Scientology: Religion or racket? Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi The name Scientology (a copyrighted and registered trademark) brings to mind a wide array of claims, observations, impressions, findings, and documents, reflecting a complex and controversial history. The religion/not religion debate over various groups and organizations, prominent in the Western media over the past thirty years, has usually presented the public and politicians with a religion versus "sect" or "cult" dichotomy. The classification issue in this article is framed differently.Hopkins (1969) offered us the terms of the debate in the bluntest and most direct way when he asked in the title of an article in Christianity Today more than thirty years ago "Scientology: Religion or racket?" Read today, the Hopkins article sounds naive and charitable, but this question still stands before us, and yet deserves an answer Philipps-Universität Marburg Marburg Deutschhausstraße 9, 35037 Marburg 2003 2015-08-24 2015-08-24 Text article urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-0004-2003-121-37241 eng 1418722-x 8 1 (2003) 1 https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0004/article/download/3724/3539 10.17192/mjr.2003.8.3724 https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0004/2003/121/3724