Are There Aliens Among Us?

This is the first in a series of articles on what the Bible says about UFOs and aliens.

The radio announcer tried to hide his panic as he spoke: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead us to the inescapable conclusion that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars.”1

The CBS presentation of Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater was intended to entertain a dial-happy radio audience in the fall of 1938. Instead, it sent the world into panic. Shortly after signing off, Welles and his colleagues learned the unintended consequences of their broadcast.

Hundreds of thousands of screaming Americans had taken to the streets. Governors were begging their constituents to believe that martial law had not been declared. Weeping families jammed houses of worship, seeking absolution from their sins before the Martians descended on their towns. 

The mayor of a Midwestern city furiously reported mobs in the streets, violence, and looting. Headlines the next day read: “Radio War Terrorizes U.S.” and “Panic Grips Nation As Radio Announces ‘Mars Attacks World.’”

A Princeton study later discovered that 1.7 million Americans believed the program was a real news broadcast, and 1.2 million were sufficiently distressed to do something about it.

For the next two days, the broadcast drove Hitler off the front pages of the world’s newspapers. CBS and the Federal Communications Commission tried reassuring Americans that it was all intended as a “regrettable” hoax. There was talk of criminal prosecution of Welles, but that zeal faded as Welles’s star rose. FDR eventually invited him to a White House function.

The radio dramatization of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds wasn’t the start of America’s fascination with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and aliens, but it laid a foundation for future UFO sightings that began in 1947, when pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine saucer-shaped objects fly past Washington’s Mount Ranier at a speed more than 1,200 miles per hour. 

Several weeks later, the celebrated Roswell incident occurred, in which an alleged spacecraft crashed in the New Mexico desert, and, by some accounts, aliens were removed from the scene. The world hasn’t looked back since. 

Today, countless television programs, movies, books, and podcasts are devoted to the subject of alien encounters in space and on Earth. Some make us chuckle, like Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs, while others instill terror in our hearts (Signs still creeps me out).

The U.S. Air Force launched a series of special projects to study the issue, most notably Project Blue Book, which ran from 1952 – 1970. Wherever you turn, it seems, there’s a fascination with UFOs and aliens. And according to a recent Axios survey of U.S. residents, 76 percent of respondents under the age of 30 believe there’s intelligent life on other planets.2

But the questions that keep gnawing at our sensibilities remain: Are UFOs and aliens real? And, if so, what, exactly, are they?

These may not seem to be serious questions for Christians to ponder. But our culture’s deep dive into UFO and alien mania expose the soft underbelly of modern religious beliefs. And even that’s not new. Alleged alien encounters are embedded in the religions and folklores of virtually every people group going back thousands of years. 

And with the momentum growing today at such a rapid rate, it’s hard for Christians not to be sucked into the vortex. We need to be discerning, not merely entertained or annoyed. 

What are alleged alien spacecraft? And who are their pilots? Does Scripture have anything to say about extraterrestrial life? In the next few columns, we take a closer look at the modern UFO phenomenon and see how Scripture should guide our perspective of it.

Next: Who are these guys?

Notes:

  1. Taken from William Manchester, “A Shadow of Primitive Terror,” The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932-1972 (New York: Bantam Books, 1974), 193.
  2. bit.ly/Axios-Stat, reported by Dan Brownell in “UFOs: What are They?” https://todayschristianliving.org/ufos-what-are-they/.