologists operating outside the institutional CoS. Since Robertson’s initial schism in the early 1980s, the Free Zone has become a significant aspect of contemporary Scientology, with a rising number of Scientologists practising in the Free Zone (Lewis 2016: 480). However, while the Free Zone is often perceived as a singular entity, united in opposition to the CoS, the reality paints a far more complex picture. One of the most defining features of the Free Zone landscape, as this book will demonstrate, is its largely unregulated and non-hierarchical environment, which has resulted in the emergence of a large variety of Scientologist groups, communities and independent practitioners.

To account for the diversity found within the Scientologist landscape, this book concerns the notion of ‘Scientologies’ – the existence of a several different types of Scientology. Understanding the dynamics of Scientologies is, as this book will lay out, best understood through the ‘auditing’ process. Auditing is a hybrid practice that combines psychology with religious and mystical notions of esoteric knowledge and experience, and it is a technique that enables Scientologists to make progress through pre-specified levels of achievement. The practice is positioned within Scientology (particularly the CoS) as an entirely scientific process, while simultaneously maintaining a religious status through its believed treatment of the spiritual self. Furthermore, its distinctive use of technology and its association with science fiction situates Scientology as a religion of an increasingly secular age. Accordingly, I approach Scientology in this work as a hybrid of religious and secular-scientific elements.

That auditing draws both from discourses of psychology and religious sources is a mark of contemporary Western cultures. Notionally impervious boundaries between religion and the secular-scientific have broken down, giving way to hybrid formations such as Scientology whose practices constitute negotiations of competing forces in Western societies. This book will therefore assist the scholarly understanding of Scientology as a varied belief system, featuring many Free Zone practitioners with different understandings of what it means to be a Scientologist, and how the auditing process is practised accordingly.

The bigger picture: The study of ‘Scientologies’

The scholarly focus on the Church of Scientology

It would be remiss to ignore the fact that Scientology has been the subject of limited academic study throughout its history, with only a handful of monographs and edited volumes with which scholars can engage. The reasons for this are varied and closely tied with the methodological challenges facing scholars approaching Scientology as a research subject, as this chapter will go on to demonstrate. Recent years (from the late 2000s onwards) have seen a small pool of scholarship on the subject, with a number of doctoral students and scholars of New Religious Movements (NRMs) conducting more significant research on Scientology.

The first major publication on Scientology, however, was Roy Wallis’s The Road to Total Freedom (1976). This work was an important milestone in the study of Scientology, outlining the ‘cult phase’ of Scientology (its Dianetics era), the theory behind its beliefs and its relations with society. However, it must be kept in mind that Wallis’s work is surrounded by controversy. It is alleged that, while he pursued his research on Scientology, the CoS employed a representative to pose as a student at the University of Stirling, where Wallis was then employed, to gather information about him. Additionally, his colleagues and employers received letters (presumed to have been sent by the CoS) accusing him of a gay love affair and participation in a drug squad (Graham 2014; Lamont 1986: 87). Wallis acknowledges these difficulties in his work, stating that the CoS’ vigorous attempts to countercriticism means that ‘it seemed almost inevitable that [his] own final work would be the subject of lengthy and expensive litigation’ (1976: vi). During a process of negotiation with the CoS, Wallis made a series of changes to his work, including amending that ‘Hubbard was “obsessed” with communism, to read that he was “pre-occupied” by it’ (1976: vi), and removing comparisons of the CoS with the Nazi Party which he deemed to be ‘on reflection unnecessarily offensive to members of the Church of Scientology’ (1976: vi, emphasis in original). Further to these amendments, The Road to Total Freedom contains, in an appendix, a commentary response written by a member of the CoS, Dr Jerry Simmons. It is therefore wise, despite the landmark nature of Wallis’s monograph, to consider the limitations of The Road to Total Freedom in the context of a non-confessional and academic study of Scientology.

