Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion

This is a fairly scholarly work, but I found it easy enough to read. It does contain a sort of chronological history of the group, but mostly it's about the actual beliefs of the movement and the influences on them. I was convinced by his argument that they were actually a variation on your standard premillennial Protestant American Christianity, just filtered through an ufology hermeneutic--an assertion I found farfetched at first, but he was very thorough in examining the various influences on the group.

I really appreciated the way the author treated Heaven's Gate as a religion on its own terms--really diving into its worldview and showing how the belief system makes sense from the inside. He never treated the members like a bunch of show more brainwashed or mentally ill people he could dismiss, but instead really tried to understand what it was about the religious teachings and practice of Heaven's Gate that drew them in, and also why the group suicide was, in the end, inevitable. He managed to be compassionate without ever endorsing their beliefs. show less

Very dry and feels disorganized though there is some interesting information in there stuffed between the author saying what he’s going to talk about later and arguing against what others have said about the group. (Though in these arguments he seems to willfully misunderstand what the other side is saying.) On the positive side, he is relatively respectful of the UFO-centered beliefs - he ranks them as legitimate as Christianity in several comparisons.

This book is definitely informative! Less true crime and more academic religious exploration. I learned so much about Heaven's Gate as a religion and the culture it emerged out of. However, because it's academic, it could be extremely difficult to read/understand. I enjoyed learning, but probably won't revisit.