Donald Trump’s pledge to declassify long-rumoured ‘alien files’ has triggered an unusual backlash across the United States from Christian pastors, who warn the move could destabilise Churches and even ‘destroy’ confidence in Christianity if it is not handled carefully.
Talk of Trump’s alien files has been building for months in US conservative media, fuelled by the President’s public promise to order agencies, including the Pentagon, to dig out and release government records on UFOs and possible extraterrestrial life. That promise has now collided with a strand of American evangelical theology that views talk of aliens not as a scientific question, but as a spiritual trap.
Pastors Split Over Trump’s Alien Files And The Bible
The concerns have been amplified by Tennessee-based evangelist Perry Stone, a high-profile pastor with a sizeable media following. Citing briefings he says came from US intelligence officials, Stone has warned that churches are being quietly told to brace for a wave of doubt once Trump’s alien files appear.
Stone has warned that churches are being quietly told to brace for a wave of doubt once Trump’s alien files appear.
The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
According to the Daily Mail, Stone claimed he and other pastors had been urged in a series of meetings to prepare congregations to ‘stay united’ after any disclosure. The fear is not so much that little green men will step out of a flying saucer, but that new material on unexplained aerial phenomena and supposed life beyond Earth will be read as proof that Genesis is a fairy tale.
‘You’re going to have people who are going to say if there are galaxies and there are allegedly other creations in the galaxies, then the whole creation story is a myth,’ Stone told his audience. In his view, some believers could ‘apostatise and turn from the Christian faith because they have no answer for what they’re about to hear.’
Trump, for his part, has been leaning into the intrigue. ‘We’re going to be releasing a lot of things that we haven’t,’ he said.
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
He has also suggested the alien files might include detailed reports of unusual craft and possibly even video footage, though none of this has been independently verified. At this point, nothing in the pastors’ warnings confirms what is actually contained in the material Trump wants declassified.
Trump, for his part, has been leaning into the intrigue. ‘We’re going to be releasing a lot of things that we haven’t,’ he said last week. ‘I think some of it’s going to be very interesting to people.’ In February, he said the Pentagon had been instructed to release information because of what he called ‘tremendous interest’ in the subject.
Spiritual Warfare Around Trump’s Alien Files
If some pastors sound alarmed about Trump’s alien files, others are more combative, framing the issue as part of a spiritual struggle rather than a clash between religion and science.
Bishop Alan DiDio of Revival Nation Church has argued that the promised disclosures could be used to lure Christians away from their faith. According to Express US, he and like-minded leaders see a deliberate attempt to recast biblical faith as outdated once the public has been primed by official-sounding talk of life in distant galaxies.
Bishop Alan DiDio of Revival Nation Church has argued that the promised disclosures could be used as a tool to lure Christians away from their faith.
Revival Nation / Youtube Screenshot
They are not rejecting the files because they trust Washington. Quite the opposite. For these pastors, government-backed revelations about aliens are suspect precisely because they come from institutions they already view with scepticism.
That attitude finds an echo inside Trump’s own camp. Several figures close to the president have publicly rejected the idea of benign extraterrestrials, preferring a darker reading. Conservative Catholic senator JD Vance, a key Trump ally, put it bluntly in March: ‘I don’t think they’re aliens. I think they’re demons.’
Vance’s remark, dismissed by critics as superstition, lands very differently in Pentecostal and charismatic circles where talk of spiritual warfare is part of everyday faith.
Gage Skidmore/Flickr CC BY-SA 4.0
Vance’s remark, dismissed by critics as superstition, lands very differently in Pentecostal and charismatic circles where talk of spiritual warfare is part of everyday faith. To those ears, alien encounters are not an affront to Scripture but potential evidence of deceptive spiritual forces.
What separates the pastors now speaking out is how they think their flock will cope if Trump’s alien files arrive packaged with official commentary that leans into cosmic speculation. Some appear confident that centuries of Christian theology can absorb the idea of a vast universe. Others sound genuinely worried that younger, internet-shaped believers will treat any government disclosure as the final truth.
Underneath the noise, there is an old American tension at work. For decades, citizens have claimed the US government is sitting on UFO secrets, while officials have kept most of the material classified.
Trump has cast himself as the disruptor willing to cut through that secrecy. His religious supporters now face a curious dilemma: cheering the declassification instinct while fearing that what emerges could be turned against the Bible they champion.
For now, no alien bodies, craft or earth-shaking doctrines have appeared, only promises and warnings. Until the Trump administration’s alien files are actually made public and examined, both the most breathless hopes and the darkest pastoral fears remain just that: speculation waiting for evidence.