Volume 2, Issue 2. March – April 2018 of the Journal of CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions) features a number of recent studies on the Scientology religion.
These studies include:
- “Is Scientology a Religion?” by Luigi Berzano, Catholic priest and professor of sociology with the Department of Culture, Politics and Society, University of Turin
- “The Most Misunderstood Human Endeavor: L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, and Fine Arts,” by CESNUR director Massimo Introvigne
- “Religious Discrimination and State Neutrality: The Case of Scientology in Hungary,” by Patricia Duval, attorney and member of the Paris Bar
- “Scientology. Libertà e immortalità” by Aldo Natale Terrin, reviewed by Luigi Berzano, University of Turin.
In the introduction to the volume, Dr. Introvigne points out that “both scholars and courts of law throughout the world increasingly recognize Scientology as a religion.”
Introvigne presents examples of “fake news propagated to justify Russian breaches of religious liberty,” and states: “in Belgium on March 11, 2016, after one of the longest cases in Belgian legal history, Scientology obtained a resounding victory and a decision whose language was embarrassing for both anti-cultists and Belgian prosecutors, who wasted taxpayers’ money for twenty years investigating and prosecuting a criminal case that went nowhere.”
He concludes:
“Twenty years after the decision of the Italian Supreme Court, Scientology remains a test case for defining the legal and cultural meaning of ‘religion’ in the 21st century. It is for this reason that the articles in this issue of The Journal of CESNUR and the Supplement should be of interest for scholars of law and religion, both because of the relevance of Scientology as one of the most significant new religions and of the broader significance of the legal and theoretical issues they discuss.”
