The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions

By Stefan Isaksson

The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions
James R. Lewis (editor)
Prometheus Books
530 pages
ISBN: 1573929646

Scholarly books which objectively and thoroughly deal with the UFO phenomenon and all its various elements are, fortunately, multiplying. And, the last few years have seen a steady rise in the books published dealing with the religious, anthropological, and sociological aspects. The God have Landed (1995, also edited by Lewis) brought together several outstanding scholars and their analyses and studies of religious elements within the UFO movement in general and the extraterrestrial hypothesis in particular.

The latest book from Lewis can be regarded as a sequel to the one published in 1995. The Encyclopedic Sourcebook examines many different new religious movements that were founded after its leader or leaders, in other words the contactees, received extraterrestrial messages through physical contact or telepathy and channelling. Since the book (actually an anthology) is examining new religious movements and their ideas, the content is free from descriptions of various famous UFO sightings (which have been dealt with in numerous other books, anyway). Theories about explanations or solutions to what the UFO phenomenon really is, are also absent, and so are new sightings and new revelations.

Instead, the human factor is what’s being focused on, discussions about why people believe what the believe, and the positive as well as negative factors that might surface when traditional religion is being replaced by saviors from outer space.

The anthology, a massive piece with more than 500 pages, is divided into six different sections. The first section offers an overview of various religious interpretations of the UFO phenomenon, and how the flying saucer myth with its benevolent extraterrestrials came into existence, primarily in the United Stated during the latter half of the 20th century.

Section two describers two UFO religions from the 1950s that are still in existence; The Aetherius Society and Unarius Academy of Science.

Next section is devoted to movements founded in the 1970s; The Raëlian Movement and Heaven’s Gate. The former is the most prominent UFO religion in contemporary society and the latter created headlines all over the world when its members and last remaining founder committed mass suicide in San Diego, California, in 1997.

After that section, the reader is offered an exposition over movements that were founded more recently; Chan Tao and the internet based The Ground Crew.

The following section is lacking direct analyses of movements, and is instead focused on how people in general view the extraterrestrial hypothesis, how contemporary religions would react to the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life, and how a future meeting with a cosmic intelligence would affect the Earth.

The final section is a long appendix with material gathered from some of the movements. The Gods have Landed ended with an extensive bibliography of contactee literature from 1950 to 1994 by J. Gordon Melton, but a similar or updated list cannot be found in The Encyclopedic Sourcebook. However, since literature produced by the movements themselves rarely or never can be found in traditional bookstores, the final section gives the reader a possibility to hear from the believers themselves, and not just from the scientists who have studied them.

And speaking of the scientists, all contributors are well-known and quite respected, which makes the reading both interesting and memorable indeed. But, the book is very academic, and thus very demanding. On numerous occasions the reader must be aware of anthropological, sociological, or religious scholarship in order to fully understand what’s going on, the language can be quite a challenge, and several sections are not easy to grasp for the everyday reader. On more then one occasion the text feels somewhat repetitive, which on the other hand can be suspected from an anthology dealing with such a specific topic.

Still, if one is able to cope with the academic English, lots and lots of goodies are to be found. The essays by Susan Palmer and Michael Rothstein about the Raëlians are very interesting. Charles A. Ziegler offers great insight into how widespread the belief in extraterrestrial intelligence is, Robert Elwood does a great job philosophizing about what would happen the day Contact was firmly established, and Hilary Evans has a splendid contribution with an essay made of easy-to-understand language and interesting approach.

John A. Saliba’s essay about Unarius, on the other hand, is both boring and redundant, and the entire section four does not live up to the standard set by the other essays in the anthology.

Overall, The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions is a breath of fresh air of reasoning and interesting scholarly analyses of new religious movements which all in one way or the other uses the UFO phenomenon in their ideologies and promises about a better world for us all. It’s quite expensive, but if you’re able to afford it you’ll get a piece of scholarship well worth a place of honor in your bookshelf.