Download Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion AudioBook Free
2015 Best Book Prize from the Communal Studies Association In March 1997, 39 people in Rancho Santa Fe, California, ritually terminated their lives. To outsiders, it was a mass suicide. To insiders, it was a graduation. This function was the culmination of over two decades of spiritual and cultural development for the customers of Heaven's Gate, a religious group focused on transcending humanity and the planet earth, and seeking salvation in the literal heavens on board a UFO. In this amazing analysis, Benjamin Zeller not only explores the question of why the customers of Heaven's Gate determined ritual suicides, but interrogates the origin and development of the faith, its appeal, and its own practices. By tracking the introduction of the history, cultural structure, and worldview of Heaven's Gate, Zeller does draw out the ways in which the movements was both a reflection and a microcosm of greater American culture. The group surfaced out of engagement with Evangelical Christianity, the brand new Age movement, knowledge fiction and UFOs, and conspiracy theories, and it improved in response to the religious quests of baby boomers, new religions of the counterculture, and the narcissistic pessimism of the 1990s. Thus, Heaven's Gate not only shows the context of its environment, but also discloses how those forces interacted by means of a single religious body. Within the only book-length analysis of Heaven's Gate, Zeller traces the root base of the movements, examines its beliefs and tactics, and tells the captivating tale of the folks of Heaven's Gate.
