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The connection between UFOs and religion may not seem obvious, but Diana Walsh Pasulka, a Catholic religious studies scholar, has come to see the two as intertwined.
Both wrestle with the mysteries that lie beyond ordinary human experience and require language, community and a personal witness to make sense of it. And in both cases, the two have the power to transform the way that reality is perceived.
Pasulka, who is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, used to dismiss the whole UFO conversation.
But as she was studying the archives of the Catholic saints like Teresa of Ávila and St. Francis of Assisi, she noticed parallels between their mystical experiences and modern-day alleged UFO accounts.
She tracked Catholic accounts from the 13th and 14th centuries that referred to visions of “flying houses,” “balls of light” and “little people.” Centuries later, she argues, people reporting UFO sightings — like the wave of reports in 1947 — have similarly relied on religious language to make sense of extraordinary experiences.
These findings didn’t undermine Pasulka’s religious belief. In fact, studying the UFO reports and interviewing people with alleged encounters reinforced her Catholic faith, she recently told Joe Rogan on his podcast. “It supercharged my Christianity,” she said.
Pasulka is one of the leading voices in the current UFO conversation. She brings a fresh lens to a subject that’s long been relegated to the fringes of cultural debate.
The recent file release on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena by the U.S. government did not prove the existence of extraterrestrial beings. But it did unsettle the purely materialist understanding of the world and reopened questions about the limits of human knowledge and science.
Pasulka has written a lot about UFOs, including in her recent book, “The Others: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny.” She groups UFOs along with other extraordinary phenomena, including angels, demons and AI, under the umbrella of “nonhuman intelligence.”
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I’m making my way through the book, and I’m finding it fascinating. I was struck by the connection Pasulka makes between UFOs and religion and the way that the former opens up the possibility for belief in the supernatural and the enchanted.
“The truth is that the possibility that UFOs are real has been the best thing for religion and religious practitioners for at least 200 years,” Pasulka writes, “and certainly within the period since 1917, when sociologist Max Weber confidently asserted that the modern world was disenchanted because rationalism and science replaced religion as dominant explanatory frameworks.”
One of religion’s functions, according to Pasulka, is “to help people assess nonordinary events and phenomena. It provides ritual, language and community to metabolize encounters that would otherwise overwhelm the individual.”
She goes on:
“Throughout history, we have reports of forms of intelligence associated with religious events, and from the 20th century onward, UFO encounters that appear to exceed our capacity to comprehend them. … The UFO, oddly enough, has re-enchanted the modern world; it has re-legitimized transcendence for secular subjects. Originally, religion remains the most adaptive framework we possess for understanding and responding to potential nonhuman intelligence, from AI to alleged UFOs.”
Pasulka was raised by secular parents — although her father came from a Catholic background and her mother was Jewish — and had little exposure to faith until age 11. While watching Franco Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth” on TV, she was captivated by a scene in which Jesus saves the woman accused of adultery by inviting those “without sin” to throw a stone at her. She immediately asked her mother to buy her a Bible and became determined to understand Jesus’ teachings.
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Pasulka converted to Catholicism, but she remained more “secular” in her disposition, she shared on the Rogan podcast. Studying people’s experiences with UFOs made her more open to extraordinary manifestations of her own faith — she wanted to be a “believing believer.”
Pasulka has acknowledged in interviews that she has no secret knowledge or evidence about UFOs.
Her point is that the phenomenon should not be dismissed as either science fiction or a fringe belief but instead that UFO claims deserve attention as a significant cultural and even religious phenomenon. And as a form of modern religion, belief in the UFO can be studied as such, through scholarly methods.
As a culture steeped in materialism and hyper-rationalism begins to hunger again for mystery and transcendence, belief in UFOs may offer a new outlet for religious imagination.
Fresh off the press
The beloved and influential Latter-day Saint poet Carol Lynn Pearson passed away this week. I talked to a few people about her legacy of compassion and inclusion. And don’t miss Carol Lynn’s final poem.
A German scholar at the University of Würzburg made an unexpected discovery while studying a 12th-century manuscript containing the sermons by St. Augustine.
Did you know that almost every day for over a century, someone has played a recital at the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ? Inside one of the longest-standing traditions at Temple Square.
What I’m reading
“Literally,” “actually” and extra exclamation points. The way we speak has become more extravagant. — The New York Times
Antisemitic graffiti appeared on a California synagogue after the house of worship suffered in the LA wildfires. — Forward
One charismatic Christian couple in Maryville, Tennessee, believed that their local bookstore became “the central hub for demonic activity” and was targeted for “spiritual warfare.” — The Atlantic
In addition to Pasulka’s book, I’m in the middle of “London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth” by Patrick Radden Keefe. It’s a gripping narrative about identity and parental grief and the city’s culture of wealth.
End notes
One evangelist influencer decided to use her Alaska Airlines flight delay to preach to her fellow airplane passengers. “God’s timing is perfect,” she announced to the cabin while filming herself. Maybe God was sparing them from danger, she said. She proceeded to preach about resurrection and salvation.
The preaching session didn’t go well for her, and she was asked to disembark the plane. In a video that went viral on social media, the flight attendant appears to be saying that the crew didn’t feel safe during the incident.
“I didn’t know that the message of Jesus Christ was unsafe,” the influencer said as she was filming herself and getting off the flight. She invoked freedom of speech and described the attack as “spiritual warfare.” She recorded a seven-part video of the saga on Instagram, with one video getting nearly 3 million views.
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