On April 3, 1971, the CBS radio show The World of Religion hosted by Douglas Edwards aired the latest episode two months after the close of the Apollo 14 mission. Covering the latest religious news of his time, Edwards introduced his listeners to Reverend John Stout. What caught Edward’s attention about this Presbyterian minister from a suburb of Houston was the Reverend’s “mission to have a Bible taken to the moon” through the work of his Apollo Prayer League (APL), a network of prayer groups that sought to use the power of prayer to support the success of the US space program.^[1]

American astronauts had previously taken personal books to the Moon; Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 brought two Bibles aboard to the flight to the moon. However, these Bibles did not reach the lunar surface and were privately stowed by the astronauts themselves.^[2] It was Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin who carried the first book to the lunar surface – a miniature copy of rocket pioneer Robert Hutchings Goddard’s autobiography – in his pocket.^[3] Stout envisioned a collaborative effort between astronauts, NASA staff, and the evangelical Christian community to send the Bible to the moon during the Apollo missions, intending for his Moon Bible to serve the whole of humanity.^[4] By partnering with the astronauts to store the Bibles in the astronauts’ personal belongings, Stout and the APL dodged the contentious problem of the separation of faith and state. This attempt to create a “lunar Bible” through the journey of the Bible to the moon and back to Earth during the Apollo 14 mission was recounted by Stout during his interview with Edwards. Reflecting on this fascinating experience, Edwards asked his guest what he hoped to do with the lunar Bibles. Stout replied with the following answer:

“I do not know exactly what will become of the first lunar Bible - the one that actually made it. I am hoping that people will write to me in LaPorte and tell me what they think should be done with the Bible. We really do not know what will become of this Bible. I hope that I do receive some suggestions about what to do with it.^[5]

Despite leading this project, Stout drew a blank as to what to do with his newly acquired Lunar Bibles and invited his community at home for ideas. Stout’s vague answers during his interview invite many questions about this complicated and bizarre endeavor. Overtime, the effort to create a lunar Bible was expanded through Stout’s effort by sending multiple copies of the Bible to the moon. Instead of sending a singular copy of the Bible on each of the Apollo missions, the APL executed the production of hundreds of microfilm bibles to be sent to the moon. A total of 1,028 Bibles were dispatched to space as part of the Apollo 12, 13, and 14 missions thanks to the APL's Lunar Bible Project. However, the lunar Bibles themselves were uniquely designed; they were the size of postage-stamps, unreadable to the naked eye, yet could be produced and distributed easily due its compact form, making them a suitable size for the expensive constraints of space travel. Despite losing their readable functionality as religious tools, the lunar Bibles also became transcendent symbols of the Christian faith for the members of the APL, carrying the gravitas of the religion to space and conveyed the triumph of Christianity to the universe as the Christian faith had successfully reached the closest celestial body to humanity first.

This paper uncovers the religious and political motives behind John Stout by analyzing his leadership of the Aerospace Ministries, a religious nonprofit that operated within an existing network of NASA employees and included the APL.^[6] This paper will follow Stout’s life up until the 1970s and place particular focus on his religious and scientific activities during the Cold War. I will feature episodes of his life that lead Stout to connect his interests in space with his Evangelical Christian views during the Space Race, from his research on Sputnik 1 at the University of Lavras to the Lunar Bible Project at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center. To contextualize Stout’s experiences, I will examine the Christian cosmology of the twentieth century and identify the intersection between spaceflight and religion as understood by modern scholars such as Kendrick Oliver, David F. Noble, and Roger D. Launius. Next, I will investigate how John Stout’s religious nonprofit Aerospace Ministries reflected the development of American evangelical Christian networks during the Cold War as US foreign policy goals aligned with evangelical work. The final portion of this paper will focus on the APL Lunar Bibles, and will also use ideas from Kristina Myrvold and Dorina Miller Parmenter’s work on miniature texts to understand the ritual power surrounding the microfilm lunar Bibles.

