The Church of Scientology
A History of a New Religion
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Narrated by:
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Contessa Brewer
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By:
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Hugh B. Urban
About this listen
Scientology is one of the wealthiest and most powerful new religions to emerge in the past century. To its detractors, L. Ron Hubbard's space-age mysticism is a moneymaking scam and sinister brainwashing cult. But to its adherents, it is humanity's brightest hope. Few religious movements have been subject to public scrutiny like Scientology, yet much of what is written about the church is sensationalist and inaccurate.
Here for the first time is the story of Scientology's protracted and turbulent journey to recognition as a religion in the postwar American landscape. Hugh Urban tells the real story of Scientology from its cold-war-era beginnings in the 1950s to its prominence today as the religion of Hollywood's celebrity elite. Urban paints a vivid portrait of Hubbard, the enigmatic founder who once commanded his own private fleet and an intelligence apparatus rivaling that of the U.S. government. One FBI agent described him as "a mental case", but to his followers he is the man who "solved the riddle of the human mind". Urban details Scientology's decades-long war with the IRS, which ended with the church winning tax-exempt status as a religion; the rancorous cult wars of the 1970s and 1980s; as well as the latest challenges confronting Scientology, from attacks by the Internet group Anonymous to the church's efforts to suppress the online dissemination of its esoteric teachings.
This book demonstrates how Scientology has reflected the broader anxieties and obsessions of postwar America, and raises profound questions about how religion is defined and who gets to define it.
©2011 Princeton University Press (P)2012 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Mary Eberstadt
- Narrated by: Margaret Winston
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In It's Dangerous to Believe, Mary Eberstadt documents how people of faith - especially Christians who adhere to traditional religious beliefs - face widespread discrimination in today's increasingly secular society. Eberstadt details how recent laws, court decisions, and intimidation on campuses and elsewhere threaten believers who fear losing their jobs, their communities, and their basic freedoms solely because of their convictions.
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Not about Freedom of Religion
- By A. A. Gunnarsdóttir on 01-29-19
By: Mary Eberstadt
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Republic of Lies
- American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
- By: Anna Merlan
- Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar, Anna Merlan - introduction
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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American society has always been fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but with the election of Donald Trump, previously outlandish ideas suddenly attained legitimacy. Trump himself is a conspiracy enthusiast: from his claim that global warming is a Chinese hoax to the accusations of “fake news”, he has fanned the flames of suspicion. But it was not by the power of one man alone that these ideas gained new power. Republic of Lies looks beyond the caricatures of conspiracy theorists to explain their tenacity.
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even-handed and thought-provoking
- By Lenny Pozner on 04-17-19
By: Anna Merlan
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48 Liberal Lies About American History
- (That You Probably Learned in School)
- By: Larry Schweikart
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The problem isn’t that liberal authors present their opinions or interpretations of history from an obvious left-wing bias. Students learn, for example, that the Founding Fathers were elitists who drafted the Constitution in order to protect their own economic interests; that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation only because he needed black soldiers; that racist groups such as the KKK represented our society in the early twentieth century.
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amazingly accurate...
- By Anthony on 01-23-16
By: Larry Schweikart
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Fantasyland
- How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
- By: Kurt Andersen
- Narrated by: Kurt Andersen
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A razor-sharp thinker offers a new understanding of our post-truth world and explains the American instinct to believe in make-believe, from the Pilgrims to P. T. Barnum to Disneyland to zealots of every stripe...to Donald Trump. In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen demonstrates that what's happening in our country today - this strange, post-factual, "fake news" moment we're all living through - is not something entirely new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character and path.
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Bland Title For An Amazing Book!
- By David Larson on 09-07-17
By: Kurt Andersen
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The Long March
- How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America
- By: Roger Kimball
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The architects of America's cultural revolution of the 1960s were Beat authors like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and celebrated figures like Norman Mailer, Timothy Leary, Eldridge Cleaver, and Susan Sontag. In examining the lives and works of those who spoke for the 1960s, Roger Kimball conceives a series of cautionary tales, an annotated guidebook of wrong turns, dead-ends, and blind alleys.
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The Long March
- By Suzanne on 05-16-06
By: Roger Kimball
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Hitler's American Model
- The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law
- By: James Q. Whitman
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime.
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Did not we suspect this?
- By dessa on 11-04-18
By: James Q. Whitman
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Seven Lies about Catholic History: Infamous Myths about the Church's Past and How to Answer Them
- By: Diane Moczar
- Narrated by: Kevin F. Spalding
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The world hates the Church that Jesus founded, just as He said it would (John 15:18). It reviles her doctrines, mocks her moral teachings and invents lies about her history. In every age, but especially in our modern day, historians and political powers have distorted the facts about her past (or just made up novel falsehoods from scratch) to make the Church, and the civilization it fostered, seem corrupt, backward, or simply evil.
