Penna Dexter

Author and radio host Eric Metaxes told an important story in his column that appeared in the Wall Street Journal Christmas weekend. He wrote of a Christmas Eve, 48 years ago, when three astronauts spent Christmas Eve inside the Apollo 8 capsule orbiting the moon.

The astronauts did something that should not be surprising, but seems extraordinary to us today. They took turns reading from the first ten verses of the Book of Genesis. Their voices were broadcast worldwide over radio and television. Mr. Metaxes wrote, “….as Jim Lovell, Frank Borman, and Bill Anders looked at the faraway Earth through the small window of the spacecraft, they read the verses: ‘In the beginning, God made the heavens and the Earth.’” And so on.

Seven months later, on July 20, 1969, NASA’s Apollo 11 became the first manned spaceflight to land on the moon. There were two astronauts, the pilot, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Commander Neil Armstrong in the Lunar Module Eagle that touched down on the moon’s surface. Buzz Aldrin planned ahead for the moment, asking himself, as Eric Metaxes described it, “what could one do to mark the first time human beings landed on another heavenly body?”

After asking his pastor, Dean Woodruff in Webster, Texas for an idea, Mr. Aldrin formed his plan to take communion on the moon as a way to thank God for the Earth, for its inhabitants and the ability to build their spacecraft that would actually fly men to the moon. Pastor Woodruff gave Mr. Aldrin a small amount of bread and wine that were later packaged to take into space. Once they landed, Buzz Aldrin said over the radio from the Lunar Module: “This is the LM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever 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.” At that point, he closed off radio communication and read a Bible verse and took communion.

Why didn’t Buzz Aldrin keep the radio broadcast going as he performed this God-honoring act so that the world could take part vicariously? He wanted to. Eric Metaxes wrote: “…at the last minute NASA asked him not to because the agency was in a legal battle with the outspoken atheist Madeleine Murray O’Hair. As it happened she was suing over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis on Christmas Eve.”

Eric Metaxes met Buzz Aldrin about 10 years ago and learned that Mr. Aldrin agreed to NASA’s request only “reluctantly.” He told Eric how significant it was to him that the communion elements were the first food and liquid consumed on the moon. Buzz Aldrin did write about this in Guideposts the following year, but most of us had no clue this happened.

Eric deserves our thanks for telling the story.