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
