Quoting the Bible from space

Recently, Christian astronaut Victor Glover was reminded of the memorable Christmas Eve reading from Genesis on Apollo 8 in 1968, and he was asked to provide an Easter message from Artemis II. This is the story …

The space race

The Nineteen Sixties was the time of the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Cold War was a clash of ideologies, with rivalry between communism and capitalism played out in space and on Olympic playing fields somewhat than in military conflict. It was also seen by some as a clash between Western Protestantism and atheist Marxism. Except it was not that straightforward: not all of the American astronauts fitted the stereotype of evangelical Christians, and never all of the Russian cosmonauts fitted the stereotype of atheists.

At first, the Soviet Union was ahead within the Space Race. The first man in space to return alive was Yuri Gagarin, an amiable and popular Russian cosmonaut. His rocket left Earth on 12 April 1961, and he entered space on Vostok I. When he landed in Siberia, he had to influence locals that he had come from outer space because they didn’t imagine him. Later, the Americans caught up and overtook the Russians in technological capability, and the Apollo mission landed on the Moon in 1969.

Did you see God?

The story goes that when Yuri Gagarin landed, he was asked if he had seen God in space, and he said something like, “I looked, but I didn’t see God.” When Neil Armstrong was asked the identical query after his return, he replied, “No, but when I had stepped out of my space suit, I might have done.” Well, that was how I heard it once in a sermon, and it made an incredible illustration, contrasting the atheist cosmonaut’s worldview with the Christian American’s worldview. Except it seems that neither was true.

According to a different alternative anecdote, Khrushchev asked Gagarin if he saw God in space. “Of course I’ve seen him,” he said, and Khrushchev replied, “I knew it! But don’t tell anyone else.” This, sadly perhaps, can also be a myth.

Rather, it seems it was Nikita Khrushchev who spoke at a session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in regards to the query of promoting atheism. Khrushchev then set the duty for all Party and Komsomol (Young Communists) organisations to advertise anti-religious propaganda. He spoke in Russian, however the words translate something like: “Why are you clinging to God? Here Gagarin flew into space and didn’t see God.” Sometime later, these words were adapted and falsely attributed to Gagarin himself. Like many Russians, Yuri Gagarin was Russian Orthodox and kept his faith quiet within the midst of a political climate where religion was taboo and the regime officially promoted atheism. Whatever he thought in regards to the words falsely attributed to him, he probably reasoned it was safest to maintain quiet.

Reading the Bible from space

The American Apollo 8 mission was launched into space by the Saturn V rocket just before Christmas, on 21 December 1968. The three American astronauts were Lunar Module Pilot William “Bill” Anders, Command Module Pilot James “Jim” Lovell, and Commander Frank Borman. They became the primary humans to depart Earth’s orbit, the primary to enter the orbit of one other celestial body, and the primary to gaze upon the far side of the Moon.

On Christmas Eve, while orbiting the Moon for the ninth time and approaching the lunar sunrise, they decided to cite the primary ten verses of Genesis from the King James Version. Anders began with, “In the start God created the heaven and the earth … ” Then Lovell continued, and Borman closed with the gathering of waters, ending with, “and God saw that it was good.” This was transmitted continue to exist television. Fewer people had televisions in those days, but it surely was then the most-watched broadcast of all time and was immensely powerful. You can watch it here on YouTube.

Lawsuit

However, not all Americans appreciated it. One of them was Madalyn Murray O’Hair (1919–1995), who was evangelical in her atheism. Five years earlier, in 1963, she had founded the “American Atheists” movement. She had waged a successful campaign to remove prayer and Bible readings from American state schools as a violation of the constitutional separation of Church and State. Now she had a latest campaign. She felt that NASA had endorsed religious activities during their missions, and she or he desired to stop it. She encouraged others who also disagreed to put in writing letters of grievance, and 30,000 letters were received complaining in regards to the reading.

In early 1969, Murray O’Hair filed a lawsuit against NASA on the matter. However, her actions inspired an enormous counter-campaign referred to as “Project Astronaut.” Christian groups and churches rallied their members, and letters were written within the tens of millions to NASA and the astronauts themselves, supporting the astronauts as a matter of spiritual freedom.

Stamp

On 5 May 1969, the United States Postal Service (USPS) issued a six-cent postage stamp to commemorate the Apollo 9 mission. USPS was not troubled by the lawsuit against NASA. The stamp featured the famous photograph of the Earthrise, but over the blackness of space between the Moon’s surface and the rising Earth, the stamp has the words “In the start God … ” directly quoting the Bible and recalling the reading from Genesis. These stamps at the moment are wanted by collectors.

