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In recent decades, Coptic Egyptian immigrants have steadily adopted new homelands throughout the world, most significantly in Europe, North America, and Australia. Their efforts perpetuate their religious and cultural identity and connect diaspora communities and experiences to the mother church as well as to the realities of marginalization and persecution of their co-religionists in Egypt. However, relatively little research has been carried out on the virtual or digital presences of diaspora Copts, all the more significant in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring. Focusing on religious identity, this article fills a lacuna by analyzing three case studies of electronic identity mediation and preservation in the Coptic diaspora: (1) the online ecclesiastical-pastoral and educational presence of Bishop Suriel of Melbourne, (2) the spiritual-socialcultural mission of the Los Angeles-based Coptic television station LogosTV, and (3) the global collaborative academic project of the digital Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia. These are part of an emerging electronic Coptic diaspora (e-diaspora)-a form of borderless territoriality-that functions to compensate for the loss of territorial and socio-religious-cultural-political control in Egypt and provide Copts with virtual territorial gains and borderless space for community and consciousness raising.

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This article contends that a number of ecclesiastical and historical centers associated with the Church of Scientology can be considered and analyzed as pilgrimage sites. Although the notion of pilgrimage is not explicitly taken up by Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986), his Bridge to Total Freedom is intended to provide church members with a distinct spiritual path leading to the states of Clear and Operating Thetan (ot). In order to walk this spiritual path, individual Scientologists must physically journey to a series of Scientology churches (organizations) where auditing (spiritual counseling) and auditor training levels are delivered in a gradient fashion. In addition, the church has established L. Ron Hubbard Landmark Sites for members (and interested outsiders) to tour key sites in the development of Dianetics and Scientology. These spaces have no direct soteriological value but are educationally and spiritually significant because they allow visitors to “walk in Ron’s footsteps” and retrace the Founder’s research into the nature of the mind and spirit as later systematized and streamlined in the Bridge to Total Freedom.

The academic study of Scientology traces to at least 1958, when L. Ron Hubbard granted an interview to new religions scholar and librarian J. Stillson Judah in Washington, DC. Since then, relations between the Church of Scientology and academics have at times been strained yet, | INTRODUCTIONFor many, the Church of Scientology is associated with a science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard , celebrity adherents, esoteric scriptures, allegations of abuse, claims of "brainwashing" and "cult" status, a pay-as-yougo theology, an episode on the American TV show South Park, and a slew of anti-Scientology books and documentaries (especially over the last decade). In a 2008 Gallup poll (Jones), 52% of Americans surveyed had a "total negative" view of Scientologists. This was the highest of all religious groups surveyed, ahead of both Muslims and atheists, respectively. Only 7% of Gallup respondents reported a "total positive" view of Scientology, with 37% indicating that they were "neutral" on the topic. This perception in the popular culture is, to a large extent, a reflection of the literature about the Church of Scientology that has influenced the popular imagination since the 1950s.