Matthew Bowman

Matthew Bowman is Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and a professor of religion and history at Claremont Graduate University. He is interested in new religious movements and basketball, and is the author of several books, including CHRISTIAN: THE POLITICS OF A WORD IN AMERICA (Harvard, 2018) and THE ABDUCTION OF BETTY AND BARNEY HILL (Yale, 2023).

"Lost Tribes: Flying Saucers and Mormon Ways of Knowing in New Age Arizona."

At the end of the 1960s, Paul Solem, a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, appeared on Hopi land in Arizona. He told stories of his own experiences with flying saucers and argued that Hopi prophecy could best be explained as references to his  encounters. He gained a respectful hearing from some Hopi leaders. This presentation proposes that the category of 'flying saucer' allowed Solem to gather together a tradition of esoteric Mormon knowledge and epistemologies that had been largely rejected by the leadership of the LDS church.