Over the last few weeks, many Orthodox Christians online have been talking again about Fr. Seraphim Rose because of renewed rumors and conversations surrounding his possible canonization. That discussion has brought many parts of his legacy back into public view, including his warnings about UFOs, aliens, and spiritual deception. Fr. Seraphim was a profound witness of repentance, ascetic struggle, and the search for truth. His life continues to speak powerfully to many people who have come to Orthodoxy from confusion, pain, or spiritual wandering.
At the same time, loving and respecting Fr. Seraphim does not mean we have to treat every one of his opinions as a settled dogma of the Church. When he wrote about extraterrestrials, he tended to connect the subject with demonic deception and the spiritual dangers of the modern age. That warning deserves to be heard seriously, especially in a culture that often chases strange spiritual experiences without discernment. But it also leaves room for a pastoral question: if we ever encountered something truly alien, weak, frightened, and vulnerable, how should Orthodox Christians respond?
That is where E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial becomes surprisingly useful. The film does not answer the theological question of whether aliens exist, and it is certainly not an Orthodox movie. But it gives us a story about an unknown stranger who appears frightening at first, yet is also wounded, lost, and in need of mercy. In a moment when Orthodox people are discussing Fr. Seraphim, aliens, discernment, and spiritual deception, E.T. gives us a gentle way to ask another question: not only “What is this?” but “How should a Christian heart respond to the stranger?”
E.T. and the Christian Call to Receive the Stranger
E.T. begins with fear. The creature is strange, hidden, and not easily understood. The adults see a problem to investigate, control, or contain. Elliott and the children slowly come to see someone vulnerable who needs help.
This matters because Scripture repeatedly calls God’s people to care for the stranger. Abraham receives the three mysterious visitors by the oaks of Mamre. The Lord commands Israel to remember the stranger because they themselves were strangers in Egypt. In the Gospel, Christ identifies Himself with the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned, and the stranger.
Orthodox Christians believe every human person is made in the image of God. That belief cannot be reduced to sentimental kindness, but it does shape how we see the weak and the unknown. E.T. is not human, and the movie is not making a theological claim about the image of God. Still, the emotional movement of the story reminds us that fear often makes us treat the stranger as a threat before we have learned to see his suffering.
The children do not understand E.T. at first. They do not know where he comes from, what he is, or what his arrival means. But they recognize his need. They hide him, feed him, protect him, and gradually love him. Their response is not perfect, but it is merciful.
Love, Communion, and the Mystery of Shared Life
One of the most memorable parts of E.T. is the mysterious bond between Elliott and E.T. What happens to one affects the other. Their emotions and bodily states become connected. The film uses this in a childlike and almost magical way, but the deeper idea is worth noticing.
Orthodox Christianity teaches that persons are not meant to exist as isolated units. We are created for communion with God and with one another. Sin isolates, wounds, and turns us inward. Love opens the person outward, creating a shared life marked by care, responsibility, and sacrifice.
Elliott’s bond with E.T. shows that real love is never distant. It involves the heart. It means that another person’s suffering begins to matter to us, not as an idea, but as something we feel and carry. Saint Paul says that if one member suffers, all suffer together, and if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
The film does not present the Church, the sacraments, or Christian communion. But it does show a small image of shared life. Elliott cannot remain untouched by E.T.’s pain. This is one of the reasons the movie works so well. It understands that love makes us vulnerable.
Why does E.T. feel almost Christian?
E.T. feels almost Christian because it understands that love is not simply a feeling. It becomes care, protection, risk, and sacrifice. The children’s love for E.T. costs them something. They must choose between safety and mercy, between obeying fear and protecting the helpless stranger.
This is not the same thing as Christian discipleship, but it echoes part of it. The Orthodox Church teaches that love must become concrete. We cannot love mankind in the abstract while refusing to love the person placed in front of us. E.T. puts that truth into the shape of a children’s adventure.
The stranger in the story reveals the hearts of the people around him. Some characters respond with curiosity. Some respond with fear. Some respond with control. Elliott responds, eventually, with love.
This is often what happens in real life. The presence of a weak person reveals whether our hearts are ruled by fear or mercy. The stranger asks a question without using words: what kind of person are you becoming?
Wonder instead of control
Another major theme in the film is wonder. The children are afraid at first, but their fear gives way to awe. They do not fully understand E.T., but they are able to receive mystery. This childlike openness is one of the most beautiful parts of the movie.