This controversy arguably contributed to the small amount of academic work on Scientology that emerged between Wallis’s work and the recent resurgence of interest from the late 2000s onwards. However, there are now six prominent academic works on Scientology. These are Harriet Whitehead’s Renunciation and Reformulation: A Study of Conversion in an American Sect (1987), J. Gordon Melton’s Studies in Contemporary Religion: The Church of Scientology (2000), James R. Lewis’s Scientology (2009b), Urban’s The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion (2011), Lewis and Kjersti Hellesøy’s Handbook of Scientology (2016b) and Donald Westbrook’s Among the Scientologists: History, Theology, and Praxis (2019).

With the exception of Whitehead’s work, which was written prior to (and published soon after) L. Ron Hubbard’s death in 1986, the remaining five prominent works emerged during the past twenty years, marking a renewed interest in Scientology amongst the academic community. The three monographs by Urban, Melton and Westbrook could be categorized as general overviews of the CoS, its history and practices. For example, Urban’s (2011) work provides a thorough history of Scientology, including details of auditing, the establishment of the CoS and the history of Scientology from the lifetime of Hubbard through to the current leader of the CoS, David Miscavige. Furthermore, Westbrook’s (2019) work, directly informed by his ethnographic approach to the CoS, is significant in the number of interviews and level of access he was able to gain during his research.

The remaining two works are edited volumes. Lewis’s (2009b) volume of essays, despite its broad range of topics, relates only to the subject of the CoS, and contains no significant research on Scientologies outside the institutional Church. This lack of scholarship on the Free Zone is addressed in Lewis’s most recent edited work on Scientology with Hellesøy, the Handbook of Scientology (2016b). Noting that ‘we are on the verge of experiencing a small tsunami of new scholarship on Scientology’ (Lewis and Hellesøy 2016a: 2), their volume contains a plethora of chapters on Scientology that focus on the deeper aspects of Scientology beyond basic introductions, particularly aimed towards those with an already firm understanding of Scientology. Of particular note in this handbook are the chapters on Free Zone movements and schisms, notably Hellesøy’s (2016) study of Ron’s Org and the Dror Center, two prominent Free Zone organizations. These chapters remain a minority in the volume, however, with most contributions concentrating on the CoS.

The purpose of this book

While it is pleasing to see that academic work on Scientology is beginning to dig deeper than basic introductions to the movement, research on different Scientologies outside the CoS continues to be a minority pursuit. Indeed, the CoS presents itself as being synonymous with the category of ‘Scientology’, regarding the Free Zone and any other use of Hubbard’s work outside its institution as a form of Scientological heresy. As I have previously argued (Gregg and Thomas 2019: 350), the scholarly community has, to a great extent, accepted the CoS’ narrative of its position as the only ‘official’ form of Scientology, which in turn has resulted in many publications and monographs concerning only the institutionalized CoS.

This work is intended as a significant contribution to academic conversations surrounding Scientology, which has previously been dominated by CoS-centric understandings of ‘what Scientology is’. In this book I argue that auditing lies at the core of contemporary Scientology, and that the ways in which different Scientologists understand, practise and engage with the process directly impacts the production of boundaries in Free Zone Scientologies. Although previous studies of Scientology exist, this study has benefitted from access to a range of auditing practitioners in types of Scientology beyond the CoS. I therefore provide an original account of auditing as it is practised in both the CoS and Free Zone spheres, examining the diverse nature of the auditing technique as a process that combines different series of procedures, material culture and both religious and secular elements pertinent to particular ideas about the mind, body and the self. A key distinction that emerges from this study is between the hierarchical, top-down and vertical authority-practice structure of the CoS, in contrast to the flatter, more horizontal forms of the Scientological authority-practice in the Free Zone.

