While the group does claim religious status, Hubbard was fairly explicit that the “religion angle” was to be pursued for two reasons. Scientology’s origin usefully illustrates the fact that cults don’t necessarily have to be religious. A struggling fiction writer from Nebraska became the leader of a billion-dollar cult, convinced thousands that he’s the Buddha, commanded his own private navy, and died while on the run from the US government. Hubbard was a flamboyant con artist whose tall stories – such as having been a blood brother of the Blackfoot Indians (they had no such ceremony), a nuclear physicist (he dropped out of a civil engineering degree) and a decorated war hero (he wasn’t) – were renowned on the science fiction scene long before he became a cult leader, and have been exhaustively documented in Russell Miller’s definitive biography Bare Faced Messiah.Īppalling as he was in many ways, it’s impossible not to wonder at his story. Scientology, though, is particularly fascinating - after all, not every spiritual movement is launched by an article in Astounding Science Fiction magazine. The United States has a long history of exotic sectarian movements led by somewhat dodgy spiritual entrepreneurs such as Carlos Castañeda or Elijah Muhammad. This denouement has been decades in the making, and may just form an ending to a strange and often unbelievable story. Today, Scientology has been reduced to the punchline of jokes. The organization - once shrouded in Hollywood glamor, feared by reporters, and powerful enough to face down the Internal Revenue Service and win - suddenly looks vulnerable.ĭocumentaries from journalists like Alex Gibney ( Going Clear) and Louis Theroux ( My Scientology Movie), featuring accounts from Scientology defectors, have uncovered the group’s secretive and repressive structure to a broad audience. Times are hard for the Church of Scientology, the cult founded by sci-fi writer L.