Reviews 427

Although the passing of John Webster in the prime of his career in 2016
was a tragedy, we are grateful to the editors of this volume for bringing
to light an older but still classic iteration of Webster’s theology that he
became most noted for. This book is short, but it is also densely packed
with much theological reflection and argumentation that will be
demanding and rewarding for the readers of it. These lectures are a clear
sample and example of Webster’s ‘Barth years’ in which he heavily
engaged with and drew upon the theology of the Swiss theologian Karl
Barth (1886–1968) and the register of his language, tone, and rhetoric
evidence that plainly. Although Webster expanded his theology in his
final years to include Thomas Aquinas and Protestant Scholastics, these
lectures demonstrate the mind and heart of a Christian theologian who
takes the discipline of theology with the utmost joy and seriousness that
it deserves. The lectures (chapters) are of mostly equal length and they
build off one another to make a compelling argument for theology and
the theologian to regain their nerve at the beginning of late modernity
and early postmodernity. Webster ably dissects the ills of contemporary
theology and provides worthwhile prescriptions for how to remedy these
issues and prevent them from arising in the future. The editors did well
to provide a thorough introduction to the lectures and Webster’s
academic career; moreover, through further deft editorial work, a section
of the sixth lecture was retrieved from the original lecture notes that was
not published in the journal article in 1998, and for that, we are also
grateful. Although it would be easy to critique this theological offering
of Webster as underdeveloped relative to his later theology, that would
also be disingenuous; therefore, we recommend that the reader engage
this work conscious of the fact that they are from 1998 and must be read
as part of the development of Webster’s theology. Because of Webster’s
polished and poignant academic prose, we recommend this book to
scholars, graduate students, and those with a vested interest in Webster’s
theological corpus.

Bradley M. Penner
Briercrest College and Seminary, Canada

★ ★ ★

Among the Scientologists: History, Theology, and Praxis, Donald A.

Westbrook, Oxford University Press, 2019 (ISBN 978-0-19-066497-8),
xiv + 338 pp., hb £29.99

Donald Westbrook’s book opens with a quote from Hugh B. Urban’s

history of Scientology, in which Urban discusses the problem with
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
428 Reviews

outsider analyses of Scientology. On the one hand, there is a deep suspi-

cion towards the Church of Scientology on the part of the general public.
Discussions of the Church by journalists, ex-members, and documentary
filmmakers tend to be very hostile. On the other hand, academics
studying Scientology are so aware of these tendencies that their work
on Scientology suffers from the opposite problem, a determination to
make the Church appear in the best possible light, ignoring all evidence
to the contrary. These are the twin pitfalls in researching such a
controversial movement and Westbrook is clearly well aware of them.
To his credit, he navigates them with great success, treating his informants
with the appropriate respect but not shying away from discussing the less
creditable areas in the history of Scientology.
One of Westbrook’s innovations is to focus on the individual
practitioner, as opposed to high-profile Scientologists such as Tom Cruise.
The average Scientologist is not a Hollywood superstar, or even in the
entertainment industry at all, and so to focus on the likes of Cruise and
John Travolta creates a misleading impression.
The first chapter lays out some preliminary conclusions regarding how
members of the movement understand Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, and
the ‘Bridge to Total Freedom’. This last is a key concept in Scientology.
Movement up the Bridge represents a Scientologist’s spiritual
advancement. The first half ends at ‘Clear’; after that, the so-called OT,
or ‘Operating Thetan’ levels, begin. Progress through the stages of the
Bridge is obtained by completing ‘audits’, exercises in counseling and
self-examination conducted by a trained ‘auditor’.
As will be apparent from the previous paragraph’s liberal use of
quotation marks and capitalization, one of the difficulties in
understanding Scientology is its constant use of its own jargon, all of it
developed by L. Ron Hubbard, who seems to have enjoyed applying in-
congruously technical-sounding language to matters of mystical and spir-
itual development. Westbrook acknowledges the problem and deals with
it by defining each term as it comes up.
The second chapter discusses L. Ron Hubbard’s life and work before he
founded the Church of Scientology – in particular, the development of
‘Dianetics’, his self-help discipline. As Westbrook explains, Scientology
inherited many of the key concepts of Dianetics, but it also expanded its
scope dramatically and made a number of significant changes. One such
change was the introduction of the OT levels: in Dianetics, going Clear
was the practitioner’s ultimate goal, whereas in Scientology, it is only half-
way up the Bridge. Another important change was the requirement for
auditors to be officially authorized by the Church. Previously, anyone
who had read Dianetics could audit others, and the movement around
it was informal and non-hierarchical. As well as giving Hubbard and
the Church greater power, this was also a lucrative change: as with all ad-
vancement in Scientology, qualifying as an auditor within the Church of
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Reviews 429

Scientology requires courses for which the would-be auditor must pay, ei-
ther in cash or labor.
Of course, many believe that Hubbard’s desire for money was his main
motivation in founding the Church in the first place, sometimes citing a
putative quote from him about the money to be made by starting a new
religion. Westbrook’s analysis of Hubbard’s motives is nuanced and per-
suasive. He certainly does not represent Hubbard as blind to the money to
be made, but he argues that his real motivation was to regain control of
his own intellectual property. An earlier episode of bankruptcy had lost
Hubbard the copyright to Dianetics, putting him in an extremely
humiliating and frustrating position. The introduction of the OT levels
above Clear, all of them confidential and copyrighted, restored control
to Hubbard.
A subsequent chapter sets forth the theology of Scientology, laying out
key doctrines such as the concepts of ‘overts’, ‘withholds’, and ‘suppressive
persons’; the space opera-like vast timescales of reincarnation; and above
all, the idea of ‘Keeping Scientology Working’ (KSW) – that is, preserving
Hubbard’s teachings and not altering or editing them. It is
dogmatic within the Church that Hubbard’s approach (his ‘technology’,
to use the Scientology term) cannot fail; if it does, then the user has
misunderstood something and should return to his writings and read more
carefully. There then follows an overview and history of the Sea Org, the
elite organization within Scientology. Particularly interesting is a case
study of the typical day-to-day life of a Sea Org member in Los Angeles.
The final chapter discusses the recent history of Scientology, in
particular the power struggles that took place after Hubbard’s death,
the Church’s legal battle to be recognized as a religion in the United
States, and the story of the rise and fall of the Guardian’s Office.
This book is a first-rate introduction to Scientology, making its convo-
luted tenets and history remarkably clear and accessible.

Clement William Grene

University of Edinburgh

★ ★ ★

The End of the Beginning: Joshua and Judges, Johanna W. H. Van Wijk-
Bos, Eerdmans, 2019 (ISBN 978-0-8028-6838-1), xiv + 354 pp., pb $29.99
The Road to Kingship: 1–2 Samuel, Johanna W. H. Van Wijk-Bos,
Eerdmans, 2020 (ISBN 978-0-8028-7744-4), xiv + 418 pp., pb $29.99

These are the first two volumes of a trilogy, A People and a Land, which will
include the author’s commentary on Kings, due out later this year. Each
© 2020 The Author. Reviews in Religion & Theology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution
and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.