Howdy y’all,
I’ve been traveling with family for my birthday and have wavered from my weekly schedule. But the scheduling this week affords me the opportunity to respond to a post by Pastor David Hamstra published for the NAD Ministerial Association: Seventh-day Adventism and Aliens.
I would just like to note that this is not the first time adventists have explored the UFO phenomena. I just ordered Francis Nichol’s seven part essay on UFOs and would like to see how they engaged with the material.
Regarding recent disclosures of UFO/UAP sightings, Hamstra, I think, puts it very succinctly: “It seems that we are entering a new era of openness to mainstreaming the notion that we are not alone and are being visited by beings from space or extra dimensions.” I would hasten to add that UFO/UAP sightings are not new, they have just been historically marginalized by prominent institutions who are now loosening their proclaimed skepticism. This new era, I would argue, says more about “us” than about “them”.
Hamstra’s first point is something with which I wholeheartedly agree. This hidden (or occult) history of UFOs and disclosure (or revelation) can’t be as easily dismissed as conspiracy theories as they might have been in years past. “[W]e should develop new models for the hermeneutics of life that can help us understand how we interpret incomplete information and how our decisions in these situations reveal and shape our deepest commitments.” Believe each other. Embrace mystery. Cultivate curiosity.
His second point is where I begin to differ.
Hamstra— “Those who seek fuller meaning in life via quid-pro-quo relationships with such beings, attempting to bend their interests to our will, would likely garner a great following after this re-enchantment of our disenchanted world. Traditional Christians may also welcome this new openness to transcendence, but life in the sway of ‘enchanted others’ is hardly the liberation from the dominion of higher powers promised to the children of Almighty God.”
I think this point—like most protestant metaphysics—omits the spiritual realities of indigenous cultures. Some of the longest-surviving and ecologically-generative cultures have had coherent cosmovisions, incorporating other-dimensional beings and cultivating relationships with them.
Obviously there can be an unhealthy obsession with “enchanted others” that isn’t grounded in a world brimming with life and joy and diversity. Such an obsession could function as an abdication of personal power and agency onto some spiritual being. This is not a hypothetical possibility but a very common reality. Any regular churchgoer recognizes the personality who projects their agency onto their image of God (and commonly, their pastors). The cosmologies UFO phenomena intimate aren’t a threat to our liberation, but a threat to the entities who claim a monopoly on our psychospiritual freedom, be it god, church, or nation-state.
UFOs are old. People have been engaging with lights and beings in the sky since before the Bible. It’s only the last century or two where we’ve interpreted these experiences as “alien” and “extraterrestrial”. The field of ufology challenges our materialist “rationalism” that demands objectivity. The works of John Keel, Jaques Vallee, Diana Walsh Pasulka, and Jeffrey Kripal explore the hazy twilight between objective and subjective reality where these experiences occur.
I really appreciate David Hamstra discussing how these narratives might impact our spiritual reality and worldview. I don’t think this is something to shirk from, but to openly engage and dialogue about.
Thanks for reading.