Understanding scientology: a look inside the controversial church.

• Author: Urban, Hugh
• Position: Going Clear - Book review

THE LAST SEVERAL years have been rough ones for the Church of Scientology. Since 2008, a number of high-ranking defectors have come forward to condemn the church's current leadership. There's a growing list of books by ex-members that detail a shocking array of abuses within the church. Withering exposes of Scientology have appeared in The St. Petersburg Times and on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, while the faith's innermost secrets were mercilessly ridiculed in a 2008 episode of South Park.

Most recently, the church has been the focus of three major books: my own academic work, The Church of Scientology (Princeton), and two journalistic accounts: Janet Reitman's Inside Scientology (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and Lawrence Wright's Going Clear (Knopf).

Of these last two, Wright's book is arguably the more balanced, thoughtful, and empathetic, offering not an "expose" but rather an attempt to understand the effects of religious beliefs in people's lives, exploring the allure, the benefits, and the perils of involvement in this complex new religion. Indeed, at certain points, Wright bends so far over backward to be fair to the church that he risks undermining the credibility of his own narrative.

Wright, a staff writer for The New Yorker, begins his account by focusing on one ex-Scientologist, movie director Paul Haggis. Wright uses Haggis' case to introduce the initial appeal of Scientology, the church's powerful role in Hollywood, and also Haggis' progressive disillusionment with the contradictory, unsettling, and bizarre aspects of the movement.

Wright then offers a remarkably sensitive portrait of Scientology's enigmatic founder, L. Ron Hubbard, telling in a compelling way how a penny-a-word pulp fiction author wrote a tremendously popular self-help book, Dianetics, then went on to create one of the most successful new religions of the 20th century. While the Church of Scientology presents Hubbard as the most important man who ever lived and critics denounce him as a madman and a charlatan, Wright offers a more complex and human portrait, trying to account for the tremendous influence this figure has had on millions of readers. In Wright's narrative, Hubbard appears as neither a monster nor a saint but as a man who was often surprisingly insightful, yet also egotistical, manipulative, and abusive. Wright narrates particular pieces of this tale especially well, such as the suicide of Hubbard's gay son, Quentin, after which Hubbard allegedly...