It is remarkable what you can see if you just look up. From my humble patch of earth here on the North Shore of Boston, I can see the stars ablaze in the northeast night sky, with the belt of Orion hanging on the horizon, recognizable even to the most amateur astronomer.

“They’re real. But I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in Area 51.” With that offhand remark on a widely watched podcast, former president Barack Obama managed to ignite a familiar American firestorm: curiosity, skepticism, and a surge of online speculation about extraterrestrial life.

It would be useful to make clear that I’m not saying that I think that what we mean by angels is extraterrestrial life on some other planet. I wanted to respond to the misconception that Christian theology is incapable of thinking about life beyond Earth because it’s always been “about us.”