Astronomers may recently have detected planets around stars using stellar spectroscopy. The speculation is that contact with extraterrestrial life has become more likely. But in popular culture, it is already here.
Many channellers ('mediums' of yesteryear) claim to bring teachings from nearby star systems. One of the most intelligent British channels, Murry Hope, has 'come out' and declared that spiritually she is of alien origin. She is not the only one, and it gives a new twist to that seminal social science concept 'alienation'.
Another British medium, Ann Walker (author of Little One, Messages from Planet Heaven, 1994) has been told by her spirit guide that he is both a Red Indian and from outer space.
There are channellers relaying material from reptilian forms of evolution in the universe. Walker and Hope - and many others in the shamanic revival - have communicators who are or have assumed the form of animals.
Most disturbing of all is the spread of purported cases of abduction by aliens. They are in your local newsagent. Indeed the new British paranormal magazine, Encounters, has recently issued its first omnibus edition Alien Encounters.
Augustine and aliens
What is the Christian to make of all this? We should first avoid the error of Augustine who in The City of God (16.9) argued on dubious biblical grounds that there could be no people living in the Antipodes (the other side of the globe). Although that opinion prevailed for a millennium, and was supported by both church and science, it fell victim to exploration.
We would be unwise to assert there are no aliens; rather we should be ready for other forms of life, including intelligent life, to be discovered. But we should be wary.
So far as the channelled entities are concerned, the evidence of identity is no better than when Swedenborg (Earths in the Universe, 1758) thought he was speaking to the inhabitants of the solar system. In modern spiritualism, there have always been mediums like Andrew Jackson Davis who fell into the same error, while theosophy had C.W. Leadbeater who astrally visited Mars and its (non-existent) canals.
Conventional psychology may explain this as imagination, and by regurgitation of material once read by the medium or those around him, but the Christian would not rule out the involvement of misleading spirits.
On another planet
Such spirits may also impart a delusion that a person came from another planet, or that a person lived before on the earth. That is especially the case once a person has already been opened up to psychic experiences by occult involvement.
Recently, a former psychoanalyst has published a memoir of the occult writer Paul Brunton, whom he knew well. Jeffrey Masson wrote: 'I think that at some point he became convinced that he had indeed come from another planet. This is an unfamiliar variation on a familiar theme, known to psychologists as 'the family romance', where a person, unhappy with his parents and his current position, imagines that he comes from another planet. PB was later in life to drop hints to other disciples that he was from another planet' (My Father's Guru, HarperCollins, 1993, p. 70).
In dealing with abduction experiences, we enter a darker realm, where the events are typically against the will of the experient. But these are not entirely new. As Ralph Noyes, Honorary Secretary of the Society for Physical Research, has noted: 'Why has this experience come to be called, during the past three or four decades, a UFO abduction? Many parallels - though they never correspond in all details - can be found from earlier centuries and other cultures, for example the medieval visitations of an incubus or succubus to a sleeping victim (always with sexual intention), the entrapment of humankind by the Fairy Folk (often into an enclosed chamber within a hill and frequently for reasons which have to do with sex and reproduction), the flights of the shaman into another realm where non-human entities are encountered, horrendous bodily interventions are suffered and sexual intercourse is a not infrequent theme' (Psi Researcher, May 1995).
The answer is that the experience of supernatural assault began to be reported to flying saucer investigators, who interpreted it in their own extraterrestrial mindset.
Hypnosis
Some investigators also used hypnotic regression. Although hypnosis has a certain medical respectability today, it remains a mysterious process which readily gives access to occult experiences. The suspicion must be that the hypnotic subjects regressed and fantasised in accordance with the preconceptions of the investigators.
Kevin McClure, a leading British physical researcher, has sounded a grave warning about the myth of alien abduction. These stories of adults and children being subjected to vile treatment by entities are often, he suggests, of a pornographic nature, and by spreading fear may cause significant damage to the vulnerable. Hypnosis is a common trigger for this material to surface, which is accepted uncritically by all too many investigators. Significant sums of money may also be involved for authors and publishers of books which further disseminate the myth.
