Product Description

"Skillfully weaving together engaging narrative and careful sociological analysis, Susan Palmer has written a ground-breaking study that will be the benchmark for all future studies of alternative religions."—James R. Lewis, general editor of The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements and author of Legitimating New Religions

"Susan Palmer has an extraordinary ability to probe beyond stereotypes and understand unconventional religious and social movements. Her latest book admirably combines rigorous scholarship and honest empathy in depicting one of the most poorly understood movements of our time."—Timothy Miller, University of Kansas

Aliens Adored is the first full length, in-depth look at the Raelian movement, a fascinating new religion founded in the 1970s by the charismatic prophet, Raël. Born in France as Claude Vorilhon, the former race-car driver founded the religion after he experienced a visitation from the aliens (the "elohim") who, in his cosmology, created humans by cloning themselves. The millenarian movement awaits the return of the alien creators, and in the meantime seeks to develop the potential of its adherents through free love, sexual experimentation, opposition to nuclear proliferation and war, and the development of the science of cloning.

Sociologist Susan J. Palmer has studied the Raelian movement for more than a decade, observing meetings and rituals and enjoying unprecedented access to the group’s leaders as well as to its rank-and-file members. In this pioneering study she provides a thorough analysis of the movement, focusing on issues of sexuality, millenarianism, and the impact of the scientific worldview on religion and the environment. Raël’s radical sexual ethics, his gnostic anthropocentricism, and shallow ecotheology offer us a mirror through which we see how our worldview has been shaped by the forces of globalization, postmodernism, and secular humanism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #487504 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 244 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Palmer, a professor of religious studies at Dawson College in Montreal, offers a rare full-length analysis of the Raelian movement, which made headlines in 2002 when leaders claimed to have successfully cloned a human being. Palmer is a scholar of new religious movements, and the book undertakes some serious academic questions (including a thoughtful discussion of the Raelians as a test case for Weber's thesis on the routinization of charisma), but it is also downright fun, even dishy. Palmer has spent more than 15 years observing the Raelians and their controversial leader firsthand, and she shares her own experiences and impressions within a balanced portrait of the history, organization and theology of the group. Drawing on interviews, participant-observer accounts of Raelian meetings and analyses of the movement's increasingly sophisticated public relations outreach, Palmer profiles a fascinating new religion still struggling to define itself. Her tone is sometimes admiring, sometimes critical, and always intrigued.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Palmer treats seriously a religious movement that many do not, thanks to its otherworldly philosophy that incorporates UFOs, openness toward sexuality, reliance on science over spirituality, and enthusiasm for human cloning. The International Raelian Movement was born in December 1973 in France when its founder, sports journalist Claude Vorilhon, encountered extraterrestrials who told him that life on earth was genetically manufactured (cloned) millennia ago by alien scientists from a saucerful of their own DNA. Vorilhon took the name Rael, moved to Montreal, and now claims to have 60,000 adherents in 60 countries. Palmer has researched the group since 1987, and she analyzes its organization, ethics, theology, prophecies, leaders, and followers, and compares it to other millennialist and UFO religions. A crucial chapter recounts its controversial 2002 announcement that its genetic laboratory, Clonaid, had produced the world's first cloned human. Hoax, hype, or breakthrough? Palmer has her suspicions but offers a generally objective account of the Raelians and the significance of their "bridg[ing] the cultural and cognitive gap between science and religion." George Eberhart
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Skillfully weaving together engaging narrative and careful sociological analysis, Susan Palmer has written a ground-breaking study that will be the benchmark for all future studies of alternative religions."-James R. Lewis, general editor of The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements and author of Legitimating New Religions"

Customer Reviews

Aliens? Don't think so!
I obtained this book to understand the Raelian Movement a little better, as they've had so much bad publiciity from people who are not broad-minded enough to be able to understand that "everyone of us is different". And what a great book it was - it didn't "bad-mouth" the Movement & didn't support it either. It was written in impartial terms, for which I commend its author.

