To Touch the Face of God: The Sacred, the Profane, and the American Space Program, 1957-1975

Abstract

“Son, we are about to break the surly bonds of gravity, and punch the face of God.” So declares nuclear reactor safety inspector and amateur space enthusiast Homer J. Simpson in a 2001 episode of the television cartoon series The Simpsons, right before he and his winsome offspring Bart accidentally launch a rocket into a church, setting it ablaze. The notion that piercing the heavens with flaming, pointy metal objects might have spiritual implications is a subject several historians have examined, especially James Gilbert in his excellent Redeeming Culture: American Religion in an Age of Science (1998). Space-flight historians know that there has always been a healthy dollop of messianic fervor (and more than a little blasphemy) in space flight; fortunately, this subject, encountered fleetingly in several works, has finally received a more thorough investigation in Kendrick Oliver's thoughtful To Touch the Face of God. Surveying several decades of journalism, theological tracts, archival documents, and oral histories, Oliver examines carefully what few in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration were comfortable addressing in the 1960s: whether there was a place for God in the space race. Oliver is careful not to read too much into his sources, avoiding the temptation to ascribe meaning to careless words uttered by astronauts in moments of public relations. Rather, after surveying scholarship by David F. Noble and Robert Poole, among others, Oliver breaks open the traditional narrative of space exploration—secular men in their flying machines—to ferret out the theology embedded in the astronauts' “monastic” work (p. 5).