Founded in 1974 as the Mouvement pour Accueil des Elohim Createurs de l’Humanite (MADECH), the Raelian Church is a UFO-religion, originating from a claimed encounter by its founder-leader Claude Vorilhon (a.k.a. Rael, b. 1946) and an extraterrestrial near the volcanoes of Clermont-Ferrand in France on 13 December 1973. This encounter is described in Rael’s first book, The Book Which Tells the Truth (1974), in which it is claimed that the Elohim, who come from another planet, created the human race as a genetic experiment, and return periodically to assess their work. Much of Rael’s teaching claims to be derived from the Bible, and the book offers sustained biblical exegesis, claiming that its references to gods and chariots are allusions to extraterrestrials and spaceships.
A further encounter with the Elohim led to Rael’s second book Extra-Terrestrials Took Me To Their Planet (1975). As the title implies, the work describes how he visited the Elohim’s planet, and met their leader, Yahweh. In 1978 the two books were published in Canada as a single volume, Space Aliens Took Me To Their Planet, and in 1986 the British edition was entitled The Message Given To Me By Extra-Terrestrials: They Took Me To Their Planet.
The Elohim have highly advanced technology, which Rael experiences in his space journey. In the Elohim’s planet, all the menial work is carried out by robots, leaving the inhabitants free to enjoy intellectual and sensual pursuits. The Elohim are prepared to share their technology with humankind; however, they have no wish to force their lifestyle or government on Earth’s inhabitants, and await a time when they will be freely received on the planet. To this end the Raelians plan to build an embassy to receive the Elohim, who are expected to arrive around the year 2035. The preferred location for the embassy is the State of Israel, being the country in which the first messiah—Jesus of Nazareth—was born. Rael is hailed as the new messiah, who claims to have been born not of normal human birth, but as a result of a sexual union between Yahweh and his human mother. The Raelians anticipate that the Jews may once again reject their messiah, and that they may have to approach other governments for land on which to build their embassy.
The government that the Elohim will establish will be a ‘geniocracy’. Since Raelians emphasize intellectual and technological advance, society will be governed only by those whose intelligence is at least 50 per cent higher than the human average. Sensual enjoyment is encouraged, and the Raelian Church teaches that people should do what they see fit with their bodies. The Raelians have attracted media publicity for their ‘sensual meditation’: their annual workshops aim to induce ‘cosmic orgasm’, which involves a feeling of oneness with the infinite universe.
Since humans were originally created as a genetic experiment, Raelians have consistently encouraged genetic experimentation, and are in favour of genetically modified crops. They also advocate human and animal cloning, and in 1977 the Raelian Church established Clonaid, under the directorship of Dr Brigitte Boisellier, a Raelian ‘bishop’. The project originally aimed at enabling clients to bank a DNA sample to enable them to be re-cloned after death, thus ensuring personal survival. Rael teaches that, after death, the Elohim’s Council of the Eternals will decide which humans are worthy of recreation, and will ensure that their DNA samples are cloned. Clonaid has also offered services to infertile couples, and in December 2002 Boisellier claimed to have cloned the first human baby from its mother’s DNA. Other Raelian organizations include Ovulaid, which unashamedly encourages the creation of ‘designer babies’; Clonapet aims to offer pet owners the opportunity to clone replicas of deceased pets; and Insuraclone stores samples of human cells for the purpose of therapeutic cloning for the treatment or prevention of certain diseases.
