Alien Initiations?

See here.

The two Jesuits ask whether we would accept extraterrestrial baptism or equivalent. What do our representative sf writers say?

CS Lewis' Martians and Venerians live in direct contact with Maleldil (the Solar word for "God"), do not practice initiations and, in any case, have no regular contact with Terrestrials. Blish's Lithians are entirely rational and secular.

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

the Ythrian Old Faith is polytheist with practices involving drug use and bloody sacrifices;

in the New Faith, God the Hunter offers not salvation in a hereafter but a good fight at death;

the Merseian deity is entirely transcendent and favors the Race above all other rational species.

Transcendence is indicated by the phrase "the God" as opposed to letting the word for a god become a personal name. Because of his upbringing, Olaf Magnusson is a Merseian ideologically if not biologically. An Avalonian human being who joins a choth might honorably embrace the New Faith although it is incompatible with any Terrestrial religion whereas the Merseian allegience is bad news, a false gospel.

Yet To Come

See here for the alpha timeline, here for the beta timeline and here for both. I will search the blog again for any other earlier descriptions of these timelines and will also reread the relevant passages in Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time.

Meanwhile, Sean M Brooks has sent me a copy of Guy Consolmagno SJ and Paul Mueller SJ, Would You Baptize An Extraterrestrial? (New York, 2014). This book addresses six cosmological/theological conundra, including the title question. I will read this work for any light that it might throw on the theological issues raised in four works of sf:

The Ransom Trilogy by CS Lewis;
A Case Of Conscience by James Blish;
"The Problem of Pain" by Poul Anderson;
The Game Of Empire by Poul Anderson.

Poul Anderson is to be appreciated both in his own right and in relation to other such sf writers. Both the Ransom Trilogy, Volume III, and Anderson's The Shield Of Time refer to Frederick Barbarossa (Fred Red Beard) (see image).