Welcome back to  “Name That Religion” — in which I learn a little and then teach you a little bit about a religion/following/cult/organized group with interesting beliefs.

This week’s featured religion: Raelism! 

Find all the rest here.

Origin

• Founded in 1974 by former French car-racing test driver Claude Vorilhon (now known as Rael)
• He was (supposedly) visited by extraterrestrials, shifting his world view
• Claude was a musician early in his career as well as an auto-racing journalist
• In 1973 he was visited by “Yahweh”
• Yahweh explained that humanity was an experiment; an advance race called the Elohim mated with humans
• Their offspring were the “prophets” — Jesus, Mohammed, etc.  The prophets were half-alien
• Vorilhon (“Rael”) formed this religion to explain the origin of humanity to people to primitive to understand this history
• Raëlian Church has a quasi-clerical structure of seven levels. Joining the movement requires an official apostasy from other religions
• The structure of the Raëlian Church is hierarchical, with seven levels ascending from level 0 to level 6.  The top four levels consist of “Guides”.

Beliefs

• Raelism is based around the idea of improving humanity to the point that the Elohim will be able to visit.
• On that day, they’ll help set up a new society without hunger, war, or suffering.
• Raelism has a few basic tenants that believers should follow:
  • They reject any of the rules of established religions about sexuality. Raelism teaches that love should be free and in no way seen as shameful.
  • They advocate for universal peace and understanding across humanity.
  • Humans need to perfect cloning technology. Apparently, aliens have already done this, and use it to transfer their minds to new bodies when they die.
  • Jesus’ resurrection is an example; by perfecting cloning, Raël believes that humans can also achieve immortality
• Endorse topless rights for women — men can go topless anywhere, so why not women?
• Homosexuality, bisexuality, and nudity are accepted (pedophilia is not)
• Advanced alien supercomputers are recording your DNA right now.
• One day, when the aliens return, they will judge your life to decide if you get a new cloned body
• The ultimate goal of Raelism is to create both a perfect society and an embassy for the aliens to visit Earth.
• Ideally, Raël wants this embassy to be in Israel, since the Hebrew people were the first to be contacted by the aliens

Current Status

• Has ~85,000 followers; many in Japan and South Korea
• No embassy yet

Resources  (videos, wikis, etc)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raëlian_beliefs_and_practices

https://allthatsinteresting.com/raelism