A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

magazine, the latter edited by iconoclast Elbert Hubbard who “urged lenient child-rearing,
advocated divorce for incompatible couples, and mocked all ‘smug’ religions—especially
Christianity,”—causes which had all resonated with the spiritualists of the previous century. 144
Pelley began to issue the Philosopher, his attempt to propagate ideas central to his emergent
philosophy, in Fulton, New York in 1909. Progressive child rearing, manly independence, the
power of maternal love—the obvious tension between the two preceding indicating Pelley’s
ambivalence vis-à-vis the feminine—and the “scientific, unsentimental” discussion of faith all
received hyperbolic treatment in the nineteen-year-old’s journal. 145
This last echoes the
nineteenth century belief, so central to Spiritualism, and doomed to increasing obscurity
following the 1925 Monkey-Scopes trial, that science and religion were compatible. The notion
that matters of faith would bear scientific scrutiny also aligns with a central tendency in the
nexus of communication between human and Other —the materialization of the spiritual. Pelley
would continue to assert the compatibility of science and religion throughout his life. In a much
later communiqué he intoned, “‘religion’ and ‘science,’ in short are beginning to be recognized
as parts of the same Truth, of the same Reality, as indeed they must be.” 146
This ostensible
compatibility was necessary in the bid to maintain a public space for spiritual discourse. In a
period of ascendant positivism, spiritual discourse needed to be clothed in the language of
materialism.
The Philosopher further espoused a utopian vision led by a unified, non-denominational
Christianity—a utopia characterized in part by the nationwide establishment of “Guild Houses”
144 Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Depression to the Cold War
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983) 26.
145 Ribuffo, 29.
146 William Dudley Pelley, Books for your Soulcraft Library (Noblesville IN: Soulcraft Chapels Press). Undated
material recovered from Noblesville, Indiana Public Library’s vertical file archive on William Dudley Pelley in July
of 2005.
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