20 July, so: 54th anniversary of Buzz Aldrin taking Holy Communion on the moon, although he didn’t make a big deal of it because the leader of American Atheists had sued NASA after the Apollo 8 crew had read from Genesis while in orbit.
Madalyn Murray O’Hair had won a case against mandatory school prayer and bible recitation in American schools, and said in 1968 that astronauts practising religion “around and about the moon” was a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.
Aldrin, though, attended Webster Presbyterian Church on the outskirts of Houston, and wanted “something I could do on the moon, some appropriate symbolic act regarding the universality of seeking” (as he wrote in Magnificent Desolation in 2009).
He discussed the idea of communion with flight crew director Deke Slayton, who said “have your communion, but keep your comments … general.” So he read a passage from the Bible silently, and “poured a thimbleful of wine from a sealed plastic container into a small chalice…
He did as requested and kept his comments general
I would like to request a few moments of silence… and to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way.
…and wrote in 2009:
Perhaps, if I had it to do over again, I would not choose to celebrate communion. Although it was a deeply meaningful experience for me, it was a Christian sacrament, and we had come to the moon in the name of all mankind — be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists. But at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the enormity of the Apollo 11 experience than by giving thanks to God. It was my hope that people would keep the whole event in their minds and see, beyond minor details and technical achievements, a deeper meaning a challenge, and the human need to explore whatever is above us, below us, or out there.
There are other accounts of the event on Snopes:
…the Grauniad
…and Aldrin’s own account in a 1970 magazine (source for that quote about how “the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup”).
…and this was not the only claim that religion made on the Earth’s satellite. Giving some credence to O’Hair’s point about gods encoraching on space, William Donald Borders was one of three men of the cloth to claim to be Bishop of the Moon. He was in Rome in 1969, and…
During his visit, Bishop Borders mentioned to the Pope that he was the “bishop of the Moon”. Responding to the Pontiff’s perplexed reaction he explained that according to the 1917 Code of Canon Law (in effect at that time) any newly discovered territory was placed under the jurisdiction of the diocese from which the expedition which discovered that territory left. Since Cape Canaveral, launching site for the Apollo moon missions was in Brevard County and part of the Diocese of Orlando, then in addition to being bishop of 13 counties he was also bishop of the moon!
Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York, “vicar of the Military Ordinate with a base at Cape Kennedy” claimed jurisdiction, too — as did Archbishop Coleman Carroll of Miami on the somewhat flimsier grounds that “the moon is always over Miami”.
Still, one of them had responsibility for the Holy See of Tranquillity, #amirite?
(I stole that joke from someone on Twitter, and despite extensive searches cannot find out who. I apologise for that. Not for the joke, though.)
Anyway, after the communion and a rest, he and Armstrong did all that making history stuff, and then Aldrin did something else that was unprecedented – becoming the first man to piss on the moon:
