Bare-faced Messiah
Cover of UK paperback edition
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| Author | Russell Miller |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | L. Ron Hubbard |
| Publisher | Michael Joseph |
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Publication date
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26 October 1987 |
| Pages | 380 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 20634668 |
| 299/.936/092 B 20 | |
| LC Class | BP605.S2 M55 1987 |
Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard is a posthumous biography of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard by British journalist Russell Miller. First published in the United Kingdom on 26 October 1987, the book takes a critical perspective, challenging the Church of Scientology's account of Hubbard's life and work. It quotes extensively from official documents acquired using the Freedom of Information Act and from Hubbard's personal papers, which were obtained via a defector from the Church. It was also published in Australia, Canada and the United States.
The Church of Scientology strongly opposed the book's publication. The Church was accused of organising a smear and harassment campaign against Miller and his publisher, though it strenuously denied this accusation, and a private investigator involved in the campaign denied that the Church was his client. However, a leak of internal Church documents to the press in 1990 disclosed many details of the campaign. The Church and related corporate entities attempted to prevent the book's publication in court, resulting in cases that reached the Supreme Court of the United States, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and the Federal Court of Canada. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to let a lower court's ruling stand, denying fair use protection for the book's use of unpublished sources, set a precedent favouring copyright protection of unpublished material over biographers' freedom of speech. Courts in the UK and Canada took an opposite view, allowing publication of Bare-faced Messiah in the public interest.
Reviews of the book have been broadly positive — one calling it "the best and most comprehensive biography of L. Ron Hubbard" — and praise the quality and depth of Miller's research. The Church of Scientology has been less complimentary; the executor of Hubbard's estate called it "a scumbag book ... full of bullshit" in a court deposition in the U.S.
Russell Miller had been an investigative journalist for the Sunday Times and had written well-received biographies of Hugh Hefner (Bunny, published in 1984) and J. Paul Getty (The House of Getty, 1985). These were the first two biographies of a trilogy on sex, money and religion, with the Hubbard book completing the trilogy. He spent two years researching the book, which followed a Sunday Times Magazine investigation of the Church of Scientology published in October 1984. In 1985, he suggested that the Sunday Times should try to find Hubbard, who had disappeared from public view several years earlier. If the project succeeded, it would be a worldwide scoop for the newspaper. Even if it did not find the reclusive Scientology leader, the continuing mystery would itself be a good story. Through contacts among ex-Scientologists in the U.S., Miller narrowed down the area where Hubbard was hiding to the vicinity of San Luis Obispo, California. However, Hubbard died in January 1986 before Miller could finish his project. He decided at this point to use his research as the basis of a full-fledged biography of Hubbard, in addition to writing the previously agreed series of articles for the Sunday Times.
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