Many of the adults, by contrast, respond through systems, equipment, tests, and control. This does not mean adults are evil. Some of them may even believe they are doing what is necessary. But the film clearly contrasts the child’s capacity for wonder with the adult desire to manage what cannot be understood.
Christ tells His disciples that unless they turn and become like children, they will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This does not mean becoming childish, foolish, or naive. It means recovering humility, trust, wonder, and the ability to receive what is greater than ourselves. The childlike heart can be taught. The controlling heart can only grasp.
In this sense, E.T. is a gentle rebuke to a world that wants to dissect mystery before learning to love. The film is not against knowledge. It is against knowledge without reverence. Orthodox Christians believe that truth and love belong together, and that knowledge without humility can become dangerous.
Death, life, and resurrection-shaped hope
The most emotional part of E.T. comes when the creature appears to die. The story slows down and the children face the grief of loss. Elliott’s love seems powerless. The one he tried to protect is gone.
Then life returns. This is not the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and it should not be forced into a direct allegory. E.T. is not Christ, and the movie is not preaching the Gospel. But the shape of the scene is familiar to Christian hearts: sorrow, death, silence, and then unexpected life.
Many great stories move us because they echo the deep structure of reality. Christians believe that death has been conquered by Christ. Because of that, we are especially sensitive to stories where death does not get the final word. Even when a film does not know the fullness of the Gospel, it may still stir the human longing for life beyond death.
This is why the scene works so powerfully. It touches the ache every person carries. We want love to be stronger than death. We want the beloved to live. In Orthodox Christianity, this longing is not dismissed as childish. It is fulfilled in the risen Lord.
The longing for home
The phrase “E.T. phone home” has become part of popular culture, but it is more than a memorable line. It expresses the deepest ache of the film. E.T. is not merely lost in a physical sense. He is away from where he belongs.
That longing for home is one of the most Christian themes in the movie. The human person was made for communion with God. We live in this world, and the world is God’s creation, but we also experience exile, restlessness, and longing. We are not fully at home until we are united to God.
Saint Augustine famously wrote that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. The Orthodox tradition speaks in its own way of the same reality. We were created for union with God, and nothing less can finally satisfy the human person. E.T.’s homesickness becomes a small image of that deeper spiritual homesickness.
The children love E.T., but they cannot become his final home. They can shelter him for a time. They can help him. They can suffer with him. But love must finally help him return where he belongs.
Love is not possession
This may be the most important Christian echo in the film. Elliott loves E.T., but he cannot keep him. The story would become selfish and false if love meant clinging forever. True love receives, protects, suffers, and then lets the beloved go.
Orthodox Christianity teaches that love is not possession. God does not call us into communion so that we may control one another. He teaches us to offer ourselves. This is why Christian love is always tied to freedom, humility, and sacrifice.
Elliott’s farewell to E.T. is painful because love has become real. But the pain is not meaningless. It shows that the relationship mattered. In a small and imperfect way, the film understands that love may require release rather than grasping.
This is an important lesson in a culture that often confuses love with ownership. Parents, spouses, friends, and even parish communities can fall into the temptation to possess what they are called to love. E.T. reminds us that love is not proven by holding tightly. Sometimes it is proven by blessing the other to go where they must go.
Is E.T. a Christ figure?
It is tempting to turn E.T. into a Christ figure. He comes from above, heals, suffers, appears to die, returns to life, and goes home. Some viewers have noticed those patterns for decades. There are real reasons the comparison comes to mind.
Still, Orthodox Christians should be careful. Not every death and return is a direct image of the Resurrection. Not every gentle stranger is a symbol of the Savior. When we force an allegory too hard, we can make the story feel smaller and less honest.
It is better to say that E.T. contains Christ-shaped echoes. It reflects themes of compassion, wonder, sacrifice, death, life, and return. These echoes can move the heart toward deeper truth, but they do not replace the Gospel, the Church, or the sacramental life.
This is what Almost Christian means. It does not mean “secretly Orthodox.” It means that a work of art can reflect fragments of truth because all truth belongs to God. The film can be beautiful and incomplete at the same time.
What should Orthodox Christians do with alien stories?
Orthodox Christians should approach alien stories with discernment, not fear. Fr. Seraphim Rose warned strongly about deception, and that warning should not be mocked. The spiritual world is real, and Christians should not treat every strange experience as harmless. The Church calls us to test the spirits and remain rooted in Christ.
But discernment is not the same as panic. The Orthodox Church has not given a dogmatic answer to every possible question about extraterrestrial life. If some created rational life existed beyond earth, Christians would still ask the same basic questions: What is this creature? What is its relation to God? Is it fallen? Can it receive the Gospel? These are not simple questions, and humility is better than loud certainty.
