David Quinn
The Moon landing ultimately glorified God, writes David Quinn
The first man in space was the Russian Yuri Gagarin in 1961. After he returned to Earth he was reportedly asked if he saw God while he was up there. He apparently replied, “I looked and looked and looked but I didn’t see God”, although whether he ever said such a thing is in dispute.
What is not in dispute is that Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet boss at the time, said, “Gagarin flew into space, but didn’t see any god there”. Krushchev was ferociously anti-religious, even by the standards of the Soviet Union.
Whatever Gagarin might have said, and what Khrushchev did say, shows that when men first flew into space, questions of ultimate importance were not far behind. It is hard not to contemplate such things when you are far above the Earth looking down on it and looking at the vastness of space all around you.
When the astronauts of Apollo 8 orbited the Moon on Christmas Eve, 1968, they each took it in turns to read out the opening lines of the Book of Genesis, starting, “in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”. Many of the astronauts were religious men and it was natural for them to express their religious faith in this way.
Atheism
While the Soviet Union proclaimed and promoted atheism, America in the 1960s was still overwhelmingly Christian and dominated by the so-called WASPs, or ‘White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants’.
But atheism was on the rise in America, too. This was an era during which the US Supreme Court was ever more radically separating Church and State.
When the men of Apollo 8 returned to Earth, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of American Atheists, sued NASA, citing a violation of Article 1 of the US Constitution which says that the Government should not establish any religion. She lost, but maybe only because the Supreme Court in the end decided that it had no jurisdiction in space.
This weekend we are marking the 50th anniversary of the momentous landing on the Moon, an absolutely tremendous feat which gripped the imagination of anyone able to follow it. I was a small boy at the time, but I still remember the event and the huge excitement it generated. Everyone in my class wanted to grow up to be an astronaut.
When the astronauts of Apollo 8 orbited the Moon on Christmas Eve, 1968, they each took it in turns to read out the opening lines of the Book of Genesis”
There seemed no greater, more heroic thing a boy could grow up to be. Of course, women have also been astronauts, and cosmonauts (the Soviet version). The first woman in space was, in fact, a cosmonaut, one Valentina Tereshkova back in 1963. She is still alive aged 82. The first American woman, Sally Ride, did not go into space until 1983, 20 years later.
Famously, Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the Moon, followed by Buzz Aldrin (now aged 89). Aldrin, a Presbyterian, took Communion while on the Moon, with the permission of his pastor.
This was not widely publicised at the time because of the lawsuit against NASA. He also read a passage from the Bible, but not live on-air.
Pope St Paul VI met the Apollo 11 astronauts in October 1969, only three months after the Moon landing.
All the way along, he took an extremely keen interest in the event. For example, he sent NASA a message to be left on the Moon by the astronauts. It was the text of Psalm 8, which begins: “O Lord, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth! I will sing of your majesty above the heavens with the mouths of babes and infants.”
A few minutes after the landing occurred, he issued a message. The opening lines read: “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to men of good will!
“Christ, when coming among us from the abysses of the divinity, made this blessed voice resound in the firmament.
“Today We, his humble representative, echo and repeat it as a festive hymn on the part of our whole terrestrial globe, no longer the insurmountable boundary of human existence but the open threshold to the wide expanse of boundless space and new destinies.”
He praised “the architects of this great space undertaking!”
To the astronauts he said: “Honour, greetings and blessing to you, conquerors of the Moon, pale lamp of our nights and our dreams!”
Pope Paul was in the observatory at Castel Gandolfo as the landing took place, watching the Sea of Tranquility, where the astronauts landed, through the telescope there.
When you contemplate the universe it takes a special effort not to also contemplate whether there is a Creator behind it all”
If the first Moon landing happened today and not 50 years ago, would the event still be viewed by so many people through the eyes of religion, as it were? Probably not, because our part of the world (meaning the Western world) is much more secular than it was.
Still, when you contemplate the universe it takes a special effort not to also contemplate whether there is a Creator behind it all. Even Nikita Khrushchev did, even if only to deny the existence of one. But the question still occurred to him because it is so hard for it not to.
As the first landing on the Moon is remembered this weekend the coverage will probably leave out the religious faith of many of the astronauts and the excitement of religious leaders like Pope Paul, never mind the ultimate questions that naturally come to mind when we think of space.
But it is perfectly acceptable to view the event as one that honoured and glorified God, even if that was not its direct intention. This is certainly how Pope Paul saw it.