Panel: RELIGIOUS CONSTRUCTIONS OF MORTALITY: INEQUALITY, NORMATIVITY, AND THE MEANING OF DEATH



652_2.3 - SCIENTOLOGY AND DEATH AS PASSAGE: DOCTRINE, RITUAL PRACTICES, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SPIRITUAL IMMORTALITY

AUTHORS:
D'Agostino F. (Chiesa Nazionale di Scientology d'Italia ~ Vimodrone-Roma ~ Italy)
Text:
This paper analyzes the conception of death and immortality in Scientology, with particular attention to the funeral ceremony as a ritual device which forward and transmits the eschatological vision of this religion. Scientology presents itself as a path of individual verification rather than dogmatic adherence, a distinction the movement actively claims and that forms an integral part of its legitimation in the contemporary religious field. Founded by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s, it proposes a vision of the human being as a spiritual entity - termed "thetan", from greek letter "theta" for spirit, in its internal terminology - that survives bodily death and continues its existence. It is on this anthropological premise that Scientology's soteriological path is articulated, oriented, according to its doctrine, toward a progressive spiritual liberation achievable already in the present. Building on this doctrinal framework, the paper focuses on the funeral ceremony as a case study: a ritual in which death is reinterpreted not as cessation but as transition, and in which the community celebrates the continuity of the spiritual being beyond biological life. The analysis shows how the ceremony coherently integrates eschatology, anthropology, and communal practice, situating Scientology in a meaningful dialogue with religious traditions on the theme of death and with the broader landscape of contemporary new religious movements. -