The Moon landing

The Apollo 11 mission launched on 16 July 1969 and landed on the Moon on 20 July 1969. Neil Armstrong stepped out first and said, “That’s one small step for a person, one giant leap for mankind.” He didn’t say anything religious, but in a 1969 CBS interview, Armstrong said that he was “actually not an atheist.” By contrast, his colleague Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin was a devout Christian and an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church in Texas, referred to as “the Church of the Astronauts.”

At NASA, there was nervousness after Murray O’Hair’s lawsuit, and so they desired to avoid broadcasting religious messages. However, Aldrin’s pastor, Rev Dean Woodruff, helped him plan some private readings. Aldrin secretly took with him a small piece of card measuring just three by five inches, on which he wrote the words of John 15:5 and Psalm 8:3–4.

When he was on the Moon, he radioed to Earth: “Houston, that is Eagle, the LM Pilot speaking. I would really like to request just a few moments of silence. Over. I would really like to ask everybody listening in, wherever and whomever they might be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to provide thanks in their very own individual way. My way shall be by partaking of the weather of Holy Communion.”

He had taken with him a wafer in a plastic packet and wine in a small silver chalice from his church, which his minister had pre-consecrated. Aldrin then took communion and silently read to himself Jesus’s words from John 15:5: “I’m the vine; you might be the branches. Whoever stays in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you may do nothing without me.” He was the primary and only person to carry a spiritual ceremony on the Moon. His fellow astronaut, Neil Armstrong, watched but didn’t partake. NASA avoided broadcasting it.

However, on the return trip, on the evening before splashdown, there was a live broadcast from the capsule, and Aldrin took the chance to read Psalm 8:3–4 from the King James Version: “When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the Moon and the celebrities, which Thou hast ordained, what’s man that Thou art mindful of him?” NASA was unprepared, and it went live longer than. The splashdown occurred on 24 July 1969 within the Pacific Ocean.

The events are recalled in his book Return to Earth (1973) and in Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon by Buzz Aldrin and Ken Abraham (2009). In 2007, his small 3″ by 5″ card with the Bible verses was auctioned for $179,250.

Change of attitudes

On 1 December 1969, Murray O’Hair’s lawsuit against NASA was dismissed on the grounds that the broadcasts were voluntary, not organised by NASA, viewers could simply select whether or not to look at, and no taxpayer funds were spent on the promotion of faith. Murray O’Hair appealed, and her appeal was dismissed in 1970. Ten years later, in 1980, her son William Murray became a Christian and is now a Baptist minister. He told his story in My Life Without God, published by Harvest House in 1982.

After the autumn of communism, many Russian cosmonauts felt freer to precise their faith openly without fear of repercussions. Now it is just not unusual for an Orthodox priest to conduct a blessing service in front of the Soyuz FG rocket on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. In 2014, to mark the 700th anniversary of St. Sergius of Radonezh, Russian cosmonauts posed for a photograph on the International Space Station with their Orthodox icons.

So now Americans and Russians are free to precise their faith within the context of space travel.

Artemis II

All that is the backstory to recent events when Artemis II went around the Moon in probably the most recent NASA mission. The pilot, Victor Glover, is a Christian who attends a Southeast Church of Christ in Friendswood, Texas, and took a Bible with him on the trip. On Saturday, 4 April, as Artemis II’s Orion capsule sped toward the Moon, a journalist reminded him of the famous Bible reading from space at Christmas in 1968 and asked if he wished to share any Easter thoughts.

He was asked: “Apollo 8 had a memorable Christmas Eve reading from Genesis. Do you have got a message you desire to to share from space about Easter Sunday?”

Victor Glover then gave an inspirational reply, openly reflecting his faith. He said: “You know, I don’t have anything prepared. I’m glad you brought that up, though. I feel these observances are essential. And as we’re up to now from Earth and searching back at the fantastic thing about creation, I feel, for me, one in all the really essential personal perspectives that I even have up here is that I can really see Earth as one thing.

“And, , after I read the Bible and I take a look at all the amazing things that were done for us … you have got this amazing place, this spaceship. You guys are talking to us because we’re in a spaceship really removed from Earth, but you’re on a spaceship called Earth that was created to provide us a spot to live within the universe, within the cosmos.

“I feel possibly the gap we’re from you makes you’re thinking that what we’re doing is special, but we’re the identical distance from you. And I’m attempting to inform you – just trust me – you might be special in all of this emptiness. This is an entire bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.

“I feel as we go into Easter Sunday, enthusiastic about all of the cultures all all over the world – whether you rejoice it or not, whether you suspect in God or not – that is a possibility for us to recollect where we’re, who we’re, and that we’re the identical thing, and that we’ve got to get through this together.”

You can watch it here.