After examining the evidence, McClure states: 'I do not believe that any human being, at any time, has ever been taken away, abducted or whatever by a non-human entity. I am quite sure there are no medical examinations, no interbreeding, no presentation of babies. Consequently, it is my belief that every account of such an event is, however that account comes to be given, an absolute fiction. And that includes all stories of violent abuse of children by aliens. I have come to this conclusion for the very simple reason that there is no evidence to support any other' (K. McClure, Bogeyman, Magonia, Issue 55, March 1996).
The last time McClure got so angry was during the satanic abuse scare when children were being removed by social workers from parents, sometimes for years, because of fears that they were being ritually abused. There are disturbing parallels between the two movements, such as the importation of methods of investigation from the States, the emergence of 'experts' who facilitate the gathering of case histories, and the weakness of evidence from a scientific or legal point of view.
At the same time, I would not rule out demonic involvement in the abduction scenario. I would welcome evidence that apparent experiences of this kind respond to Christian ministry.
Christ over all
Alien interference is also being preached throughout Britain by the New Age prophet David Icke. In his blasphemously-titled book And The Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), he asserts that aliens from space are manipulating the history of the world, working through elite individuals and groups. Though he claims they can be resisted by human knowledge and spirituality, Icke's vision is essentially bleak and paranoid.
The Christian will rejoice that the Lord Jesus is set over all powers, in earth and the heavens. That there is an evil conspiracy, since the Garden of Eden, is not to be denied, but those forces were overthrown on the Cross and will be finally defeated in the coming Judgment.
Without substantial evidence, Christians must be careful not to endorse secular conspiracy theories, such as those which have US presidents making pacts with aliens. Here the interface between legitimate fundamentalism in religion, based on Scripture, and fundamentalism in politics based on idols such as nationalism, is a danger point. Evangelicals who toy with conspiracy theory are in bad company.
Icke agrees with those reputable UFO scholars such as Jacque Vallee who have perceived that Marian phenomena such as Fatima are akin to UFO experiences. But he goes further: 'I am convinced that the Old Testament 'God' know as Yhwh (Yahweh) is also based on an extraterrestrial, or more likely, a series of them' (p. 8).
Some spiritualists, of course, had long interpreted Yhwh as a spirit guide. Both theories indicate the continuing need for Christian teachers to explain the meaning of the names of God in Scripture (as Bob Sheehan has lately done in Reformation Today), and to emphasise that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth, not merely an alien.
Abductions and aliens in fact are ingredients in spurious religions, as has been massively documented in James R. Lewis (ed.): The Gods have landed; new religions from other worlds (SUNY Press, 1995). This is an indispensable book in the study of these things.
UFO religions
In his contribution to this volume on Religious Dimensions of UFO Phenomena, James A. Saliba identifies many religious themes in the phenomena - mystery, transcendence, belief in supernatural entities, perfection, salvation, a distinctive world view and even spirituality. 'Becoming a member of a UFO movement,' he notes, 'often involves an initiation which connotes the beginning of a spiritual development through a series of stages or grades' (p. 51).
In his paper on 'Exo-Theology', Ted Peters quotes an unfortunate comparison between UFOs and angels made by Billy Graham in his book Angels (1975). Since then, angels have become a growth area of religious publishing, but it is doubtful if Christians generally have a better grasp of the biblical teaching which will enable us to distinguish the two.
Peter also traces what he calls Christian terror literature about UFOs as far back as a 1973 Mississippi abduction case, though the subject was eclipsed in later years by anti-New Age and anti-Satanism literature.
The first of the UFO religions such as the 'I Am' movement of Guy Ballard, predate the flying saucer excitement of 1947. Indeed extraterrestrial teachings are a continuing element in the classics of modern theosophy (Blavatsky, Bailey, Steiner etc.).
The challenge for Christians will be to avoid the knee-jerk scepticism of the humanists on the one hand and credulity of much American ufological output on the other.
Meanwhile, the growth of abduction cases poses a considerable pastoral problem.
Leslie Price is an associate editor of Theosophical History, a quarterly journal.
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