I have long been an enthusiast for the insight of the reformation – the principle that finding truth in faith is about continually returning to the source – back to the Scriptures endorsed by Jesus – and asking afresh, “Have I read that right?!” The trauma of the Reformation is testimony to how difficult that dynamic can be. The history of Christian thought is scattered with moments where a paradigm shift in society at large has sent believers back to the texts with fresh eyes, to come away wondering, “Why did we not see that possibility before?!”

Astro-physicists C20th Albert Einstein and C13th Bishop Robert Grossteste who both asserted that light and not time is the primordial reality on whose properties everything else depends. A mind-bending paradigm-shift.

Consider the discovery of the properties of light as primordial to the functioning of the universe, the gradual move away from the American slave trade, the acceptance of tectonic plate movements and continental drift. All have sent believers back to back to the work of our translators to ask, “Have we read that right?!” In each case, once the texts had been reviewed and the general worldview shifted, believers were left asking themselves, “Why didn’t we see that possibility before when there was content in the Scriptures themselves that should have clued us?!”

The perpetual process of re-reading and re-thinking tests our readiness to be believers in reform – ecclesia semper reformanda. We are all creatures of habit. Few of us can be wholly comfortable with our universe changing! How ready is any one of us to wake up in a different world to the one we fell asleep in?!

This brings us to the question of other worlds. Is your theology large enough to allow for a busier universe than the one we have known to date?!

From the 1940s until the last decade, all around the world government agencies around the world employed people to manage accounts of UFO and ET phenomena. Their remits were to publicize cases which could be easily debunked and classify all those that couldn’t. From around the turn of the new millennium these offices around the world began to be vacated.

A significant proportion of those former officials was then permitted to set up an independent international body dedicated to campaigning publicly for the total declassification and disclosure of all government and military UFO files.

The campaign has been astonishingly successful. Since 2008 a huge volume of previously classified government material was released – case files detailing phenomena, publicly witnessed, filmed, examined by military and civil authorities; cases where an ET explanation is simply unavoidable.

President Truman c.1947

To date the USA has not participated in this international disclosure. America still enforces the National Security Act signed by President Truman in 1947 specifically to classify all UFO investigation following the incident that year at Roswell, New Mexico. Before the Roswell incident investigations of UFO phenomena were undertaken in the public arena and were commented on openly by military and government alike.

Yet there has been a climatic change in the USA too. Also from around 2008 statements supporting ET contact began to be made by more senior public figures without the previous longstanding pattern of official debunking and denigration by authorities. It seemed the era of threats and violent gag orders, such as were suffered by the original Roswell witnesses, appeared to be put in the past.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Professor John Mack

Head of Clinical Psychology, Harvard Medical School

Voices have included former intelligence operatives, military personnel, surgeons (echoing the heroic work of Harvard Professor John Mack) eyewitnesses, commercial and military airline pilots and, significantly, NASA personnel.

In 2001 over 60 such witnesses testified before a major press presence at the Washington Press Club, organized by Dr Steven Greer’s Disclosure Project. The witnesses spoke of  their own experiences of ET contact and collaboration – some weeping and some terrified as they breached decades’ old oaths and security protocols to testify.

Watch this interview with Dr Steven Greer – a very important champion of the disclosure process:

Champion for Disclosure – Dr Steven Greer

NASA personnel who have publicly testified to ET contact include Mercury astronauts Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter, and Donald Slayton; and Apollo astronauts Eugene Cernan, Colonel Al Worden, Colonel Buzz Aldrin, Dr Brian O Leary, Lt Col Onizuka and Dr Edgar Alan Mitchell.

What does the lifting of the old regime of violent gag orders mean? It could be seen as a “does anyone care anymore?” gesture. Or it could be the evidence of a new policy of passive disclosure.

Project Mercury Astronaut Gordon Cooper

Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Alan Mitchell

Among government figures who have testified to ET or UFO encounters is the current Russian Prime Minister Medvedev – who has spoken at least twice on camera on the subject. In the video grabs below Medvedev endorses the content of a Russian documentary, titled “Men in Black” (not the Hollywood spoof) which reports both ET contact and collaboration. Medvedev made these statements in December 2012.

This is very different to the world I grew up in – in which UFO and ET testimony was only ever heard from unreliable witnesses, or was only of phenomena easily explainable by other means. Put simply we were taught to laugh at those willing to speak publicly, at great cost to themselves, about their experiences. People who testified were ridiculed and lost their jobs simply by speaking about what they had witnessed and experienced. This was especially true of commercial airline pilots. So this sudden pattern-change a decade ago caught my attention.

The following 3 videos present Dr Edgar Alan Mitchell – a great man, the 6th man to walk on the moon – speaking on the need for official disclosure of ET files.

IS YOUR THEOLOGY READY TO LOVE AN E.T. BROTHER OR SISTER?

In May 2008, seemingly from out of the blue, there began a sequence of statements and interviews  issued by Senior Vatican Theologian, Fr Jose Gabriel Funes, Director of the Vatican Observatory. These culminated in a formal press release on behalf of The Vatican in November 2009. The substance of these statements was that Christian believers need to be ready “sooner than we might expect…to love our extra terrestrial brothers and sisters.”

