Have you ever wondered whether other worlds exist, and, if they do, whether they’re filled with intelligent life? If so, you’ve tapped into a deeply human instinct. Americans have long looked up at the night sky and asked that question.
For Christians, though, the answers can feel unnerving. We already believe in nonhuman intelligence. We call them angels and demons. But aliens would be something else—material, embodied, literally otherworldly.
In 2016, NASA started a conversation among religious scholars at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton about what the existence of extraterrestrial life would mean for religion. Paul Gutjahr, Ruth N. Halls professor of English at Indiana University, has been wrestling with that question for years. Faith in Space: American Religious Belief in Extraterrestrial Life is his considered answer. He thinks we need to look back at existing “extraterrestrial cosmologies” in American religions rather than merely pondering future possibilities (7).
Faith in Space is ultimately a history of what happens when religious communities take extraterrestrial life seriously. Many minority religions have, and it has shaped their cosmology and even their soteriology. But for many evangelical Christians, Gutjahr’s history raises a more uncomfortable question: What happens when we don’t take seriously the possibility of extraterrestrial life?
Alien Religion
Early Americans didn’t need much help imagining inhabited worlds. According to Gutjahr, many Americans “believed there to be life elsewhere in the universe” (19). By the end of the 19th century, “every stratum of American society had been exposed” to this belief (43).
For example, Emanuel Swedenborg taught that the universe is populated with humans bearing God’s image and claimed to have conversed with them. His American followers never numbered more than a few thousand, and yet his ideas traveled across the young nation; Helen Keller held them, as did John Chapman (a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed).
What happens when we don’t take seriously the possibility of extraterrestrial life?
Andrew Jackson Davis, the father of American Spiritualism, was similarly inspired, convinced that “if life is to be found on other planets, it is human life.” He arranged extraterrestrial humans in “a progression of degrees that move from less to more spiritual” (64).
Then Joseph Smith took things further. Latter-day Saints (Mormons) took an “aggressive extraterrestrial cosmological stance,” linking all worlds under one governing structure (79). God created many inhabited worlds arranged in “a hierarchy where some worlds rule over others” (89). Among these many worlds, Earth holds the least desirable title of “the most wicked, and thus most in need of a savior” (86). God himself is an enfleshed exalted man dwelling on a planet near the star Kolob. I’d add that the Salt Lake Temple bears the Big Dipper, and early Latter-day Saint temple iconography is thick with suns, moons, and stars.
Next came the founder of Seventh-day Adventism, Ellen G. White. Where William Miller’s followers read comets and meteor showers as signs of Christ’s return, White gave Seventh-day Adventists “a far more complex understanding of their relationship with the stars” (124). Ours “was the only wicked world” (125). White distinguished strongly between the righteous and unrighteous worlds, and put Earth on the wrong side of that distinction.
By the 20th century, the heavens were packed and theories about the heavens were part of salvation. Then comes Helena Blavatsky (Theosophy), L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology), Wallace Fard Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan (Nation of Islam), Malachi Z. York (Nuwaubian Nation), Ashtar Command, and Heaven’s Gate. All these figures or groups saw extraterrestrial life as part of the human story, whether for our good or our ill, or both.
While the subtitle promises to cover American religions broadly, Gutjahr sets aside Catholics, Jews, and native traditions. The only “Protestants” he examines are Swedenborgians and Latter-day Saints, neither of whom would accept the label. The better subtitle would have been American Minority Religious Belief in Extraterrestrial Life; that book is excellent. The great observation Gutjahr makes is that while older traditions discussed other worlds and their inhabitants, newer traditions made them doctrine.
Evangelical Attitudes
This book leads me to wonder where evangelicalism sits. As a pastor, I’m afraid the honest answer is that many evangelicals haven’t yet pulled up a chair. Our people are already thinking about this possibility, including many of our young men. The U.S. government keeps releasing Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) footage and testimony, and Congress keeps holding hearings. Some of the loudest Christian voices on the subject are repeating only one word, over and over: demonic.
Demonology certainly is part of the UAP discussion. I’ve read enough abduction encounters and heard enough testimony to understand that sort of thing is in play and should be taken seriously. But my concern is that all UAP and nonhuman intelligence will be considered demonic by default, and we’ll stop asking what else might be out there.
If his Space Trilogy is any measure to go by, I think C. S. Lewis would find that move unwise. It’s such a big conclusion to draw from such a small, opaque sample. Lewis would ask us to stretch our imagination within the bounds of biblical orthodoxy.
Much of the buzz around Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day this summer focused on how the movie, which presented the existence aliens in our midst as a fact, might undermine religious belief. The UAP discussion is something our culture is wrestling with in religious terms. Our answer needs to go deeper than simply attributing the inexplicable to demons.
Considered Response
Thankfully, the Christian worldview allows us to think carefully about this subject, and it even invites us to. Scripture already speaks of a creation that includes things “visible and invisible” (Col. 1:16).
C. S. Lewis takes up these questions without flinching—especially in his excellent essay “Religion and Rocketry”—where he walks through the logical possibilities for rational extraterrestrial life. He argues that “the mere existence of these creatures would not raise a problem.” We would need to know if they were fallen and in need of redemption before we worry about how their existence affects our theology. Meanwhile, Lewis reminds us that “Christians and their opponents again and again expect that some new discovery will either turn matters of faith into matters of knowledge or else reduce them to patent absurdities. But it has never happened.” Yet if Lewis thought it worthwhile to consider the possibilities, then we can do the same, and I think pastors should for the sake of their people.
The Christian worldview allows us to think carefully about this subject, and it even invites us to.
The challenge for church leaders is to take people seriously when they ask these questions. When a young man brings up the topic, we can’t simply claim it’s demonic and walk away. Instead, we need to turn to discipleship.
Ask what he’s been reading and hearing. Ask what he thinks about it. Then show him how the Christian doctrine of creation is big enough to hold all those questions and thoughts and feelings. We don’t need to have all the answers. We just need to be willing to wrestle with all the questions.
Faith in Space shows that many Americans throughout history have already taken the question of extraterrestrial life seriously, but they’ve done so from outside an orthodox Christian framework. By expounding an engaging history, Gutjahr invites readers to join in the conversation.
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