Definition
According to Christopher Partridge (2003), UFO religions are those institutions whose creation was directly influenced by alleged contacts with extraterrestrial beings and which take them as their fundamental motive or those “which have been informed by a belief in the existence of UFOs and the intervention of extraterrestrial life” (Partridge 2003: 4).
The referred contacts are normally established by a leader, who is transformed by the interactions with extraterrestrials and accept the task of spreading their messages to the earthlings. Such is the case of Mrs. Keech, the contactee studied by the group lead by Leon Festinger et al. (1956) who held prophecies pointing to the end of the world. It is also the foundation narrative told by the Claude Vorilhon, later named Raël, of his contact with the Elohim, who revealed to him that humans were created by extraterrestrials (Battaglia 2005).
John Saliba (2006) points to a crucial element of most UFO religions: “[a] stress on...
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References
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Almeida, R.A. (2018). UFO Religions in Latin America. In: Gooren, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_531-1
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