Disclosure Day asks, can Christianity survive first contact with aliens?

What would the existence of aliens mean for Christians?

It’s a question that former aspiring nun Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson) wrestles with in Steven Spielberg’s newest movie, Disclosure Day. It’s also a question that some Christians are now considering in light of U.S. President Donald Trump’s recently launched initiative to publicly declassify and release decades of records, videos, and investigative files about UFO’s (now called UAP’s).

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Released over three phases, the most recent disclosure of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) files under Trump was pushed by Republican congresspeople following years of increased scrutiny of the government’s UAP files by (mostly) Republican members of congress and conservative influencers. While most of the files are blurry photos, videos, recreations of eye witness testimony, or other already seen documents, that hasn’t stopped people from speculating.

Disclosure Day, meanwhile, follows a band of underground freedom fighters, insistent on releasing previously withheld and covered conclusive proof of alien life and visits to earth publicly. It is in this context that Jane is forced to question how this information would shape humanity. Jane is shown evidence of extraterrestrial life and experiences a crisis of faith. She wrestles with whether helping to reveal the truth will undermine people’s belief in God.

A leading scholar on religion and extraterrestrial life, Dr. Ted Peters has long wondered what the discovery of extra terrestrial intelligence (ETIs) would mean for Christians. In 2011, he surveyed 1,300 Christians across the U.S. to explore whether confirmed contact with an intelligent alien civilization would trigger a crisis of faith or cause religious beliefs to collapse.

It didn’t. Ninety per cent of respondents said they would have no difficulty including ETIs within God’s creation, Peters told Broadview in an interview last week, adding that comments in the survey indicated belief that the same God who created Earth and us could also create extraterrestrial species.

While many Christians appear open to the possibility of alien life, a 2021 Pew Research poll found that they are generally less likely than non-religious people to believe extraterrestrial life exists. Among atheists and agnostics, 85 per cent said they believed intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, compared with 67 per cent of Catholics and 51 per cent of Protestants.

Could the recent disclosure of government UFO files change that?

While the Pentagon has repeatedly stated that it has found no evidence of extraterrestrial life — and forensic experts and former government officials like physicist and former director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office Sean Kirkpatrick have concluded that many reports were inconclusive or otherwise explainable by natural and technical phenomena — this hasn’t stopped some from speculating.

“I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons,” Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, said earlier this year on the conservative Benny Johnson podcast, in a discussion about UAP phenomena.

The idea that UFOs may have a demonic origin has circulated in some Christian circles for decades. But recent reporting by The New York Times suggests these discussions are reaching broader audiences.

In May, the newspaper reported on a February gathering where podcasters, priests and religious leaders were presented with what organizers described as evidence of extraterrestrial life — and warned that future disclosures could create spiritual confusion among Christians. That same day, Trump announced his plan to disclose the government’s UFO files.

Peters, however, views such claims as a fringe response.

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“A few Christian yahoos try to startle us by claiming that UFOs are demonic,” he told Broadview. “They claim that extraterrestrial intelligence” does not exist, but demons try to fool us into believing ETI exists, the demon theorists contend.”

Nor is the belief limited to conservative evangelicals. Peters says examples can be found among some Evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics, and members of the Orthodox Church.

He predicts that as the possibility of extraterrestrial life becomes a larger part of public discourse, and as blurry videos continue to spark questions about the nature of the universe, Christians will likely respond to the new interest in aliens stimulated by the Disclosure Movement — the organized political movement that believe governments have concealed evidence of extraterrestrial life — in ways indistinguishable from the wider culture.

At the same time, he suggests that such developments will prompt renewed discussions about the scope and breadth of God’s creation.

Disclosure Day seems to share Peter’s assessment, treating the revelation of alien life as a positive rather than a negative force. The movie ends with a final ‘Disclosure Day’ where people around the world watch the news, and step back from the brink of World War 3. It is an optimistic ending, one that has been heavily criticized by some reviewers. Would aliens really unite us — or would they further fracture the social order? Grifters and politicians would just take advantage of the chaos to push their doctrine, these critics argue.

Jane acts as one of these cynics. Her story arc is one of wrestling with what alien life would mean for humanity, and especially faith. She has lost her faith — not in God, but in humanity.

Midway through Disclosure Day, Jane receives a simple answer to her questions. Why would God create such a vast and beautiful universe, and leave it empty?

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James Adair is an intern at Broadview.