Bare-faced Messiah
Encyclopedia
Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard is a posthumous biography of Scientology
founder L. Ron Hubbard
by British journalist Russell Miller
. First published in 1987, the book takes a critical perspective, challenging the official account of Hubbard's life and work promoted by the Church of Scientology
. It quotes extensively from official documents acquired using the Freedom of Information Act
and from Hubbard's personal papers that were obtained via a defector.
The Church of Scientology was accused of organising a smear and harassment campaign against Miller and his publisher, and these accusations were strengthened by a leak of internal documents to the press. The Church strenuously denied this accusation and a private investigator involved in smearing Miller denied that the Church was his client. Hubbard's followers attempted to prevent the book's publication in court, resulting in cases that reached the Supreme Court of the United States
, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales
and the Federal Court of Canada
. The Supreme Court's decision denying fair use
protection for the book set a precedent
favouring copyright
protection of unpublished material over biographers' freedom of speech
. Courts in the UK and Canada took an opposite view, allowing publication of Bare-faced Messiah in the public interest.
Reviews of the book have been broadly positive, praising Miller's research but in some cases criticising the book for failing to explain Hubbard's success. Reviewers are divided over whether to interpret the book as a polemical attack on Hubbard or a neutral work which leaves conclusions to the reader.
and J. Paul Getty
. He spent two years researching the book.
Miller's research was assisted by a set of Hubbard's personal papers provided by Gerry Armstrong, a disaffected former employee of the Church of Scientology. Armstrong had been preparing material for an official biography of Hubbard, but left the Church in 1981 after finding that Hubbard's claims about his life conflicted with independent sources. The Church of Scientology obtained an injunction in California to prevent Armstrong from further distributing the documents. However, the court in England refused to enforce this order.
, his success as a science fiction writer, his military career, the rise of Dianetics
and Scientology, his journeys at sea with his followers, and his period as a fugitive from the law in California.
There are 378 footnotes in the book. These include references to interviews conducted specially, to court or government documents and to Hubbard's own writings. In an "author's note", Miller wrote that the book would have been impossible without the United States' Freedom of Information Act. Among the private papers quoted in the book are Hubbard's letter to the FBI denouncing his wife as a spy, another in which he tells his daughter he is not really her father and an internal letter in which he suggests that Scientology pursue "religious" status for business reasons.
aircraft factory and for the murder of American singer Dean Reed
. Reed had died the day before Miller had arrived in East Berlin to interview him. His family was approached by private detectives seeking to implicate Miller in his death, although these detectives would not say who their client was. Another private investigator interviewed Miller's friends and associates, claiming to be acting for Reed's family, though they denied employing him. A former Scientology insider told the Sunday Times that Miller "is kept under constant watch. Every time he goes abroad a two-man mission will be waiting for him at the airport when he arrives. They will monitor where he goes, who he sees, where he stays. This information will be added to his file, which is already more than 100 pages thick."
Senior executives at publishers Michael Joseph and at the Sunday Times, which serialised the book, received threatening phone calls and also a visit from private investigator Eugene Ingram, who worked for the Church. Another private investigator, Jarl Grieve Einar Cynewulf, told Sunday Times journalists that he had been offered "large sums of money" to find a link between Miller and the CIA. In 1990, nearly three years after the book's first publication, a defector from the Church of Scientology provided the Sunday Times with internal documents detailing the smear campaign against Miller. These records listed several private investigators who had been hired to keep Miller under surveillance and feed false information about him to neighbours and the police. A Scientology executive had flown from Los Angeles to a flat in London where he and a private detective co-ordinated the campaign. Rubbish from the publisher's offices was regularly emptied into the flat's bathtub to be picked through. A Church spokesman dismissed these allegations, saying, "anyone giving you this sort of information must be crazy or on drugs."
s against the book's publication, claiming copyright
infringement of Hubbard's private documents. They threatened to sue in as many as fifty countries. In the UK, they sued Penguin Books as well as Russell Miller, claiming additionally that the photograph of L. Ron Hubbard on the book's dust-jacket would mislead potential buyers. Mr Justice Vinelott dismissed the suit, describing it as a "mischievous and misconceived" attempt to stifle criticism. That judgement was upheld by the Court of Appeal who argued that Hubbard's "cosmic significance" in Scientology—a group which itself had been the subject of a Government report in 1972
—implied a strong public interest in the book's content.
