DAVID’S QUESTION:

Do you know if it’s true Christian Communion was celebrated during the first moon landing?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Yes, though this was top-secret at the time.

Something about such momentous events makes mere mortals reach for transcendent themes. For example, media coverage of last month’s 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing featured President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous radio address leading the nation and world in a prayer that God would bless the invading Allied soldiers in the “struggle to preserve our republic, our religion and our civilization.”

Astronaut “Buzz” Aldrin performed the Christian sacrament on the moon in 1969, and revealed this in a 1970 article for the inspirational magazine Guideposts that was picked up by other media (full text here). The Communion is mentioned in the official history posted online by NASA.

At the time of the moon adventure, Aldrin was a lay elder of the Webster (Texas) Presbyterian Church and discussed ways to mark such an historic event with his pastor, Dean Woodruff. Aldrin raised the idea of Communion and Woodruff checked with Presbyterian headquarters, which said under those unusual circumstances it was proper for a solitary layman to serve himself elements that had been consecrated previously. (While Catholicism allows priests to celebrate Mass by themselves, Protestants only perform sacraments or ordinances in group worship.)

Two Sundays before liftoff, Aldrin received Communion in a private worship service. Woodruff gave him a second bit of the bread and a tiny silver chalice containing some of the wine, which he included with the personal items the astronauts were allowed to take into space.

After the Eagle landed on the moon, Aldrin asked mission control for brief radio silence. As Commander Neil Armstrong looked on, Aldrin read New Testament words of Jesus he had scrawled on a bit of paper:

Was Holy Communion really celebrated on the moon?

DAVID ASKS:

Do you know if it’s true Christian Communion was celebrated during the first moon landing?

THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS:

Yes. And that Apollo 11 Communion followed a related event on Christmas Eve of 1968 during Apollo 8′s first manned flight to the moon. The earlier flight didn’t attempt a lunar landing but the astronauts transmitted a breathtaking live telecast of moon photographs while in orbit.

Then William Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman took turns reading the familiar account of God’s creation of the universe and planet Earth from Genesis 1:1-10 in the august King James translation. Commander Borman concluded, “Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you -- all of you on the good Earth,” with the last phrase referring back to Scripture’s verse 10. Last year, the 85-year-old Lovell joined a Yuletide re-enactment of the lunar Bible reading at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

There’s something about such momentous events that makes mere mortals reach for transcendent themes. Think FDR’s D-day radio prayer for God to bless the invading Allied soldiers in their “struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization.”