UFOs and Religion - The Symbol of the Mothership within the Apocalyptic Worldviews of the Raëlian Movement, the Nation of Islam, and the Nuwaubian Nation
In this lecture, Professor Susan J. Palmer will explore the significance of the “Mothership” or “Mother Plane” in three contemporary NRMs (“flying saucer cults”): the Raelian Movements, the Nuwaubian Nation, and the Nation of Islam. The function of the UFO as symbol will be analyzed within the context of their prophets’ apocalyptic visions, theories of race, and differing stances on nuclear war, racial and sexual identity and gender roles. Palmer argues that the descent of the UFO is hailed as bringing about “spiritual solutions” to some of the most troubling problems of the late twentieth century, such as ecology, sexuality, war, racism, and global warfare; concerns shared by many other religions, majority and minority alike. This lecture offers an in-depth tour of contemporary radical religions based on primary sources and field research.
Susan J. Palmer is an Affiliate Professor at Concordia University in Montreal, and the author of Aliens Adored: Rael’s UFO Religion and The Nuwaubian Nation:Black Spirituality and State Control, and many other sociological studies of New Religious Movements.
Background
R. S. Ellwood (1973) has argued that the appeal of “UFO cults” resides in their “classic religious eschatologies” which are “revamped to meet the fears and dramas of the modern world.”
In this lecture, we will investigate the meaning of UFOs within the eschatological framework of three messianic new religions: the Raëlian Movement, the Nation of Islam, and the Nuwaubian Nation. Each congregation reveres superior beings who hale – not from a transcendent spiritual realm—but rather from distant, material planets. Their prophet-founders articulate a religious worldview within a purely immanent horizon, preaching salvation—not of the soul—but rather of the physical body enabled by extraterrestrial technology to “overcome death.”
C. G. Jung (1957) proposed that flying saucers were manifestations of psychic changes in the constellation of psychic dominant archetypes, or “gods” which augure long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche. Jung’s view can be dilated, as B. Sentes and S. Palmer (2000) have argued: NRMs, such as those addressed, here, their “Mother Planes” and “Motherships,” appear within a purely immanent natural horizon shorn of a transcendent supernatural dimension, one inflection of the “postmodern” in the wake of Neitzsche’s “Death of God.”
We will explore the ways that charismatic prophets welcome UFOs as bringing technologically “miraculous” solutions to contemporary “fears and dramas.” While their discourses suggest they address similar concerns, each prophet has formulated unique answers and solutions. Raël, the “last and Fastest Prophet,” focuses on the threat of a global nuclear holocaust, and warns humanity against aggressive abuse of the fruits of science and technology. In contrast, the Messengers and Ministers of the Nation of Islam are preoccupied with the mystery and theodicy of Race. For S. C. Finley (2022), they relied on their visions of the “Mother Plane” (UFO) to recast the meaning of the cosmos and imbue Black bodies with religious significance. For the Nuwaubian Nation, Palmer (2016) shows how the “Mothership” became a cornucopia of story-telling; offering mythologies of multi-hued alien races to replace the “black&white” history of African slavery and antiblack violence in America. The UFO is understood variously by these charismatic prophets: as a vessel sent (in 2023) to Rapture 144,000 Nuwaubian “Chosen Ones”; as a weapon built to destroy “white devils” (in 2000); as the Return (in 2035) of “Our Elohim Fathers” who will bequeath to humanity a superior, “25,000 years ahead,” technology.
Referring to original field research as well as primary and academic sources, this lecture will offer a guided tour of the utopian visions and apocalyptic expectations of UFO religions, their alien-technological means of “overstanding” problems of Race relations, “gender wars,” the nuclear threat, and even human mortality.
Location: Education Building 193