In advance of the court case, a Scientologist woman was found collecting seven copies of the unpublished proofs from a copy shop in East Grinstead
. She was arrested but later released as there was no evidence of theft. The Federal Court of Canada rejected a similar suit and another in Australia was withdrawn.
The case against US publisher Henry Holt
was brought by New Era Publications, who owned the rights to an official biography of Hubbard. The district court
who first heard the case ruled that, although the quotation of private correspondence breached copyright law, an injunction would deny the publisher's First Amendment
rights. When the case was appealed, the Second Circuit
disagreed with that judgement, arguing that copyright outweighed free speech arguments. However, the court still denied an injunction on the grounds that New Era had waited two years to bring the case after first learning about the book. Although they had prevailed, Henry Holt and Company asked the court for a rehearing to establish that they had not just won on a technicality; a request that the court denied. In 1990, Henry Holt petitioned the Supreme Court, who let the Second Circuit's judgement stand. The Supreme Court decision drew a concerned reaction from publishers and journalists, complaining that biographies would become more legally and financially difficult to publish. A brief for the PEN American Center
and the Authors Guild expressed the publishing industry's "confusion, consternation and concern" at the outcome. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. called the decision "a great sadness", arguing that had it been made earlier, he could not have published all three volumes of his history The Age of Roosevelt.
's review in Nature
called Bare-faced Messiah an "admirable, meticulously documented biography". Miller's book persuaded Gardner that Hubbard was "a pathological liar who steadily deteriorated from a charming rogue into a paranoid egomaniac". Sociologist J. Gordon Melton
has stated that along with Stewart Lamont's Religion Inc.
, Miller's book is "by far the best" among the books published by Scientology critics, though he notes that the Church of Scientology has "prepared statements on each indicating factual errors and omissions." According to Melton, Miller's book is compromised by its author's lack of access to documents charting the early history of the church.
Marco Frenschkowski, in a survey of the available literature on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, called Bare-Faced Messiah the "most important critical biography of Hubbard. Like [Friedrich-Wilhelm Haack's Scientology - Magie des 20. Jahrhunderts] and [Bent Corydon's L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?
] it is extremely polemical and very much tries to pull Hubbard to pieces." He added that Miller's book had "definitely exposed some inflated statements about Hubbard's early achievements," but that the Church of Scientology had been able to counter a number of the points made by Miller: "Hubbard's assertions about his military career in WWII, e.g., have been much nearer to the truth than Miller is trying to show." Malise Ruthven
in the Times Literary Supplement observed that Miller "forces no thesis on his readers, allowing them to draw their own conclusion from the facts he uncovers." He took this as both a strength and a weakness of the book, in that it leaves ambiguous whether Hubbard was a deliberate con-man or sincerely deluded. He also expressed frustration that Miller had not explained how Hubbard had achieved such a following, but complimented the author's meticulous research in separating fact from fiction. The satirical magazine Private Eye
described the book as "meticulously documented" but observed that the author "does not theorise, nor even very often moralise. The reader must provide his own interjections, laughter and gasps of astonishment."
The Sunday Times described the book as "admirably written, well documented and it must have entailed a great deal of painstaking research." It praised Miller for standing up to Scientologists' attempts to discredit him. The New Statesman
praised Bare-faced Messiah as accessibly written and diligently researched but, like Private Eye, criticised it for not illuminating why people find Scientology appealing. The Oregon Law Review described it as "a revealing, enthralling biography of a controversial public figure." Patrick Skene Catling
's review in The Spectator
recommended the book "unreservedly", calling it "an unsurpassably scathing study of money-mad, power-mad megalomania."
Serialisation
A summary of the book was published in the Arts & Leisure section of the Sunday Times over the course of three articles.
Extracts also appeared in The Weekend Australian and the Toronto Star.
Translation
Reference material
Author interview
Reviews
Scientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...
founder L. Ron Hubbard
L. Ron Hubbard
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard , better known as L. Ron Hubbard , was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology...
by British journalist Russell Miller
Russell Miller
Russell Miller is an award-winning British journalist and author of fifteen books, including biographies of Hugh Hefner, J. Paul Getty and L. Ron Hubbard.-L. Ron Hubbard biography:...
. First published in 1987, the book takes a critical perspective, challenging the official account of Hubbard's life and work promoted by the Church of Scientology
Church of Scientology
The Church of Scientology is an organization devoted to the practice and the promotion of the Scientology belief system. The Church of Scientology International is the Church of Scientology's parent organization, and is responsible for the overall ecclesiastical management, dissemination and...
