4. Dr. Alejandro Frigerio
Associate Professor of Sociology, Catholic University of Argentina

Dr. Frigerio took a more expansive approach to analyzing Scientology, utilizing five different methodologies used by social scientists: (1) a “substantive” approach, which examines a religion by the religious experiences of its practitioners, (2) a “comparative” approach, which distinguishes religion from other systems of meaning, (3) a “functional” approach, which examines religion in terms of the consequences it holds in other areas of life, (4) an “analytical” approach, which examines religion through the different ways that it expresses itself, and (5) what is called the “emic” approach, which focuses on aspects that culture acknowledges as religious. At the end of his exhaustive analysis, Dr. Frigerio concluded that “Scientology is a religion from all perspectives which exist in the current discussion of the definition of the term in the social sciences....”