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Susan J. Palmer, Aliens Adored: Raël's UFO Religion. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004, 227 pp.
This fascinating, highly readable ethnography of the Raelian movement adds significantly to our relatively meager social scientific knowledge of new religious movements, especially the UFO variety. This book is masterfully crafted by Susan Palmer, a teacher in religious studies at Dawson College and an adjunct professor and lecturer at Concordia University. The study is primarily based on long-term participant observation (Palmer's first contact with the Raelians dates to 1987), it is supplemented with some data from face-to-face interviews. Most of this work is Palmer's, but she also had trained help from some of her students at Dawson.
The book covers the origins and history of the movement from its inception in France and its subsequent efflorescence in Quebec, all orchestrated by Raël (born in France as Claude Vorilhon), a charismatic prophet whose special qualities were gained, in part, from direct contact in France in 1973 with an alien who had just arrived by flying saucer. This alien - an "Eloha" (singular of the Hebrew elohim) - reveals to Vorilhon the letter's true identity as Raël, the last prophet sent by a race of superior scientists from a planet in another...