Over the past three centuries, belief in extraterrestrial life has had a profound influence on American religion. Faith in Space examines the key thinkers and religious leaders throughout American history who built faith communities around the notion that we are not alone in the universe, and that the path to spiritual truth leads heavenward to the stars.
Paul Gutjahr reveals the pivotal role Protestant Christianity played in the formation of extraterrestrial belief in many of these traditions, sharing new perspectives on prominent Americans such as Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Paine. He goes on to examine familiar religious movements such as Spiritualism, Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, Scientology, the Nation of Islam, and Heaven鈥檚 Gate as well as lesser-known belief systems such as Swedenborgianism, Theosophy, the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, and Ashtar Command. Gutjahr shows how prophetic figures in these traditions created rich cosmological tapestries for their followers, bridging the terrestrial and the extraterrestrial with their spiritual insights.
A panoramic work of scholarship, Faith in Space traces how these traditions have offered generations of Americans cosmically oriented religious thinking through the belief in alien life, propounding a view that humanity鈥檚 salvation is inextricably tied to the actions and interventions of intelligent beings from other worlds.
Paul C. Gutjahr is Ruth N. Halls Professor of English at Indiana University. His books include The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America; The Book of Mormon: A Biography (快色直播); Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy; and An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880.
"An eye-opening study of the intimate ties between religion, science, and the human search for
extraterrestrial life."鈥擪ristine Morris, Foreword Reviews
“In this gripping, comprehensive study, Paul Gutjahr shows that, for many American religious practitioners, the aliens are already here. This is powerful, important, and timely work.”—Mary-Jane Rubenstein, author of Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race
“Faith in Space presents a history of cosmic reach. From venerable inquirers into the plurality of worlds through the latest channelers of UFO religions, Gutjahr explores a whole constellation of philosophers, theologians, mediums, and prophets for whom extraterrestrial life was not a mere possibility but a galvanizing reality. With prose that is at once concise and colorful, witty and exacting, Gutjahr offers a master class in how to make serious scholarship a good read.”—Leigh Eric Schmidt, author of Heaven’s Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman
“Paul Gutjahr’s thorough research treats the many Protestant, Mormon, Adventist, Muslim, Swedenborgian, Theosophist, and Eastern believers who have taken the reality of aliens, UFOs, and alternative worlds for granted. Their obsessions do not concern what if, but what kind of, contact humans enjoy with extraterrestrial realms. Aided by a splendid array of telling images, Faith in Space demonstrates that a supposed byway of American life reveals a great deal about the cultural mainstream.”—Mark A. Noll, author of America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794–1911
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