Book Reviews / Journal of Religion in Europe 5 (2012) 311–321 319 Hugh B. Urban, The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011), 268 pp. ISBN: 978-0-691-14608-9 (cloth), $27.95. Scientology is probably the best-known new religion, and a host of academic texts dealing with this particular group has appeared since 1976, when the first major account was published by Roy Wallis. Most of these contributions have been socio- logically oriented, but Hugh B. Urban makes a point of presenting himself as a his- torian of religions, identifying with Bruce Lincoln’s critical methodological approach to discursive claims of the “transcendent, spiritual, and divine.” Urban’s book offers an in-depth, meticulously researched analysis of how and why Scientology developed the way it did, and in doing so he adds considerably to the scholarship on the subject. A lot of well-known data are repeated, but often in new ways and for new purposes, but the author also offers his readers a host of entirely new insights that convincingly support his argumentation. Considering the vast amount of documents, texts, and not least internet sources available for scholarly inspection, Urban’s work is impressive—and so is his ability to stay focused. Urban explores the development of Scientology from its inception in the early 1950s to the present, using the on-going controversies surrounding the organiza- tion as a unifying theme throughout his exposition. Lawsuits, media battles, inter- net wars, threats, fraud, and sometimes acts of violence have been with Scientology more or less from the beginning, but it is rarely understood how such phenomena are linked with the religious positions and organizational structures of L. Ron Hubbard’s religion. Urban does not tackle this question directly, but his analysis shows how Scientology has adopted a discourse where the surrounding world is classified as basically untrustworthy while Scientology itself represents everything good, indeed constituting the only hope for humanity. At the centre of things we find the odd character of Hubbard, and Urban should be commended for his ability to make sense of this truly strange man. Maintaining the strict etic position of the historian of religions, Urban has no intention of explaining the religious sentiments of individual Scientologists. The issue at stake, rather, is the phenomenon of Scientology, so to speak, and in chapter after chapter new layers of data and interpretations are offered. One issue of particular interest to Urban is the discussion regarding the religious nature of Scientology. Contextualizing the debate historically, Urban leaves it up to his readers to decide whether Scientology is in fact a religion or not, and prefers to highlight the politics of defining religion. Hence, for Urban the pertinent question is not so much if Scientology is a religion or not, but rather who has the power to pass judgment on this issue. This, obviously, is a crucial question, and the author is right to call upon the historian of religions to engage in the debate and to be respectful as well as critical in his or her study of religious groups as well as of the © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI 10.1163/187489212X634825