Fr Jose Gabriel Funes

The press release was only the prelude to to something even more public. In 2009, during his brief tenure as Pope, Benedict XVI called upon the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to convene an international colloquium specifically to discuss the theological ramifications of contact with extra-terrestrial civilizations.

The language of “civilizations” or “extra-terrestrial brothers and sisters” made clear that the Vatican was not thinking in terms of finding a bunch of mass in a damp patch of Mars. It was preparing the faithful for contact with other intelligent races. It seemed that the Vatican was expecting a “sooner than expected” disclosure from other authoritative sources and wanted to be in ahead of the game to reassure the faithful.

Given that the colloquium was convened and these statements released under a Pope as conservative as Benedict XVI, they signaled a sudden, and rather surprising departure for the Vatican.

Gary McKinnon

In 2011 a very public spat blew up between US and British governments over US demands for the extradition of a computer hacker, Gary McKinnon. McKinnon had evinced data, images and text from NASA computers which indicated ET technology, contact and collaboration. The matter was discussed publicly in parliament (you can watch it on YouTube!) and the British Government responded with a refusal to extradite Gary McKinnon to the USA where he faced a potential 60 years in jail. In fact Britain quickly passed a bill through parliament which changed the UK’s extradition laws with the USA in order to protect Gary McKinnon.

The very public discussion and handling of this conflict in parliament – with references specifying images of ET craft and names of ET officers – but without any official comment ever being made to implications of the data itself – was, to say the very least, curious!

Theresa May MP as British Home Secretary in 2012, discussing the need to change British law in order to swiftly block Gary McKinnon’s extradition

The above are facts. They are easily confirmed. They are all matters in the public domain. All would seem to point in the same direction. A kind of soft disclosure appears to have been agreed across many nations and some officials and government related personnel have, evidently, been permitted to participate in the public conversation.

Becoming aware of this acceleration of events since 2008 in the last few years has completely reversed my previous views. It would seem that the Vatican is in earnest that we need to be ready sooner rather than later to make room in our theology for E.T.

Apollo Astronaut Neil Armstrong

In a cryptic public remark in a speech marking the 25th anniversary of the first moon landing, the reclusive Apollo 11 Astronaut Neil Armstrong issued a call to the next generation to peel away “truth’s protective layers”. Given the great volume of material already in the public domain, one has to ask exactly what “truths” Neil Armstrong knows to be enshrouded by “protective layers”?! What could further disclosures possibly bring to light?

Watch for yourself and work out what you think Neil Armstrong means by his cryptic remarks. He certainly doesn’t sound a celebratory note for the occasion.

Watch this if you can. It is very painful to watch. I ask myself why the Apollo 11 astronauts would have returned from having achieved the most incredible feat of human history, not rejoicing, not even smiling, but with the air of men attending their own funeral. To me they appear terrified. Neil Armstrong looks deeply conflicted – sad, angry, resentful and at moments like he wants to be sick. Is there something they are anxious not to disclose?

What would disclosure of ET contact and collaboration do to our cosmology? In the light of a more populous universe, how would we then read the Adam and Eve narratives? What would shift in our understanding of the Incarnation and the Cross? What would change in our vision of heaven and of human society? Would we return to Psalm 8.3-4, or Genesis 6.2 or John 10.16 to ask, “Why didn’t we see that possibility before?”

What would such disclosure do to our regard for the covert authorities and unseen layers of government that have kept such significant knowledge – and technology – from planet Earth’s general population – and possibly even from our democratically elected leaders? Would you see your place in the world differently?

Would you want to know who empowers the layers of government above your president or prime-minister, impinged on by no kind of democratic accountability? These are questions Researcher Richard Dolan touches on in the podcast below…

You might want to ask me, “But, Paul, why is it important?” Because, like Fr Funes, I would not want to see fellow Christians blind-sided by new information they can’t find room for in their theology.

We can see on reflection that a faith is an impoverished faith if it can be blown out of the water by the revelation of a spherical planet, or a solar system with the sun at the centre, or a planet whose land masses move, or a climate that can shift, or a society of racial and gender equity! In the C21st I hope that my Christian brothers and sisters have a faith that is thoughtful enough to be ready – in the way Gabriel Funes encourages – to accommodate new revelations about the universe. If there are further material disclosures to come I just wouldn’t want believers to be blind-sided by them.

Of course I may be wrong in my expectations on this topic. You may read the last decade of disclosure and declassification differently, and draw different conclusions. But in the end, whatever our current suppositions, our Christian faith is something more than a canon of propositions and conclusions.

Orthodox faith is, ultimately, not about having a thought system replete with orthodox conclusions. It is essentially about having in Holy Scripture an orthodox source to be sent back to, time and again to ask afresh, “Have we been reading this right!” That is the renewal of our minds (Romans 12.1ff) that transforms our world. It is the gift that ensures that from time to time we find ourselves waking up in a world quite different to the one we fell asleep in. Bring it on!

For more on this subject check out my new book “Escaping from Eden.” Click here…