A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

science” was based on empirical evidence. It was the observable phenomena that emerged via
the medium that constituted the only proofs in the Spiritualist religion.
While there was some level of concordance between Christianity and various branches of
the Spiritualist movement—Robert Dale Owen, founder of New Harmony, understood it as his
mission to “establish Spiritualism as an intellectually and socially respectable adjunct of
Protestant Christianity”— the anti-supernatural doctrine of Spiritualism sometimes lent itself to
an anti-Christian stance. 68
Such is clearly the case with Lockwood.
There’s a new day of dawn coming, ushered in by scientific research. It will demonstrate
that life continues beyond the changing phenomena of plasmatic existence …And when it
comes—as it will—the theories and speculations of theism will be crushed beneath the
weight of accumulated scientific testimony, that demonstrates the pernicious character of
these ancient platitudes, which exist only by constant abuse of the imagination. In that
day of dawn the idols of the garden of Eden, the gods incestuous and incarnate, the
sacrificial atonement, the cannibalistic and pagan ceremony of drinking a fetich Savior’s
blood and eating his body, will disappear with the advancement of a higher mental
civilization. 69
Spiritualists were often specifically opposed to the perceived stifling of spiritual exploration by
the Church, which had nothing to offer but “a lot of stale phrases from the dark ages.” 70
Clearly
there was more than a hint of anti-Catholicism and anti-clericism to all of these misgivings.
Lucy Milburn wrote of how “the teachings of Jesus have been hedged about with dogmas and
theological treatises, and the theologians have raised a mighty wall about the Garden of God, so
that many of his dear loving children do not as yet see the far country.” 71
So often the target of
attack was the obscurantist effect of orthodoxy rather than religion or Christianity per se.
Nonetheless, Spiritualism was often derided as resolutely anti-religious. Oliver Wendell Holmes
68 Kerr, 113.
69 Lockwood, 16.
70 Danmar, n.p.
71 Milburn, vii.
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