. It quotes extensively from official documents acquired using the Freedom of Information Act
Freedom of Information Act (United States)
The Freedom of Information Act is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. The Act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure...
and from Hubbard's personal papers that were obtained via a defector.
The Church of Scientology was accused of organising a smear and harassment campaign against Miller and his publisher, and these accusations were strengthened by a leak of internal documents to the press. The Church strenuously denied this accusation and a private investigator involved in smearing Miller denied that the Church was his client. Hubbard's followers attempted to prevent the book's publication in court, resulting in cases that reached the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales
Court of Appeal of England and Wales
The Court of Appeal of England and Wales is the second most senior court in the English legal system, with only the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom above it...
and the Federal Court of Canada
Federal Court of Canada
The Federal Court of Canada was a national court of Canada that heard some types of disputes arising under the central government's legislative jurisdiction...
. The Supreme Court's decision denying fair use
Fair use
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
protection for the book set a precedent
Precedent
In common law legal systems, a precedent or authority is a principle or rule established in a legal case that a court or other judicial body may apply when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts...
favouring copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
protection of unpublished material over biographers' freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
. Courts in the UK and Canada took an opposite view, allowing publication of Bare-faced Messiah in the public interest.
Reviews of the book have been broadly positive, praising Miller's research but in some cases criticising the book for failing to explain Hubbard's success. Reviewers are divided over whether to interpret the book as a polemical attack on Hubbard or a neutral work which leaves conclusions to the reader.
Background
Russell Miller had been an investigative journalist for the Sunday Times and had written well-received biographies of Hugh HefnerHugh Hefner
Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.-Early life:...
and J. Paul Getty
J. Paul Getty
Jean Paul Getty was an American industrialist. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, whilst the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1,200 million. At his death, he was...
. He spent two years researching the book.
Miller's research was assisted by a set of Hubbard's personal papers provided by Gerry Armstrong, a disaffected former employee of the Church of Scientology. Armstrong had been preparing material for an official biography of Hubbard, but left the Church in 1981 after finding that Hubbard's claims about his life conflicted with independent sources. The Church of Scientology obtained an injunction in California to prevent Armstrong from further distributing the documents. However, the court in England refused to enforce this order.
Synopsis
The book stretches from Hubbard's birth to death, and covers his early lifeEarly life of L. Ron Hubbard
The early life of L. Ron Hubbard covers the period from his birth on March 13, 1911 to the beginning of his career as a writer of pulp fiction stories in the early 1930s....
, his success as a science fiction writer, his military career, the rise of Dianetics
Dianetics
Dianetics is a set of ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body that was invented by the science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard and is practiced by followers of Scientology...
and Scientology, his journeys at sea with his followers, and his period as a fugitive from the law in California.
There are 378 footnotes in the book. These include references to interviews conducted specially, to court or government documents and to Hubbard's own writings. In an "author's note", Miller wrote that the book would have been impossible without the United States' Freedom of Information Act. Among the private papers quoted in the book are Hubbard's letter to the FBI denouncing his wife as a spy, another in which he tells his daughter he is not really her father and an internal letter in which he suggests that Scientology pursue "religious" status for business reasons.
Harassment of the author and publishers
While researching the book in the USA, Miller was spied on. His friends and business associates also received hostile visits from Scientologists and private detectives. Attempts were made to frame him for the murder of a London private detective, for a fire in a WiltshireWiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
aircraft factory and for the murder of American singer Dean Reed
Dean Reed
Dean Cyril Reed was an American actor, singer and songwriter who lived a great part of his adult life in South America and then in communist East Germany.-Life and career:...
. Reed had died the day before Miller had arrived in East Berlin to interview him. His family was approached by private detectives seeking to implicate Miller in his death, although these detectives would not say who their client was. Another private investigator interviewed Miller's friends and associates, claiming to be acting for Reed's family, though they denied employing him. A former Scientology insider told the Sunday Times that Miller "is kept under constant watch. Every time he goes abroad a two-man mission will be waiting for him at the airport when he arrives. They will monitor where he goes, who he sees, where he stays. This information will be added to his file, which is already more than 100 pages thick."
