In “The Church of Scientology,’’ Hugh B. Urban, a professor of religious studies at Ohio State University, provides a fascinating account of how a healing practice called Dianetics came to define itself - and become officially recognized - as a religion in the United States. Urban strains to strike a balance between what he calls “a hermeneutics of respect and a hermeneutics of suspicion,’’ grounded in a firm belief in freedom of worship and an obligation to ask tough questions about alleged misbehavior by Scientologists, including espionage against government agencies, attacks on critics, abuse of members, and attempts to alter entries in Wikipedia.
That Scientology flourished during the Cold War, Urban argues, was not a coincidence. Hubbard’s “space opera’’ narratives, he writes, reflected a preoccupation with safety and security, mind control, UFOs, time travelers, and the threat of nuclear war. Offering Dianetics as a means to combat communist infiltration, Hubbard designed systems of surveillance to thwart enemies from within the organization and defend it from external threats.
The greatest threat, Urban reveals, in the most intriguing and important chapter of his book, came from the Internal Revenue Service. Forced to decide (despite First Amendment strictures against a government “establishment’’ of religion) what is or is not a valid church, the IRS revoked Scientology’s tax-exempt status in 1967, igniting a 26-year battle that resulted in thousands of lawsuits. At first, the IRS decreed - and the courts concurred - that despite its clerical collars and crosses, its doctrine and discipline, the Church of Scientology was not a bona fide religion because its activities had a commercial character and served the private and pecuniary interests of its members.