E.T. does not answer those theological questions. It gives us a moral picture instead. If a frightened, vulnerable stranger appeared before us, would we treat him as a demon by default, an experiment, a threat, or a neighbor in need of mercy?
That question is worth asking because it is not really about aliens. It is about us. Strange situations reveal what is already in the heart. Fear can make us cruel, but love can make us brave.
Where E.T. falls short
E.T. is moving, but it is not enough. It offers wonder, love, and longing, but not the fullness of salvation. It shows compassion, but not repentance. It gives a resurrection-shaped moment, but not the Cross and Resurrection as the healing of the world.
The film also leans heavily on feeling. Feeling is not bad, but it cannot carry the whole weight of spiritual life. Orthodox Christianity is not built on emotion alone. It is the life of the Church, received through worship, prayer, fasting, confession, baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, and a long obedience of love.
This is why Christians can appreciate the film without baptizing it into something it is not. We can say, “This story moves me because it touches something true,” while also saying, “The fullness of that truth is found in Christ and His Church.” That is a healthy way to engage culture. It neither rejects every non-Christian story nor confuses every beautiful story with the Gospel.
The danger is not that people will love E.T. too much. The danger is that they will stop at the echo and never seek the voice. Beauty should lead us onward. Wonder should open the door to worship. Compassion should become repentance and communion.
E.T. and the Orthodox imagination
The Orthodox imagination is not afraid of mystery. The Church lives in a world filled with visible and invisible realities. Angels, demons, saints, relics, icons, sacraments, blessing, and spiritual warfare all belong to the Christian understanding of creation. Reality is larger than what can be measured.
That does not mean we accept every strange claim or spiritual experience. The Church is deeply sober. She teaches discernment, obedience, humility, and testing. But she also teaches wonder. Creation is charged with meaning because it comes from God.
E.T. works because it opens a door to wonder without turning wonder into doctrine. It invites the viewer to imagine what love might require when the unknown appears at the door. For Orthodox Christians, that question has real weight. The stranger, the weak, and the suffering person are never merely problems to solve. They are opportunities to become more human before God.
This is why the movie remains powerful. It is not because its theology is complete. It is because it knows that mercy is better than fear, communion is better than isolation, and home is worth longing for. Those are not small truths.
Moving from almost Christian to fully Christian
E.T. can make us feel tenderness for the stranger. It can awaken wonder. It can remind us that love is not possession and that death should not be the end of the story. These are good and beautiful things. But they are still fragments.
The Orthodox Church teaches that the fullness of truth is not an idea hidden inside a movie. It is a Person, Jesus Christ, encountered in the life of the Church. Cultural stories can prepare the heart, but they cannot heal the heart by themselves. They can point, but they cannot save.
So we can watch E.T. with gratitude and discernment. We can see in it a story about mercy, vulnerability, communion, and the longing for home. Then we can let those themes lead us beyond the screen and into prayer, repentance, worship, and the sacramental life of the Church.
If you have a film, song, book, or story you would like to see covered in the Almost Christian series, you can send suggestions to Fr. Stephen at frsteve@savannahorthodox.com. The goal is not to pretend popular media is Orthodox. The goal is to notice the fragments of truth, beauty, and longing that may help us turn more deeply toward the fullness of the faith.
FAQ
Is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial a Christian movie?
No, E.T. is not a Christian movie in the direct sense. It does, however, contain themes that Christians can recognize, such as mercy toward the stranger, sacrificial love, death, life, and the longing for home.
Is E.T. supposed to be a Christ figure?
Some viewers notice Christ-like patterns in E.T., especially his suffering, apparent death, return to life, and departure. Orthodox Christians should avoid forcing the comparison too far and should speak instead of Christ-shaped echoes rather than a direct allegory.
What does Orthodoxy say about aliens?
The Orthodox Church has no single dogmatic statement that answers every possible question about extraterrestrial life. Orthodox Christians should approach the topic with discernment, prayer, humility, and faithfulness to the teaching of the Church.
Why does E.T. still move people spiritually?
The film touches deep human longings for communion, mercy, life beyond death, and a true home. These longings are not the fullness of the Gospel, but they can point toward the deeper hunger of the human person for God.
Can Orthodox Christians learn from non-Christian movies?
Yes, Orthodox Christians can recognize truth, beauty, and moral insight in works that are not explicitly Christian. At the same time, these works remain incomplete apart from the fullness of the Orthodox faith.
