A Brief History of Scientology
The strange story of Scientology — Hollywood's favorite cult.
Times are hard for the Church of Scientology, the cult founded by sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1950. 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.
Documentaries 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. Today, Scientology has been reduced to the punchline of jokes. This denouement has been decades in the making, and may just form an ending to a strange and often unbelievable story.
Dianetics
The United States has a long history of exotic sectarian movements led by somewhat dodgy spiritual entrepreneurs such as Carlos Castañeda or Elijah Muhammad. Scientology, though, is particularly fascinating — after all, not every spiritual movement is launched by an article in Astounding Science Fiction magazine.
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