A Christian congressman has lifted the lid on what he claims is a shadowy network of former military operatives quietly investigating UFOs. He said one of its members told him that the Church must prepare for the potential existence of extraterrestrial life.
Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican, sits on a U.S. House Oversight subcommittee examining unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). He made the extraordinary claims during a two-hour interview with American Alchemy host Jesse Michels.
His comments offer a renewed glimpse into a bizarre episode in which a group of Charismatic pastors reportedly gathered at an Airbnb in Tennessee early this year to discuss the potential religious implications of UFO disclosure.
The meeting exploded into public knowledge in May after some pastors claimed U.S. government officials had told them to prepare their congregations for the theological consequences of revealing evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Burlison, however, Â said the controversy surrounding the meeting was merely a side chapter of a much larger investigation. “It seems like every time you have this conversation about UFOs and UAPs, it always kind of brings up the question of spirituality,” Burlison told Michels. “Are these angels? Some people say they’re all demons.”
But then came Burlison’s most bizarre revelation. The congressman talked about a “very clandestine” group of people that includes former special forces personnel and former military intelligence officers, who are investigating phenomena related to UAP.
This group, he suggested, may be working for a private entity that gave them the green light to pursue the investigation as a side mission. “That’s my best guess, because you’ll never get out of them who they really work for,” he said.
One of the men approached him in Washington, D.C., and revealed that he was also a Christian, Burlison claimed. The man, he said, asked him to be careful about whom he trusted when discussing the highly controversial subject.
The congressman went on to claim the group’s work could extend well beyond UFO sightings. He said its broader remit might include mysterious drone incursions in the United States, human trafficking, and other unexplained or sensitive matters.
And one of those allegedly involved, Burlison said, was a chaplain. That chaplain reportedly delivered a stark warning: “The Church needs to be prepared.“
Burlison said Christians should be open to the possibility that humanity could one day receive credible evidence of extraterrestrial life. But he warned against allowing that eventuality to send believers into theological panic. Many Christians, he said, were already “going off on very wild tangents” about UFOs.
Burlison said he was later invited to call into a gathering of pastors who supposedly had connections to the clandestine group.
The message, he said, was simple: Even a genuine discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe should not destroy a Christian’s worldview. A universe containing intelligent life, he reasoned, does not necessarily contradict the Bible.
But the meeting soon became the source of a misunderstanding. Larry Ragland, senior pastor of Solid Rock Church in Birmingham, Alabama, later appeared in a viral clip and alleged Burlison had told the pastors that extraterrestrials were demons. The Alabama pastor further claimed that Burlison said the government intended to promote the idea that aliens created humanity in an effort to undermine Christianity.
Burlison strongly rejected Ragland’s allegations. He said the pastors had effectively “put words in his mouth,” portraying him as saying that all extraterrestrials were demonic. “I’m not going to jump to that kind of conclusion,” Burlison said.
Ragland later apologized. He acknowledged that he had conflated his own views with those of the congressman. But Burlison’s interview went far beyond the controversy over the pastors’ gathering.
He recounted claims allegedly made by military personnel about encounters with bizarre UAPs, especially around sensitive nuclear installations. Among the most chilling was an account of what Burlison described as a “blacker-than-black sphere“ seen in the western United States. The object, he claimed, was associated with an overwhelming “sense of just complete evil and darkness.”
It remains unresolved whether such accounts represent unknown technology, misidentified phenomena, or something far stranger.
Burlison, however, also offered another extraordinary claim — this one involves the White House. He said President Donald Trump had received a briefing about the potential existence of alien-human hybrids. And according to Burlison, Trump’s reported response was characteristically provocative. “You mean like Adam Schiff?” the president allegedly replied.
The claims remain just that — claims. And Burlison did not provide publicly verifiable evidence establishing the existence of extraterrestrial beings, alien-human hybrids or the alleged clandestine organization.
But his account illustrates how the UFO debate has increasingly moved beyond questions of strange objects in the sky and into territory involving national security, military secrecy, religion and the possibility of life beyond Earth.
Perhaps the most intriguing for Christians watching on the sidelines was Burlison’s message that the Church should be ready if one day humanity receives undeniable evidence of extraterrestrial life.
