Aliens Adored is the first full length, in-depth look at the Raëlian movement, a fascinating new religion founded in the 1970s by the charismatic prophet, Raël. Born in France as Claude Vorilhon, the former race-car driver founded the religion after he experienced a visitation from the aliens (the "elohim") who, in his cosmology, created humans by cloning themselves. The millenarian movement awaits the return of the alien creators, and in the meantime seeks to develop the potential of its adherents through free love, sexual experimentation, opposition to nuclear proliferation and war, and the development of the science of cloning.
Sociologist Susan J. Palmer has studied the Raelian movement for more than a decade, observing meetings and rituals and enjoying unprecedented access to the group's leaders as well as to its rank-and-file members. In this pioneering study she provides a thorough analysis of the movement, focusing on issues of sexuality, millenarianism, and the impact of the scientific worldview on religion and the environment. Rael's radical sexual ethics, his gnostic anthropocentrism, and shallow ecotheology offer us a mirror through which we see how our worldview has been shaped by the forces of globalization, postmodernism, and secular humanism.
Sociologist Susan J. Palmer has studied the Raelian movement for more than a decade, observing meetings and rituals and enjoying unprecedented access to the group's leaders as well as to its rank-and-file members. In this pioneering study she provides a thorough analysis of the movement, focusing on issues of sexuality, millenarianism, and the impact of the scientific worldview on religion and the environment. Rael's radical sexual ethics, his gnostic anthropocentrism, and shallow ecotheology offer us a mirror through which we see how our worldview has been shaped by the forces of globalization, postmodernism, and secular humanism.
Skillfully weaving together engaging narrative and careful sociological analysis, Susan Palmer has written a ground-breaking study that will be the benchmark for all future studies of alternative religions.
Susan Palmer has an extraordinary ability to probe beyond stereotypes and understand unconventional religious and social movements. Her latest book admirably combines rigorous scholarship and honest empathy in depicting one of the most poorly understood movements of our time.
Drawing on interviews, participant-observer accounts of Raelian meetings and analyses of the movement's increasingly sophisticated public relations outreach, Palmer profiles a fascinating new religion still struggling to define itself. Her tone is sometimes admiring, sometimes critical, and always intrigued.
SUSAN J. PALMER teaches religious studies at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec. She is the author of Moon Sisters, Krishna Mothers, Rajneesh Lovers: Women's Roles in New Religions and coedited Children in New Religions (Rutgers University Press).
Introduction: How I researched the Raelians
Contactee prophets in the history of UFOlogy
The last and fastest prophet
On how to construct a new religion
Mutating the millennium
A visit to the court of Raël
Sexy angels for amorous aliens
"Enemies within!"
Cloning around-hoax or heresy?
"Science is our religion."
Contactee prophets in the history of UFOlogy
The last and fastest prophet
On how to construct a new religion
Mutating the millennium
A visit to the court of Raël
Sexy angels for amorous aliens
"Enemies within!"
Cloning around-hoax or heresy?
"Science is our religion."