During early stages of this research, it became clear that the notion of ‘Free Zone Scientology’ is far more complex than it may appear on the surface. While the Free Zone can be simply summarized as ‘Scientology outside the CoS’, the reality is a category comprising several understandings of Scientologist practices and belief. I argue that the category of ‘Free Zone Scientology’ is a fluid social environment, in which Scientologists unrestricted by administrative institutions use the opportunity to develop their own versions and applications of Hubbard’s work. With this in mind, this book explores the topic of auditing in relation to notions of the self, issues of authenticity and innovation and use of material culture across Scientologies. This exploration demonstrates how key aspects and debates surrounding Scientologist practice not only play a part in boundary-making amongst Scientologists but can also lead to the emergence of new types of fluid and horizontal forms of Scientology.

This focus on more horizontal forms of Free Zone Scientology, in contrast to the institutional hierarchy of the CoS, raises further implications for the study of contemporary religion. Previous research on NRMs and Scientology in particular have tended to focus either on NRMs as indices of broad social processes such as secularization or globalization or (in earlier research) as exemplars of exotic processes such as charismatic authority and brainwashing. This book takes a completely different approach, using the auditing practice as a method of providing an in-depth case study of an NRM developing in the twenty-first century. Accordingly, this book aims to act as a framework for the study of similar movements formed in recent decades, allowing scholars of religion to contrast highly institutionalized and hierarchical environments of practice on the one hand (such as the CoS) with unregulated and fluid ones (such as the Free Zone) on the other.

Researching Scientologies: The methods

Beginning a study of Scientology

Approaching Scientology as a subject of study presents a series of distinctive challenges. First, scholars must familiarize themselves with ‘the basics’ of the movement. Despite its status as a new and emergent religion, Scientology has a rich and often controversial history, while also adopting a vast series of specialized practices and terminology collectively known as the ‘tech’ (which are explored in Chapters 2 and 3, respectively). Second, fully penetrating the topic of Scientology becomes difficult due to the existence of esoteric practices and information intended for practitioners only, in addition to the CoS’ rigorous maintenance of its public image. Unsurprisingly, scholars can often feel discouraged from pursuing research on Scientology due to the ‘methodological minefield’ involved. I can attest, however, alongside other scholars who have recently adopted ethnographic approaches to the study of Scientology (Hellesøy 2016; Westbrook 2019), that these potential restrictions need not hinder one’s studies, rather there are potential alternatives and approaches that can be adopted.

This book primarily draws from sociology and anthropology, combining qualitative aspects such as participant observation, interviews and engaging with material culture. I envisaged this research as an opportunity to understand the role and nature of auditing in a variety of Scientologies. Accordingly, data was gathered from discussions and interactions with a wide variety of participants who identify as Scientologists. This additionally includes participants who do not consider themselves Scientologists, yet still make use of the auditing process. Conducting this research involved the use of a number of well-known methods in the academic study of religions. While being aware of the sociological typologies associated with the study of new religions, data was gathered via methods including participant observation (at the CoS), and online interviews and email conversations (with Free Zone Scientologists). Additionally, this book involves analysis and interpretation of Free Zone web pages and Scientology documents, including Hubbard’s vast writing on the auditing process. Indeed, as George Chryssides observes, ‘according to [the Church of] Scientology sources, [Hubbard] wrote 40 million words on Dianetics and Scientology, [and] spoke 25 million words in 3000 lectures’ (1999: 280). These texts and lectures are crucial to the study of Scientology – they lie at the core of Scientologist practices, and their interpretation illuminates how Scientologists ‘do Scientology’. Altogether, this evidence base is analysed and interpreted through the method of ‘lived religion’ to fully engage with how the auditing process directly impacts the fluid nature of Free Zone Scientology.

Conducting fieldwork with the Church of Scientology

Roy Wallis’s contested experience of working with the CoS during the 1970s might, on the surface, suggest that gaining access to conduct fieldwork at the CoS would be a demanding task for the scholar. The reality, however, is that there has been a notable shift in the relationship between the CoS and the academy in recent decades, with CoS members becoming increasingly welcoming of academics to tour their Orgs (Scien...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Researching ‘Scientologies’
• Part I From Scientology to Scientologies
• Part II Fluidity and boundaries
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Copyright