Faith in Space

American Religious Belief in Extraterrestrial Life

Paul C. Gutjahr

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780691277691
  9780691277684
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691290621
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

A cultural history of the American faith in alien life, from the Puritans to Heaven’s Gate

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’s 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’s salvation is inextricably tied to the actions and interventions of intelligent beings from other worlds.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Liftoff
• Part I. A Plurality of Worlds
• Part II. Spirit Worlds: Spiritualism
• Part III. Worlds Without Number: Mormonism
• Part IV. Unfallen Worlds: Seventh-Day Adventism
• Part V. Chained Worlds: Theosophy
• Part VI. Thetan Worlds: Scientology
• Part VII. Shaded Worlds: Moorish Science Temple, Nation of Islam, and Nuwaubian Nation of Moors
• Part VIII. Flying Saucer Worlds: Ministry of Universal Wisdom, Ashtar Command, and Heaven’s Gate
• Reentry
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index