Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion

In March 1997, thirty-nine people in Rancho Santa Fe, California, ended their lives. To outsiders, it was a mass suicide. To insiders, it was a graduation. This act was the culmination of over two decades of religious and social development of a new religious movement called Heaven’s Gate, America’s most famous UFO religion. The book considers Heaven’s Gate’s history, social structure, practices, beliefs, and worldview, and how they developed. The book argues that major American religious forces such as evangelical Christianity, the New Age movement, and spiritual seeking shaped Heaven’s Gate, and that the suicides must be read within the context of American religion. The book analyzes the historical origin of the movement, the backgrounds of its founders, social contexts of those who joined and left, the specific forms of Biblical interpretation or hermeneutics that members employed, religious practices developed by adherents, and the reasons that Heaven’s Gate ended as it did. Finally, the book argues that for all its seemingly oddness, Heaven’s Gate reflects American society by revealing some of the same forces at play in bigger, more recognizable, more publically accepted religions.