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There is a reason why UFO's and space aliens are so popular in America these days. For many people with little or no belief in the traditionally religious idea of the transcendent, faith in a superior civilization coming to Earth is made to fill in part of Pascal's "God-shaped hole". It also is becoming increasingly obvious to Americans that things are not getting better in the world. This was true even before 9/11, though that horrible day certainly emphasized it. In the place of a thoroughly discredited Positivist Humanism and in the presence of evils like terrorism some have looked to the heavens.

A few years after becoming a Christian I revisited a favorite film of my youth, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", one of Steven Spielberg's earliest hits. This movie about the arrival of peaceful, glowing visitors from another planet held me in thrall when it was first released in 1977. The passage of time did not diminish the emotional impact of the film and each time I, then a professing atheist, watched Close Encounters I could feel the goose bumps rising when the huge mother ship arrived at the end. After watching it as a Christian, it occurred to me why. The beings of Spielberg's imagination had come to save humankind.

It was strongly hinted that the alien's "advent" (and I use the word intentionally) was the beginning of a new and better epoch of human history. Their coming was certainly depicted as a quasi-religious event in the lives of the movie's characters. When lead Richard Dreyfuss is allowed to join the warm, welcoming beings as they leave Earth at the end of the picture his aspect is one of awe; the kind of awe that earlier generations reserved for the Divine. The thought and feeling transmitted to the audience is that he is being redeemed from the humdrum family life he has left behind. In fact at that point in the story it is easy to forget the fact that Dreyfuss is abandoning his wife and two children to make a possibly permanent journey into space. All we know is that he has seemingly been rightfully delivered from "on high".

Since Close Encounters made its debut, many other films and novels have painted aliens as modern man's redeemers and inspired a growing number of spiritual seekers to believe in such a redemption. We might call the people whose primary belief system is derived from faith in the existence of these benevolent beings from another world "Roswellians". The name is taken from the desert town of Roswell, New Mexico, home of the infamous Area 51 where our government allegedly has hidden evidence of an alien landing during the late 1940's. The number of adherents to this new religion has never been as large as they are now. Perhaps not too surprisingly the aliens of the Roswellian imagination frequently resemble the aliens of Spielberg's movie, both physically and spiritually. It is also often, though not always, implied by these believers in benign aliens that such creatures are not only technologically but morally superior to earthlings. The hope is that they will lead humankind out of its primitive vices as well as its primitive technology. Roswellians are always watching the skies for the coming of what they expect to be our extraterrestrial saviours.

The desire for such saviours is, of course, not evil in itself. Many, perhaps most, human beings know in their hearts that something is profoundly wrong with our race. We instinctively yearn for someone or something to come along and make everything right. The fateful question is who or what is the real deliverer. Here Christians are posed with a challenge. We need to counter this "feel good" error by communicating that our God is not only awe inspiring but, more importantly, real, present and relevant. We do not, unfortunately, tend to have Hollywood help us in the endeavour. What we do have is the Holy Spirit and the reality of profoundly changed lives. Believers need to share with our Roswellian friends that our true hope lies above as well. It is just that we are watching the skies for Jesus.