When I raised the possibility of extraterrestrial life to Reggie Blount, a pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, he shared a verse from the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians: “We look through a mirror dimly.” For Blount and many Christians, the full reality of God’s creation will be forever obscure to human beings, like opaque glass. As Blount sees it, in a universe containing a potentially infinite number of galaxies, aliens may very well exist. “But,” he emphasizes, “I don’t think other intelligent beings would change our relationship to God.”

Blount’s perspective aligns with most of the clergy with whom I spoke. For the planet’s 4 billion monotheists, there are two planes of existence: one constituting material reality and another inhabited by a loving God who exists outside (and yet also paradoxically within) time and space. For Christians, Muslims, and Jews, UFOs and even aliens are fascinating, to be sure, but they needn’t represent a major disruption to a metaphysical system in which the fundamental dichotomy between God and the world is already and permanently decided. The universe may contain undiscovered, extravagant life forms, but the accompanying theological challenges—about the breadth of creation, the possibility of conversion, the moral status of nonhumans—need not threaten a monotheistic picture that’s always been multidimensional. Pope Francis, for his part, has said he would baptize an extraterrestrial who asked for it: “Who are we to close doors?”

Jimmy Akin, an expert on Catholic theology and the host of Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World, a podcast that examines “fascinating phenomena in the physical world” from a Catholic perspective, said that “if there are intelligent aliens, they are simply other creatures of God. We should learn about them and their place in God’s plan.” He continued, “We know that God has created other intelligent creatures: the angels—in fact several different kinds of angels.” As for UFOs, Akin echoed what was a familiar refrain in my conversations with religious thinkers “I’m open to wherever the evidence goes.”