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excellent read
- By Christine A Carty on 02-27-16
By: Diane Moczar
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The Twilight of the American Enlightenment
- The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief
- By: George M. Marsden
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular liberalelites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course.
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Such a relevant book to our current world
- By Adam Shields on 09-14-16
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The War on the West
- By: Douglas Murray
- Narrated by: Douglas Murray
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. After all, if we must discard the ideas of Kant, Hume, and Mill for their opinions on race, shouldn’t we discard Marx, whose work is peppered with racial slurs and anti-Semitism? Embers of racism remain to be stamped out in America, but what about the raging racist inferno in the Middle East and Asia?
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Every Human (seriously, everyone) Read This!
- By aaron on 04-27-22
By: Douglas Murray
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1620
- A Critical Response to the 1619 Project
- By: Peter W. Wood
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Was America founded on the auction block in Jamestown in 1619 or aboard the Mayflower in 1620? The controversy erupted in August 2019 when the New York Times announced its 1619 Project. The Times set to transform history by asserting that all the laws, material gains, and cultural achievements of Americans are rooted in the exploitation of African Americans. Historians have pushed back, saying that the 1619 Project conjures a false narrative out of racial grievance.
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I'm Sympathetic, but wanting balance, not found.
- By Anonymous User on 11-21-20
By: Peter W. Wood
What listeners say about The Church of Scientology
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kevin Ivers
- 11-22-21
Wrong narrator
The book is fascinating but the narration was terrible. A female voice for a male author, who then does cartoonish voice acting when quoting the subject (Hubbard), is jarring and off-putting for this book.
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- Raleigh Ragan
- 11-06-22
A Great Book, a Not Great Narrator.
Excellent book — Urban does a fantastic job of outlining the background, development, and broader picture of Scientology as a whole. However, the narrator leaves something to be desired. Each time Urban quotes the founder, Hubbard, she puts on a very nasally, seemingly mocking voice to read them. I dislike Hubbard as much as the next person, but this is disrespectful, takes away from Urban’a objectivity, and is overall, just super annoying. The narrator is fine, not my favorite, but this ruins the listening experience, as these quotes make a frequent appearance over the course of the book. Listen to other reviewers and read the text instead of listening to this.
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- Frank
- 07-12-16
Excellent Summary of Scientology
Would you listen to The Church of Scientology again? Why?
Perhaps. But there is so much out there on the subject, that I might want to listen to some other things first.
What other book might you compare The Church of Scientology to and why?
"Inside Scientology" - Janet Reitman. They both seem to be a basic history of the "religion".
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
As usual, the cringe-worthiness of Scientology is unparalleled. But in general, I ways feel sad for the rank-and-file mindless robots that do all the work (and yet sometimes still end up tortured for thinking on their own), and disgust for the leadership that reap all the rewards (re: money).
Any additional comments?
Excellent book on Scientology. It doesn't belabor Hubbard's early years like some of the other texts out there, but gives you just enough background to understand the "church" today. It's very comprehensive. This book, as any good research book should be, is told in a matter-of-fact way.
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- aussieGeorge68
- 04-14-13
Some good sections but largely tedious.
All in all there are some good sections of this book, but this is one of rare times I would recommend getting the book in text form and not in audio form. My first reason for this is the narrator, while Contessa Brewer voice is understandable, I find her voice annoying and not up to the standard of other narrators of non-fiction works such as Walter Dixon and Sandy Rustin. When Contessa changes her voice when quoting other people like Hubbard, her voice become even more annoying and comical. Reading will allow skimming of parts of the book uninteresting to the reader.
The large majority of this book is about "what is a religion in the 21st century" and "Scientology's complex journey to becoming a religion".
I did find Mr Urban's catalog of the early history of Hubbard and his various organisations interesting and informative and also the sections on the tactics used by the origination such as "Fair Game" to stop or attempt to stop critics and the leak of "Religious Information" interesting. The battle with the IRS for religious status was also interesting but was presented in a very verbose fashion overly long fashion in my opinion.
As the Author himself admitted a lot of information of the organisation has been left out for legal and other reasons, after listening to the compelling book "Beyond Belief" I was particularly interested in the organisation after Hubbard died and the takeover by David Miscavige, but there is little about this here.
I can't help feeling that this book has just been bulked up to reach a certain size for whatever reason. The first chapters are full of "In the later chapters I will show" statements and little else. In the later chapters some information is endlessly repeated. Its written almost like a text book.
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- Cheeye
- 09-15-14
WASTE OF TIME
What disappointed you about The Church of Scientology?
It's Stupid and ridiculous principals, why do people even take Hubby seriously?
What was most disappointing about Hugh B. Urban’s story?
The fact she didn't beat up any of her elders.
Have you listened to any of Contessa Brewer’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Can't remember, but the narration was great.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Disgust.
Any additional comments?
I hope people don't listen to this unless they are planning to leave the stupid organisation. It's an insult to call it a church. Can Hubby be compared people like St. Francis?
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