To Touch the Face of God: The Sacred, the Profane, and the American Space Program, 1957—1975 by Kendrick Oliver

To Touch the Face of God examines the relationship between religion (mostly Christianity) and the space program. Oliver’s chosen era of study is bookended by Sputnik in 1957 and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975—the final US spaceflight until the first shuttle mission in 1981.

In particular, Oliver looks at two aspects of the space-religion connection. First, he investigates the religiosity found within NASA’s culture and employees, including the astronauts themselves. Within the essentially secular NASA, religious beliefs were varied. Some were fairly fervent. Buzz Aldrin privately celebrated communion on the surface of the Moon. Wernher von Braun, converting to Christianity after his extraction from postwar Germany by the US government, repeatedly invoked the need for God’s blessing for the lunar enterprise to succeed: “The sooner we turn our eyes to Him for help, the better it will be, for ourselves, as well as for the objectives we are pursuing.” Conversely, NASA bureaucrats sometimes ignored attempts to insert religion into the space program. In a fascinating passage, Oliver reveals that President Richard Nixon attempted to get “Under God” added to the plaque Apollo 11 would deposit on the Moon. NASA’s press office didn’t follow up on this, figuring that in the busy run-up to the mission, they could say they simply forgot.

Some of the most interesting material on astronaut religiosity comes in the discussion of Apollo 14’s Dr. Edgar Mitchell, whose story has always fascinated me. Mitchell, an extremely intelligent man with a doctorate from MIT, took a deep interest in metaphysics, parapsychology, and other pseudoscientific pursuits. Before his mission, he even arranged to have an assistant back on Earth participate with him in a test of remote telepathic communication through space. Oliver frames this interest in a religious/spiritual context, showing Mitchell as investigating these topics in an attempt to grapple with the “epiphany” of “universal connectedness” he felt in space.

For me, Mitchell has always exemplified the incredible ability human beings have to cordon off different parts of their experience. While on the one hand a person can take an evidence-based view in their practical, everyday existence (relying, say, on the fact that their car will start in the morning or that their rocket will really fly them to the moon), they can simultaneously believe deeply in pseudoscience. In other words, the question of secular versus religious isn’t necessarily about secular people versus religious people—it’s apparent that these different motivations can coexist within individuals.

Second, Oliver discusses the attitudes of religious Americans toward the space program. As with the religion-in-NASA question, the results are far from black-and-white. Oliver places these attitudes in the context of the wider relationships between religion and science/technology. All in all, he concludes that religious Americans were largely ambivalent toward the quest for the Moon. Some believed space travel would lead to new theological revelations or evangelical opportunities, while others thought the secular and governmental nature of the endeavor made it less friendly to religious appropriation.

However, the space-related interests of large numbers of religious Americans were occasionally animated by specific events, most notably the reactions to the reading from the Book of Genesis during the Apollo 8 mission. When word got out that a prominent atheist was protesting the use of religious language during a taxpayer-funded mission, thousands and eventually millions of US citizens participated in letter-writing and petition-signing campaigns to defend the freedom of astronauts to speak as they chose on religious topics. Even this response, though, does not seem to be centered around a particular reaction to space travel. Oliver contextualizes the campaign, discussing similar efforts around the same time involving prayer in schools and on public television. Many religious individuals, it seems, were just looking for an excuse to express these views.

I found the account of the Apollo 8 Genesis reaction particularly interesting. I had been familiar with American atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s protests about religion in space, but as it turns out, the response to her efforts was dramatically louder and more sustained than her original complaint. As Oliver traces the story, it becomes apparent that religious movements ended up using O’Hair as a bogeyman, spreading rumors that she and/or NASA itself was trying to get any mention of God removed from the public airwaves. Some religious people, remembering their prayer-in-public-schools defeat, took advantage of the public outcry over O’Hair’s space-related activities to mobilize their future PR efforts—apparently with some success. This side of the story was unknown to me, and I found it a fascinating example of the interaction between the “isolated” space program and the wider culture.

Numerous other themes emerge. Oliver touches on the impact of viewing the whole Earth from space, something discussed at length in Robert Poole’s Earthrise. He gets into questions of Christian cosmology, which by the time of the space age had largely dismissed the idea of God literally living in a physical place above the heads of believers. This recalls one of the more colorful early anecdotes of the space program: the reports from early cosmonauts that they had not seen God during their travels.

Oliver’s book is extremely well researched, containing hundreds of detailed endnotes. He has done extensive work in both religious and secular archives. Of particular interest to me was his use of the Apollo literature, and he seems to have done a good job surveying this vast assortment of books. (Regarding the astronaut biographies, he shares my opinion that Michael Collins’ Carrying the Fire is the best of the bunch.) He brings together all this information in a well-written, thoroughly scholarly piece of work. The formal tone here is a big departure from some of the looser self-published Apollo books I’ve read recently, but the rigor is definitely welcome.

Many Apollo books are written by astronauts, NASA employees, knowledgeable space enthusiasts, or journalists. Relatively few that I’ve come across have been fully scholarly approaches to the program. To Touch the Face of God exemplifies this approach, and it’s a wonderful addition to the Apollo library on a topic that relatively few books discuss. I recommend it for those interested in Apollo, but I suspect Oliver’s discussion of space travel in the context wider religious themes will make it a useful text for anyone interested in the religious culture of twentieth-century America.