Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Contactees: A Survey J. Gordon Melton 2. Religious Dimensions of UFO Phenomena John A. Saliba 3. Religious Dimensions of the UFO Abductee Experience John Whitmore 4. Unarius: Emergent Aspects of an American Flying Saucer Group Diana Tumminia and R. George Kirkpatrick 5. Women in the Raelian Movement: New Religious Experiments in Gender and Authority Susan Jean Palmer 6. Waiting for the Ships: Disillusionment and the Revitalization of Faith in Bo and Peep's UFO Cult Robert W. Balch 7. Spiritualism and UFO Religion in New Zealand: The International Transmission of Modern Spiritual Movements Robert S. Ellwood 8. Exo-Theology: Speculations on Extraterrestrial Life Ted Peters 9. UFO Contactee Phenomena from a Sociopsychological Perspective: A Review John A. Saliba 10. The Flying Saucer Contactee Movement, 1950-1994: A Bibliography J. Gordon Melton and George M. Eberhart Index

About the Author

James R. Lewis is Senior Editor for the Center for Academic Publication and Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for the Study of American Religion. He is co-editor of Perspectives on the New Age, also published by SUNY Press, and editor of Syzygy: Journal of Alternative Religion and Culture.

Reviews

"The whole idea of taking seriously, in a scholarly sense, a phenomenon that has a widespread following but has so far been largely scorned by serious scholars is quite appealing; it means that this book is breaking new and important ground." -- Timothy Miller, University of Kansas "It provokes interesting intersections with ancient and modern religious ideas. Its strength is in taking the religious dimension of UFOs and abductees' experiences seriously. I particularly like its historical framework and the extensive bibliography." -- David Christopher Lane, Mount San Antonio College