Senior executives at publishers Michael Joseph and at the Sunday Times, which serialised the book, received threatening phone calls and also a visit from private investigator Eugene Ingram, who worked for the Church. Another private investigator, Jarl Grieve Einar Cynewulf, told Sunday Times journalists that he had been offered "large sums of money" to find a link between Miller and the CIA. In 1990, nearly three years after the book's first publication, a defector from the Church of Scientology provided the Sunday Times with internal documents detailing the smear campaign against Miller. These records listed several private investigators who had been hired to keep Miller under surveillance and feed false information about him to neighbours and the police. A Scientology executive had flown from Los Angeles to a flat in London where he and a private detective co-ordinated the campaign. Rubbish from the publisher's offices was regularly emptied into the flat's bathtub to be picked through. A Church spokesman dismissed these allegations, saying, "anyone giving you this sort of information must be crazy or on drugs."
Legal disputes
The Church of Scientology of California and related entities sought injunctionInjunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
s against the book's publication, claiming copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
infringement of Hubbard's private documents. They threatened to sue in as many as fifty countries. In the UK, they sued Penguin Books as well as Russell Miller, claiming additionally that the photograph of L. Ron Hubbard on the book's dust-jacket would mislead potential buyers. Mr Justice Vinelott dismissed the suit, describing it as a "mischievous and misconceived" attempt to stifle criticism. That judgement was upheld by the Court of Appeal who argued that Hubbard's "cosmic significance" in Scientology—a group which itself had been the subject of a Government report in 1972
Foster Report
The Foster Report is a 1971 report titled Enquiry into the Practice and Effects of Scientology, written by Sir John Foster for the government of the United Kingdom, regarding the Church of Scientology....
—implied a strong public interest in the book's content.
In advance of the court case, a Scientologist woman was found collecting seven copies of the unpublished proofs from a copy shop in East Grinstead
East Grinstead
East Grinstead is a town and civil parish in the northeastern corner of Mid Sussex, West Sussex in England near the East Sussex, Surrey, and Kent borders. It lies south of London, north northeast of Brighton, and east northeast of the county town of Chichester...
. She was arrested but later released as there was no evidence of theft. The Federal Court of Canada rejected a similar suit and another in Australia was withdrawn.
The case against US publisher Henry Holt
Henry Holt and Company
Henry Holt and Company is an American book publishing company. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt...
was brought by New Era Publications, who owned the rights to an official biography of Hubbard. The district court
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
who first heard the case ruled that, although the quotation of private correspondence breached copyright law, an injunction would deny the publisher's First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
rights. When the case was appealed, the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
disagreed with that judgement, arguing that copyright outweighed free speech arguments. However, the court still denied an injunction on the grounds that New Era had waited two years to bring the case after first learning about the book. Although they had prevailed, Henry Holt and Company asked the court for a rehearing to establish that they had not just won on a technicality; a request that the court denied. In 1990, Henry Holt petitioned the Supreme Court, who let the Second Circuit's judgement stand. The Supreme Court decision drew a concerned reaction from publishers and journalists, complaining that biographies would become more legally and financially difficult to publish. A brief for the PEN American Center
PEN American Center
PEN American Center , founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. The Center has a membership of 3,300 writers, editors, and translators...
and the Authors Guild expressed the publishing industry's "confusion, consternation and concern" at the outcome. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. called the decision "a great sadness", arguing that had it been made earlier, he could not have published all three volumes of his history The Age of Roosevelt.
Reception
Martin GardnerMartin Gardner
Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...
's review in Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
called Bare-faced Messiah an "admirable, meticulously documented biography". Miller's book persuaded Gardner that Hubbard was "a pathological liar who steadily deteriorated from a charming rogue into a paranoid egomaniac". Sociologist J. Gordon Melton
J. Gordon Melton
John Gordon Melton is an American religious scholar who was the founding director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and is currently a research specialist in religion and New Religious Movements with the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara...
has stated that along with Stewart Lamont's Religion Inc.
Religion Inc.
Religion Inc. The Church of Scientology is a non-fiction book about Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard, written by Stewart Lamont. The book was published in hardcover edition by Harrap, in 1986.-Cited by other works:...
, Miller's book is "by far the best" among the books published by Scientology critics, though he notes that the Church of Scientology has "prepared statements on each indicating factual errors and omissions." According to Melton, Miller's book is compromised by its author's lack of access to documents charting the early history of the church.
Marco Frenschkowski, in a survey of the available literature on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, called Bare-Faced Messiah the "most important critical biography of Hubbard. Like [Friedrich-Wilhelm Haack's Scientology - Magie des 20. Jahrhunderts] and [Bent Corydon's L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?
L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?
