Aliens look like...

I just finished reading the Fire Balloons story and it got me thinking. In the story the aliens are floating blue orbs, but when we think about aliens we tend to imagine just a stranger version of us. However it seems entirely possible that if alien life forms do exist they might not resemble humans at all. They may be piles of purple ooze, orange flying squirrels, or invertebrate sea creatures. Appearances aside they may have other significant differences, they could have only 1 sex or three or more sexes, they might not communicate verbally, their family and social structures may be entirely different from ours. If we did encounter aliens who where so completely different from ourselves in appearance and practice that we might even have trouble recognizing them as intelligent beings I think that this would significantly change the way we think about them in the context of religion. I would imagine that it would be significantly harder to work up enthusiasm to convert piles of gelatinous ooze than it would be to convert a aliens with a more humanoid appearance. Ideally the urge to convert would stem from real concern for a beings soul/well being but those feelings are largely dependent on being able to identify with a person, something that might be hard to do if aliens are indeed alien to us in every way.