Church of Scientology - a new religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard in 1955 and characterized by a belief in the power of a person's spirit to clear itself of past painful experiences through self-knowledge and spiritual fulfillment

The Church of Scientology is a new religious movement that was founded by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard as an organization dedicated to the practice of Scientology. Scientology is a system of beliefs, teachings and rituals, originally established as an alternative psychotherapy in 1952 by science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, then recharacterized by him in 1953 as an "applied religious philosophy."