Prof Mary-Jane Rubenstein – Faith and the Final Frontier: The New Religion of NewSpace

This lecture explains the intensifying “NewSpace race” as a mythological project. In particular, it reveals the escalating desire to colonize other planets as an extension of the Christian imperialism that globalized the Earth. From the Doctrine of Discovery that “gave” Spain the New World through the Manifest Destiny that carried white Americans across the continent, the Christian imperial myth of human supremacy has justified genocide and ecocide as “necessary means” toward utopian ends. Now with the advent of NewSpace industries, the exploitative ethos of European colonialism has been unleashed outward in all directions, burnished with a half-religious assurance that every planetary body is ours for the taking and intensified with a messianic promise of extraterrestrial redemption.

The question, then, is whether there might be a different approach to exploring outer space. Is there a way to learn from other planets, moons, and asteroids without exploiting them? Is there a way to see land as important in its own right, rather than a mere container for “resources”? Is there a way to visit or even to live on multiple planets without ransacking them? How might we inhabit outer space without bringing our most destructive tendencies along with us? And might we find ways to heal our ravaged Earth in the process?

MARY-JANE RUBENSTEIN is Professor of Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan University. She is the author of Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race (Chicago, 2022) and co-PI of the Interplanetary Initiative’s “Sacred Space” program at Arizona State University. Her other books include Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters (Columbia, 2019); Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse (Columbia, 2014), recipient of the 2023 Iris Award in Science and Religion; and Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe (Columbia, 2009).