Scientology: A Religion in South Africa David Chidester University of Cape Town South Africa        Dedicated to the preservation of the church’s sacred scriptures and religious teachings, the Religious Technology Centre registers and supervises the use of Scientology trademarks and copyrights. In guarding the orthodoxy of the religion, the Religious Technology Centre maintains the purity of its teachings and ensures that the ministry of the church is conducted on an ethical basis.      Outside of the church hierarchy, the Church of Spiritual Technology was established in 1982 to ensure the survival of the religion by preserving the writings of L. Ron Hubbard on imperishible materials. Indicating that these writings are regarded as sacred scriptures, the Church of Spiritual Technology has developed various means of preservation, including inscribing Hubbard’s texts on stainless steel plates to be stored in titanium containers, that will guarantee the permanent survival of the foundational documents of the Scientology religion. In this way, the Church of Spiritual Technology has assumed the responsibility of protecting the sacred scriptures of Scientology from “any conceivable catastrophe in order that future generations, even wandering tribes of savages thousands of years from now, will have the Scripture to resurrect the religion.”32      In addition to preserving and propagating its religious technology, the Church of Scientology has developed a range of public services in the fields of drug rehabilitation, criminal reform, business administration, and education. Narcanon provides services and support to reduce drug use; Criminon works with convicted criminals to keep them from returning to prison; the Way to Happiness programme supports the development of personal morality and social ethics; and Applied Scholastics provides educational programmes in studying and learning methods. Through these and other programmes, the Church of Scientology extends its religious mission into social services.      The central focus of the Church of Scientology, however, remains its religious mission. As L. Ron Hubbard intended, Scientology has been “planned on a religious organization basis throughout the world.”33 Not all “new religious movements” have been so comfortable with being identified as religions. For example, Transcendental Meditation, founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, insisted that it was not a religion; it was a secular organisation that offered a purely scientific technique for stress reduction.34 But Scientology has always been clear about its status as a religious organisation. That status has been affirmed all over the world by governments that have granted the church the same legal recognition and tax exemptions accorded to any religion.

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