The Sunday Times described the book as "admirably written, well documented and it must have entailed a great deal of painstaking research."
In Canada, David Todd of news magazine Maclean's commended the way that Miller had "arriv[ed] at a portrait of [Scientology's] founder that is by turns hilarious and deeply unsettling", commenting that "while scathingly critical of Hubbard and his church, Bare-Faced Messiah is, in fact, scrupulously fair."