Faith in Space: American Religious Belief in Extraterrestrial Life
Sep 2026 · Princeton University Press
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About this ebook
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.
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.
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 ...
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About the author
Paul C. Gutjahr is Ruth N. Halls Professor of English at Indiana University. His books include The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America; The Book of Mormon: A Biography (Princeton); Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy; and An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880.
Paul C. Gutjahr is Ruth N. Halls Professor of English at Indiana University. His books include The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America; The Book of Mormon: A Biography (Princeton); Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy; and An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United S...
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