Many of you are likely familiar with the Alexander Religious Crisis Survey (1994) conducted by Victoria Alexander. If you’ve heard me speak on whether Christianity can accommodate a genuine ET reality (news flash for Ryan Wood and Stan Friedman: this a subject I’ve lecture on a number of times at UFO festivals, and my answer is “yes”), you know that I’ve been critical of that survey since its questions are at times poorly worded, and the target audience lacks important nuancing (e.g., there’s no evangelical or fundamentalist representation in it — the groups most likely to respond negatively — and there was no attempt to include the laity, only ministers). These oversights result in uncertainty regarding the validity of its conclusion that, contra the Brookings Report of 1961, the revelation of intelligent ET life most ministers wouldn’t be bothered.
The Peters ETI Religious Crisis Survey addresses those weaknesses in good measure. While not hitting certain things that I think ought to have been included, it’s a much better survey. Readers can visit the survey site at the above link, where summaries of the questions and results are available, as well as the complete survey documents.
