Palmer, Susan J.
Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Pp. 226, $17.95. ISBN:
0-8135-3476-3.
[1] An informative if overtly sympathetic study of the era’s
most successful UFO religion, Aliens Adored offers readers
an in-depth exploration of the Raelians, whose disputed claims to
have successfully cloned a human being (“Baby Eve”)
recently thrust them into the media spotlight. Part journalistic
autobiography, part historical chronicle, and part sociological
analysis, Susan Palmer’s book details her close interaction
with the movement over a fifteen-year period beginning in 1987.
It is the first scholarly book-length study of the movement.
[2] Emerging amidst the plethora of UFO societies and new
counter-cultural religious movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the
Raelians coalesced around their charismatic leader, Rael (Claude
Vorhilon). Vorhilon, a minor celebrity in French culture at the
time, claimed in 1973 to have had contact with extra-terrestrials.
They revealed to him that the human race was the result of an ancient
scientific attempt to seed the earth with intelligent life, an experiment
threatened by the advent of the atom bomb. Vorhilon’s mission
as Rael was to bring humanity back from the brink of nuclear apocalypse,
and to prepare for the return of these extra-terrestrials, the genetic
ancestors of the human race. Rael’s experience provided his
followers with a mythology that fused science and religion in an
attempt to address pressing social concerns: the dangers of science
and technology, environmental holocaust, the sexual revolution,
overpopulation, and religious violence. Though the movement originated
in France, it has since found a refuge from French anti-cult authorities
in Québec. It has congregations scattered throughout the
world, with most recent estimates of some 65,000 members.
[3] The chief thrust of the book is to account for the movement’s
success in terms of its social and ideological development. Palmer
establishes the group’s many antecedents in and connections
to other UFO groups, as well as its similarities to other NRMs,
such as Heaven’s Gate, Scientology and Mormonism. She analyzes
the group’s formation in relation to Rael’s charisma,
the institutionalization of his founding experience in terms of
myth, ritual and patterns of authority, its millenarian character,
its idealization of science and technology, and its positions on
controversial social issues (such as sexual mores and human cloning).
Fortunately for Palmer (and for her readers), her study of the group
began during a stage in its formation when it was open to outsiders
and to more intrusive forms of investigation. Thus she has been
able to document extensively the intimate workings and structures
of the movement, and perhaps more importantly, significant changes
in the movement over time. (It has since become much more restrictive
with outside observers, even going so far as to refuse Palmer the
level of access she initially had).
[4] Of particular interest, and irony, is the Raelians’ posture
towards Catholicism and Judaism. Of Jewish and Catholic parentage
himself, Rael fused his mythology out of these traditions, reinterpreting
the biblical texts as the historical records of an ancient extra-terrestrial
race of scientists, the Elohim. The movement is, however, overtly
and rabidly anti-Catholic, identifying the Church as a chief threat
to the future of humanity. It stands in particular conflict with
Catholicism over social ethics, as it is a strong advocate for sexual
freedom and human cloning (as well as philosophical materialism).
It is something of an irony then that the structural and ritual
elements of the Raelians mirror the Church. Rael serves as an unquestionable
(infallible) pope-like figure, served by a council of bishops, with
priests under them. They use baptism as an initiatory rite, have
a form of last rites (extraction from the frontal skull for future
cloning), and believe in a kind of resurrection (through cloning).
The “Order of Rael’s Angels” functions as a kind
of female religious order, albeit as sacral sexual agents for the
Elohim. Some of this perhaps helps to account for their success
among disaffected Catholics.
[5] The movement has been on much friendlier terms with Jews,
since they believe that the Jews are direct physical descendants
of the Elohim, and since for many years they were adamant that their
planned intergalactic embassy was to be built in Israel. Like many
Christians before him, Rael naively thought Jews would convert en
masse once they learned of their true identity and history.
But Rael’s messianic pretensions, use of the swastika/star
of David medallion, and extra-terrestrial identification of Elohim,
have met with so little enthusiasm among Jewish groups that the
Elohim have given Rael permission to build the embassy elsewhere,
possibly Hawaii. But these developments have come at the cost of
some Raelian good will; the potential for an incipient form of anti-semitism
cannot be dismissed.
[6] The book’s theoretical analysis is instructive,
if conventional. Palmer invites us to understand the group through
the classic paradigms of Weber, James, and Eliade, as well as the
work of more recent sociologists of new religious movements such
as Rodney Stark. The writing is at times disjointed; transitions
are abrupt, and promising lines of inquiry are raised and dropped
with frustrating brevity. This is not a systematically thorough
study, and sometimes borders on reportage. The most disappointing
chapter in this regard (chapter 7) deals with dissent and disassociation
from the group, which proves to be more anecdotal than conceptually
illuminating, and fails to give a concrete sense of the movement’s
weaknesses.
[7] This book provides an interesting study of the intersection
of religion and popular culture. It is a work that can be
appreciated by both scholars and a wider reading public, and could
be used as a course text in religious studies classes. While the
sociological and comparative analysis are academic, they are not
esoteric. The conceptual claims remain accessible, and the writing
is engaging.
Robert E. Brown
Wooster College
rbrown@wooster.edu
