Heaven's Gate

Heaven's Gate was a small new religious movement that combined UFO (unidentified flying object) lore with metaphysical and Christian themes and advocated the ascetic rejection of all “mammalian ways,” such as sexual relationships and ties with family members outside Heaven's Gate. The founders, Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985), met in Houston in 1972 and in the years thereafter developed and taught a shifting and highly combinative theology, intermingling popular science fiction themes about extraterrestrial beings and spaceships [Page 507]with strains of New Age spirituality, theosophy, spiritualism, and end-times Christianity. Applewhite and Nettles attracted significant media attention in 1975, after a lecture they gave in Oregon spurred some 30 audience members to abandon their worldly attachments and possessions as a precondition for conversion. Soon ...