An interesting read for people who've only heard the negative press reports about this group. Go on, BUY IT & cast your own impartial opinions!!

Hardly a scholarly work
Researchers of alternative religion who would welcome a well-documented study of Claude Vorilhon and his Raelian religion will be disappointed by this book, which is flawed in content and methodology. For example, Ms.Palmer implies that I "concocted" a particular incident, known as the "Teesdale Inheritance," because supposedly I was motivated by a desire to discredit Vorilhon. She makes this accusation which amounts to defamation of character - essentially attributing to me the behavior of a fabricator and liar - based on innuendoes from another ufologist that she never bothered to check.
I have a full research file on the Teesdale Inheritance, complete with first-hand testimony from people who could shed light on this episode and its relationship to Raël's career, yet I was never even contacted by this supposedly "scholarly" author - or by any fact-checker from Rutgers University. If the author is so careless in this one episode, where she does not hesitate to cast doubts on the ethics and integrity of a fellow researcher, can we trust anything else in her book?
Dr. Jacques F. Vallee, Ph.D.

Please Don't Sue Me
As a non-journalist sociologist, Susan Palmer writes her book not for controversy, but in lieu of it. As opposed to the average hit piece or expose' of most news stories - which Rael invites and appreciates for the publicity of his new religious movement - Palmer's book attempts a study from a non-judgmental viewpoint. In this manner the author avoids the drama of legal action from the slander-sensitive prophet of ET. (Rael vs. Paul Toutant, 1979-80; Rael vs. Montreal's 'Le Devoir', 1994...)

By not labeling Rael a cult leader, Palmer maintains the "objective" perspective like a true scientist - without which she wouldn't have obtained such close access to Rael. Yet in her objectivity she gives the benefit of too much doubt. Say it, Susan. Argue the point, if not only for those intellectual proponents of (ET) Intervention Theory - DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick, philosophical author Neil Freer, world renowned geologist Dr. Robert Schoch, etc. Please say it: "Rael must be a liar, considering the evidence herein." All of the hints at the fact are frustrating in their impotence.

This powerlessness of concept is precisely what has upset Mr. Jacques Vallee (see his review), whom Susan failed to contact/consult...as if to avoid confronting the reality of Rael's lies (in respect to the "Teesdale inheritance" fiasco, specifically). Why would internationally acclaimed author Vallee make up such a story? It's obvious who the more credible personality is, considering the credentials.

This vagueness likewise informs the reader inadequately of the "ancient astronaut theory", despite the superb point noted in mentioning French writer Jean Sendy (p. 28), whose groundbreaking book on the subject ('La Lune, Cle de la Bible', or 'The Moon: Key to the Bible', Editions Rene Julliard, 1968) may have been Rael's original inspiration. That is, if Rael knew more about his true target demographic, he might not have needed to get so sexually deviant in order to hone the group mentality of his virtual commune.

Rael's books - containing knowledge directly spoken from the ET-human "gods" in 1973 - may have been specific enough to describe characters from the Bible as their original Sumerian counterparts (and using the original "gods" names), had an important 1976 book been consulted (Zecharia Sitchin, 'The 12th Planet'). This would have enabled a less radical approach to the "religious" idea, a more socially acceptable theory of Mankind's origin. Perhaps this strays from the "review" category of writing, but I consider it applicable to think as if I were writing a book on Rael.

Palmer's suggestion that Rael's International Raelian Movement (IRM) has a chance of success similar to that of Joseph Smith of Mormon fame - frightening as it is - should argue toward a more judgmental thesis. Yet this thought comes as a relative fact! (See p. 77: "Rodney Stark's Eight Conditions for Success")

From the transparent base text of the "UFO religion" to the Teesdale inheritance hoax AND from the racist pro-Jewish ideology to the disappearing/nonexistent human clone media snafu, an argument forms from simple common sense.

This is all just my opinion, of course. Please don't sue me, Claude...I mean Rael. It was Susan's fault.