Interpreting UFO activity through the lens of religious traditions
By: Oxford Academic
Tags: Ufos And Aliens, Media Studies, Religious Studies, Religion, Supernatural

In the following excerpt from American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology, author D.W. Pasulka illustrates how new religious movements integrate UFOs into older religious traditions and scriptures and how that is often misrepresented in the media.

Scholars of religion were not the first to suggest that the flying saucer was the symbol of a new, global belief system. Carl Jung announced it in his little book, published in the 1950s, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. Writing in the late 1960s, Jacques Vallee argued, in Passport to Magonia, that similar patterns could be observed in folklore, religious traditions, and modern UFO events. Scholars of the history of the flying saucer usually date its emergence to the beginning of the Cold War and pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine, flat, saucerlike discs over Mount Rainier in 1947. Vallee argues, however, that the phenomenon has been around for thousands of years, perhaps more. He is right. Yet the ubiquitous cultural framework for understanding them as the modern UFO did indeed begin around 1947.

Since the 1960s, scholars of religion have made significant progress in identifying the mechanisms of religious belief, including how social infrastructures inspire new religious movements. Interpretation of UFOs as connected to religion or religious traditions constitutes a significant cultural development. New religious movements such as the Nation of Islam, Scientology, and Jediism incorporate the UFO narrative into older religious traditions and scriptures. Popular television programs like Ancient Aliens provide viewers with interpretive strategies that encourage them to view religious visions of the past through the lens of the modern UFO narrative, turning medieval angels into aliens, for example.

What was once a belief localized within small pockets or groups of believers under the umbrella term “UFO religions” is now a widespread worldview that is supercharged by the digital infrastructure that spreads messages and beliefs “virally.” The infrastructure of technology has spawned new forms of religion and religiosity, and belief in UFOs has emerged as one such new form of religious belief.

The media’s representation of the phenomenon often adds some violence to the original event that motivated the belief. Some may understandably ask, “Is it real, or is it imaginary?” It is important to remember that the events themselves pale in comparison to the reality of the social effects. This is a shame. The closer one gets to those engaged in the study of the phenomenon, the more one begins to fathom the complex nature of these events that come to be interpreted as religious, mystical, sacred, or pertaining to UFOs, and the deep commitments of the people who experience them. Each of the scientists with whom I engaged with in the course of writing my book American Cosmic was passionately obsessed with his research, but none of them would ever offer conclusions as to what the phenomenon was or where it came from. The suggestion that the phenomenon is the basis for a new form of religion elicited sneers and disgust. To them, the phenomenon was too sacred to become religious dogma.

It was also, in their opinion, too sacred to be entrusted to the media. Because of my dual research focus, I became a reluctant bridge between the scientists and media professionals. On one occasion, a videographer, working for a well- known production company, contacted one of the scientists and asked him for a two- sentence quote. At first the scientist was confused, wondering how the videographer had acquired his contact information. He then correctly traced it back to me. In a phone call to me he registered his disgust.

“There is a lot of arrogance in the assumption that I am supposed to condense twenty years of research into the most profound topic in human history into a two- sentence sound bite to be broadcast out to the public so they can consume it with their TV dinner. No thanks,” he said. Interchanges like this, which I witnessed often, reveal the chasm between those engaged in studying the phenomenon and the media representations of it. Ironically, however, it is precisely media representations that create and sustain UFO belief. Is it real, or is it imaginary? What I came to find in my research suggests that it is both.