Scientology -- Is This a Religion?

Stephen A. Kent Ph.D. researches new and alternative religions, combining perspectives from sociology with religious studies.

Scientology -- Is This a Religion? In this article by professor Kent explores the many aspects of the Church of Scientology, making many insightful observations about its structure and behavior.

Although some social scientists insist that Scientology is a religion, the more appropriate position to take is that the organization is a multi-faceted transnational that has religion as only one of its many components. Other components include political aspirations, business ventures, cultural productions, pseudo-medical practices, pseudo-psychiatric claims, and (among its most devoted members who have joined the Sea Organization), an alternative family structure. Sea Organization's job demands appear to allow little time for quality child rearing. Most disturbing, however, about Sea Organization life is that members can be subject to extremely severe and intrusive punishments through security checks, internal hearings called "Committees of Evidence," and a forced labor and re-indoctrination program known as the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) and its harshest companion, the RPF's RPF. Taken together, these harsh and intrusive punishments likely violate a number of human rights clauses as outlined by two United Nations statements.

You can read the entire article online -- Here --.

Operation Freakout

Scientologists will tell you that L. Ron Hubbard's "fair game policy" was cancelled in 1968. If that is true, then that cancellation hasn't stopped Scientologists from continuing illegal attacks on their critics.

Operation PC Freakout, was a Church of Scientology (CoS) covert black op intended to have the author Paulette Cooper imprisoned or committed to a mental institution. The plan, undertaken in 1976 following years of Church-initiated lawsuits and covert harassment, was meant to eliminate the perceived threat that Cooper posed to the Church and obtain revenge for her publication in 1971 of a highly critical book, The Scandal of Scientology. The FBI discovered documentary proof of the CoS's illegal attacks and the preceding campaign of harassment during their own investigation into the Church of Scientology in 1977.

You can read Paulette Cooper's book that caused the CoS to freak out,
online here -- The Scandal of Scientology --

You can read Paulette's personal version of Operation Freakout as she experienced it,
online here -- "The Inside Account of the Story That Almost Killed Me" --