L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman?, first published in 1987 by Lyle Stuart Inc., is a posthumous biography of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard written primarily by author Bent Corydon, which makes extensive use of interviews he conducted with Hubbard's son, who had by that time taken to calling...
] it is extremely polemical and very much tries to pull Hubbard to pieces." He added that Miller's book had "definitely exposed some inflated statements about Hubbard's early achievements," but that the Church of Scientology had been able to counter a number of the points made by Miller: "Hubbard's assertions about his military career in WWII, e.g., have been much nearer to the truth than Miller is trying to show." Malise Ruthven
Malise Ruthven
Malise Ruthven is an Irish academic and writer. He was born in Dublin of Irish-British parentage. He obtained an MA in English Literature at Cambridge University, before working as a scriptwriter with the BBC Arabic and World Service, and a consultant on Middle Eastern affairs. He also gained a...
in the Times Literary Supplement observed that Miller "forces no thesis on his readers, allowing them to draw their own conclusion from the facts he uncovers." He took this as both a strength and a weakness of the book, in that it leaves ambiguous whether Hubbard was a deliberate con-man or sincerely deluded. He also expressed frustration that Miller had not explained how Hubbard had achieved such a following, but complimented the author's meticulous research in separating fact from fiction. The satirical magazine Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
described the book as "meticulously documented" but observed that the author "does not theorise, nor even very often moralise. The reader must provide his own interjections, laughter and gasps of astonishment."
The Sunday Times described the book as "admirably written, well documented and it must have entailed a great deal of painstaking research." It praised Miller for standing up to Scientologists' attempts to discredit him. The New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
praised Bare-faced Messiah as accessibly written and diligently researched but, like Private Eye, criticised it for not illuminating why people find Scientology appealing. The Oregon Law Review described it as "a revealing, enthralling biography of a controversial public figure." Patrick Skene Catling
Patrick Skene Catling
Patrick Skene Catling is a British children's book author and book reviewer best known for writing The Chocolate Touch in 1952.-Background:Catling was born and schooled in London and was educated there and at Oberlin College in the United States...
's review in The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
recommended the book "unreservedly", calling it "an unsurpassably scathing study of money-mad, power-mad megalomania."
Publication history
- 1987, UK, Michael Joseph (ISBN 0718127641), First edition, Hardback
- 1987, Canada, Key Porter (ISBN 1550130277), Hardback
- 1987, USA, Henry Holt (ISBN 0805006540), Hardback
- 1988, UK, Sphere books (ISBN 0747403325), New edition, Paperback
Serialisation
A summary of the book was published in the Arts & Leisure section of the Sunday Times over the course of three articles.
- "Science fictions". (November 1, 1987)
- "Messiah at the Manor". (November 8, 1987)
- "Farce and fear: in Scientology's private navy". (November 15, 1987)
Extracts also appeared in The Weekend Australian and the Toronto Star.
Translation
- In 1993, a French translation (by Sibylle Lang) was published by Plon (ISBN 2259025501), titled Ron Hubbard : le gourou démasqué
See also
- A Piece of Blue SkyA Piece of Blue SkyA Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard Exposed, published in 1990, is an examination from a critical perspective by former British Scientologist Jon Atack of the history of L. Ron Hubbard and the development of Dianetics and the Church of Scientology...
, overcame legal actions from Scientology - The Road to Total FreedomThe Road to Total FreedomThe Road to Total Freedom: A Sociological Analysis of Scientology is a non-fiction book about Scientology by sociologist Roy Wallis. Originally published in 1976 by Heinemann, it was republished in 1977 by Columbia University Press. The original manuscript was the product of Wallis's doctoral...
, 1970s book by a British sociologist - Scientology in the United KingdomScientology in the United KingdomScientology in the United Kingdom is practised mainly within the Church of Scientology and its related groups which go under names including "Hubbard Academy of Personal Independence" and "Dianetics and Scientology Life Improvement Centre". The national headquarters, and former global headquarters,...
Further reading
First-person account of the UK court hearing- Reuter, Madalynne (May 12, 1989) "'Salinger' Haunts Ruling on Hubbard Biography", Publishers WeeklyPublishers WeeklyPublishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
Includes first-person account of the campaign against Miller
External links
Full text- Bare-Faced Messiah by Russell Miller (PDF, full text, by express permission of the author)
- Bare-Faced Messiah by Russell Miller (HTML version)
Reference material
- The Bare-Faced Messiah Interviews, transcripts of interviews Miller conducted while researching the book
Author interview
Reviews