Fundamentalist Christians have been gradually seceding from America over the last decade. This has signficantly dialed down the gain on efforts to Christianify the world through governmental intervention; it has also given rise to a shadow world of Christian culture: Christian themeparks, movies, and an entire genre of Christian Apocalyptic science fiction, a literature of the end-times:
On a related front, Christian apocalyptic authors, like science fiction authors, are interested in aliens. But again, they don’t like them. Although C.S. Lewis could fit other worlds with sentient beings into his Christian beliefs, this is not the case for the Christian apocalyptic fiction that I’ve seen. In such works, extraterrestrials are usually just a hoax — but if they exist, they are actually fallen angels. In Nephilim, the demons look just like the greys. In We All Fall Down, the demon aliens (called the Celestine Prophets) give a long speech to explain away the Rapture in terms of alien intervention, but the apocalyptically savvy protagonist just laughs at the devil’s obviousness: “Nice try, c@#$s!@#er. Next time why don’t you just try offering me the f@#!ing apple.” (92)
(Thanks, John!)