Nova Religio

Alien Worlds: Social and Religious Dimensions of Extraterrestrial Contact. Edited by Diana G. Tumminia. Syracuse University Press, 2007. xlii + 364 pages. $34.95 paper. The week I started reading Diana G. Tumminias anthology Alien Worlds: Social and Religious Dimensions of Extraterrestrial Contact, the Director of the Vatican Observatory declared that Catholic theology permitted the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial life. One would be hard-pressed to find a better example of the mainstreaming of the religious engagement with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and extraterrestrials (ETs) than the statement of the Jesuit priest in charge of the Roman Catholic Churchs astronomy division. Tumminia, for her part, has assembled eighteen essays that consider the much less mainstream movements and individuals who claim not only the existence of, but actual contact with, UFOs and ETs. The book draws from a variety of social scientific perspectives, and includes contributors and groups familiar to scholars of NRMs. In her introduction, Tumminia indicates that the included essays survey the societal discourse that ranges from obvious science fiction to the social construction of scientific facts around aliens and UFOs (p. xxxviii). Readers of Nova Religio will be pleased to find that the book not only accomplishes that goal, but includes noteworthy chapters on UFOrelated new religions. This includes the Aetherius Society, the Seekers (the group led by Dorothy Martin, best known by the pseudonym used in Festinger et al.s seminal When Prophecy Fails), the Raelians, and 114

Reviews Unarius Academy of Science, but all of the essays touch on material relevant to scholars of new religions. In each of the cases considered, individuals and groups construct religious worldviews, practices, and communities centered around a (sincere or playful) belief in contact with extraterrestrial intelligences. Some of these communities are actual religions, others Tumminia and her contributors consider quasireligions, such as alien abductees support groups or Star Trek fandom. Tumminias introductory essay sets the tone and theoretical questions for the contributions that follow. She notes what I have collapsed into three central characteristics of the UFO subculture: it has tremendous cultural presence, as indicated by its diffusion through mass media and the marketplace; it functions as what Tumminia calls a societal inkblot; yet it is a stigmatized subculture. The juxtaposition of the first and third of these characteristicseveryone knows what a UFO is, but everyone also assumes that contactees must be crazyand the analysis of the second characteristicthat responses to the ideas of UFOs and ETs reveal much about individuals and communitiesform the overarching themes of the anthology. The majority of the contributions consider these themes from various angles. In addition to the chapters on particular NRMs that I have highlighted below, the essays include: multiple surveys of the mythologies, causes, narratives, and social construction of alien abductions, UFO sightings, and extraterrestrial contact; several analyses of the worldview and science of ufology; and a fascinating discussion of ritual among Star Trek fandom. Several of the chapters will most strongly appeal to scholars of new religions because they focus on particular NRMs. Mikael Rothsteins work on the hagiography of Aetherius Society is an excellent study of the routinization of charisma. Using both Max Webers original formulation and the subsequent work of Roy Wallis, Rothstein presents a convincing case that the leaders and members or Aetherius have socially constructed the charisma of their founder George King, then routinized that charisma through hagiographic literature. Jerome Clarks The Odyssey of Sister Thedra details the group surrounding Dorothy Martin, the pseudonymous Marian Keech of When Prophecy Fails. Filling in details of Festingers much earlier work and continuing the story of Martin-cum-Thedra, Clark fits the group into the wider subculture of Theosophy, occultism, and channeling, as well as the growing UFO contactee movement. Alien Worlds includes two selections on the Ralian movement. Bryan Sentes and Susan Palmers chapter, Presumed Immanent: The Ralians, UFO Religions, and the Postmodern Condition, will be familiar to readers of this journal, since the essay appeared as an article in Nova Religio 4, no. 1. The essay describes Ralian beliefs and practices, contextualizing them within the immanentist Death of God theology. Readers of Palmers Aliens Adored: Rals UFO Religion (2004) will find 115

Nova Religio much repeated here, though the chapter focuses more exclusively on the centrality of science in the Ralian worldview. Christopher Hellands contribution, The Ralian Creation Myth and the Art of Cloning: Reality or Rhetoric? narrows the focus to how the movement uses science as a legitimating technique. Though both chapters are insightful, they are repetitive and I would assign only one of them in the classroom. Diana Tumminias overview of the Universal Industrial Church of the New World Comforter provides a fascinating look at a contactee religion that blends utopian Marxism, psychedelic utopianism (in Tumminias words), free-love, biblical apocalypticism, communal living, and the belief in karma. Though the group is itself interesting, Tumminia admits to it being the worlds smallest contactee religion, with only ten members (p. 42). Though I concur with the author that the church is worth studying, the chapter would have benefited from a methodological discussion of the value of focusing on so small a group. Tumminia has also contributed a third essay, which considers the plausibility structures and worldview-building enterprises of the Unarius Academy of Science, and her ethnographic relation to them. Alien Worlds has much to recommend it. In addition to the aforementioned chapters on particular NRMs, the other chapters detail and analyze the UFO contactee subculture from a variety of angles. The authors use a plethora of theoretical perspectives, ranging from sociology of religion to the social construction of scientific knowledge. (I am very pleased to see the use of Max Weber and Bruno Latour in the same volume!) As such, Alien Worlds would be an excellent addition to either sociology of religion or sociology of knowledge undergraduate courses. Scholars of new religions interested in science, UFO religions, or religions predicated on alternative epistemologies will likewise benefit from the volume. Benjamin E. Zeller, Brevard College

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