The UFO Gospel and its Ministers

A piece on Kirk Franklin, a noted gospel performer, in The New Yorker for January 16, 2017 [Making God Famous by Vinson Cunningham, Page 26 ff.] caught my attention when Franklin was quoted saying (from an NPR interview) “My job on earth, the reason why Kirk is created, is to make God famous. I just want God to be well known. …

“Christianity, and the framework of religion, makes us a subculture.” [Page 31]

If I substitute “UFOs”” for God and ufology” for Christianity in those quotes, I have the raison d’être of some significant people (and lesser lights) in the UFO community.

I’m talking about the proselytizers, Stanton Friedman, for instance, and the slew of UFO buffs who hawk UFOs as if the phenomenon is divine or near divine, and I’m not just talking about the ETH crowd.

(Even my lame agnostic views about UFOs could be lumped into the desire to make UFOs “famous” – sort of like a left-handed compliment.)

Franklin, the performer, is advocating his belief system by staging concerts and hobnobbing with rappers and hip-hoppers.

Ufologists hobnob with fellow ufologists, at conferences, by using web-sites, blogs, and writing books.

The desire is self-gratifying. If UFOs (or God) is made to be important, then the person(s) advocating them are important too.

But it’s not just that.

It’s a need, a desire, to raise UFOs (or God) to the top of the societal zeitgeist, to give precedence to something that needs elevation in some of humanities’ quarters.

Now, God, not so much, but UFOs? Certainly.

The UFO topic (and “reality”) are abased by sane, sensible members of society and some wish those who think lowly of UFOs to like them (worship them) as much as ufologists do.

The task is daunting, like Sisyphus and his eternal plight, but nonetheless it is as necessary as it is for Franklin and other God-believers, to deliver their Gospel.

UFOs are an intellectual blight, just as God is a blight to atheists.

Someone has to take up and throw down the gauntlet for both God and UFOs.

In the UFO community, we have many trying to do so. That they are inept is not the fault of the phenomenon, but the laissez faire of those pushing the belief in UFOs; they are unskilled and sloppy, inarticulate, and too ready to foist nonsense on their hoped-for audience.

Let them take a lesson from God-believers like Kirk Franklin, who said “that he always craved attention and approval …”:

Be evangelical but judicious, and spread the word about UFOs with cunning and truths.

That will make UFOs famous, at least for a while.

RR