Table of Contents

Contributors Acknowledgements Foreword INTRODUCTION 1. Understanding UFO Religions and Abduction Spiritualities PART ONE OBERSERVING RELIGIONS 2. Scientific Creationism: A Study of the Raelian Church 3. When the Archangel Died: From Revelation to Routinization of Charisma in Unarius 4. Opening a channel to the stars: the Origins and Development of the Aethrius Society 5. Legitimating Suicide: Heaven's Gate and New Age Ideology 6. The URANTIA Book 7. Ansaru Allah Community 8. From Extraterrestrials to Ultraterrestrials: the Evolution of the concept of Ashtar 9. UFO Faith and Ufological Discourses in Germany 10. The Finnish UFO Tradition, 1947-1994 PART TWO UNDERSTANDING NARRATIVES 11. UFO Religions as Cargo Cults 12. Alien Doubts: Reading Abduction Narratives Post-apocalyptically 13. UFO Beliefs as Syncretistic Components 14. Apocalyptic and Millenarian Aspects of American UFOism 15. Attitudes Toward Religion and Science in the UFO Movement in the United States 16. Jung on UFOs 17. The Psychology of UFO Phenomena