The Difference between Scientology & Christianity

It has everything--A-list celebrity members whose success has been attributed to it, extraordinary institutional wealth, a raft of artifacts demonstrating its special qualities, and cultural identification with modernity, not antiquity. It is relevant. It is now. And, if the testimonials are any guide, it gets results.

I'm having great wins on the Scientology Basic Books and Lectures.

I've been a Scientologist for many years, and I've had lots of Scientology auditing (spiritual counseling) and training. But I feel in many ways I'm just now becoming a Scientologist through studying these Basic Books and Lectures, exactly the way L. Ron Hubbard intended. (Jenny, 2008)

With the possible exception of Notre Dame varsity, nobody has recently gone on record saying that he or she is "having great wins" on the Christian Bible. That would appear to diminish Christianity as a religion relevant to modern culture, and although the testimonial might also be explained in terms of illiteracy, such concerns must be set aside in any meaningful comparison of Christianity and Scientology as religious traditions. The purpose of this research is to examine Christianity and Scientology as modern cultural artifacts, exploring what each belief system asserts, where it reaches meaning, and how it applies to contemporary experience.

It seems appropriate to begin with the earlier and perhaps more familiar religious tradition: Christianity. What is known about

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t book titled Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Dianetics was a system of self-help psychotherapy that attached a new vocabulary to Freudian psychology and advocated a systematic psychological-training program of self-improvement. Hubbard lectured widely on the concept, gradually attracting and training others in the techniques of the program; an organization emerged. Soon one could (ideally, with the help of Dianetics expert counselors) engage in the techniques of auditing one's selfhood so as to arrive at clarity, the condition of having been helped and improved. Over the next two decades, Hubbard generated a constant stream of texts (many written personally by him) and "auditing ritual tools" (Christensen, 2005, p. 232). By 1954, Dianetics had elided into Scientology as such. Hubbard and his authoritative texts remained the focus of the organization. Christensen (2005) describes the well-documented efforts on Hubbard's part to position himself as a charismatic leader as "textualization," or the process of transforming Hubbard from a historical person to a mythological character identified with a "set of religious ideas and practices" (p. 230). His intent was to "transform personal charisma into organizati

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