Primary sources include newspapers and magazine articles from both secular and religious sources to gauge the public’s reactions to the APL’s achievement of landing the microform bibles on the moon. Additionally, I will use personal correspondence and APL newsletters from John Stout to understand how he connected the lunar Bibles to the American space enterprise. As conflicting national ideologies arose during the Cold War, the lunar Bible project represented a mission to extend evangelical Christian influence to the contest over the final frontier of space. By uncovering Stout’s religious and political motives behind Aerospace Ministries, I demonstrate how they conceptualized and proselytized idealized Christian values of Evangelical Americans during the Cold War, and how the APL used its miniature Bibles as symbolic extensions of the Christian faith during the era of space exploration. Moreover, by revealing how John Stout set up a religious organization within one of the biggest government agencies, this research provides a fresh viewpoint on the growth of American Evangelical Christian networks during the height of the Space Race.

John Stout

How do we best understand the motives of the Apollo Prayer League and Lunar Bible Project? We must first turn to the founder himself, a man who lived an illustrious life filled with prominent encounters and relationships. Born in Handley, Texas, John Maxwell Stout (1922-2016) had a lifelong passion for science and his Christian faith.^[7] During his lifetime, Stout traveled the world for his missionary work with his wife Helen and earned six degrees in academic fields spanning from theology to engineering.^[8] Stout excelled in academics and athletics, concurrently pursuing a dual degree in chemical and petroleum engineering and playing football for Texas A&M,^[9] from where he received his diploma in 1947.^[10]

Beginning in 1943, Stout served in the US Army’s Pacific campaign of World War II.^[11] His involvement in the Japanese campaign was a pivotal moment in Stout’s spiritual journey. Stout experienced his missionary calling during the war effort, becoming the replacement unit chaplain for the artillery battalion in Hakata.^[12] Raised by a devout Southern Baptist family in an ultraconversative Texan community, the chaplaincy role felt natural to Stout. But tragedy struck on the warfront: after being injured by an explosive shell, medics informed him that his vertebrae would be fused together within ten years, likely crippling Stout for life. The news did not deter Stout: instead, it invigorated Stout’s drive for ministry. While discussing how to spend the remaining decade of his life, Stout stated that he would “rather spend it in service to God.”^[13] As a result, he directed his estimated remaining decade of physical mobility to missionary work with his wife Helen.

In 1949, the Stouts enrolled in the missionary training program at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary to prepare prior to their mission assignment in China.^[14] It was during this time that Stout converted to Presbyterianism, feeling that his own beliefs did not lend themselves to the rigid fundamentalism that Baptist Christians supported.^[15] Following a change in travel plans and interim pastor training at Montreat College in North Carolina, the Stouts were sent to Brazil as educational missionaries for their first assignment.^[16]

The Stouts ran four primary schools, but their responsibilities quickly expanded to include a hospital, a clinic, three churches, and an indigenous orphanage in the Amazon rainforest region of Mato Grosso, Brazil.^[17] While still involved in mission work, Stout taught at the University of Lavras as the professor of the Analytical Chemistry and Engineering Design department.^[18] His tenure as a teacher of both religion and science was concurrent with his belief, as he saw science and religion as tools to understand the world created by the Christian God.^[19] Miraculously, his health improved significantly during his missionary work, leading to Stout living the rest of his life uncrippled.^[20]

Sputnik and the Space Race

The couple returned to Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary so that John Stout could pursue theological studies in 1955. As the Cold War and its Space Race unfolded, the Stouts met then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and Reverend James I. McCord, future president of Princeton Theological Seminary.^[21] Following the conclusion of World War II, the two superpowers faced rising tensions over global security concerns after the Soviet Union achieved nuclear capability in the mid-twentieth century. The Space Race created an arena where the capitalist US and communist USSR demonstrated their technological prowess without war or mutually assured destruction by establishing superiority in space technology and exploration.

Johnson bonded with Stout over a mutual interest in space and wanted to further the US government’s space program.^[22] Johnson was invested in the US’s developing space technology and fascinated by Stout’s insights into Brazil’s capability for satellite observation, leading him to place Stout in contact with the American Society of Professional Photographers as Brazil would be able to observe possible Soviet satellite activity.^[23] This was a fortuitous encounter: shortly after Johnson informed Stout of the coordinates of the first Soviet satellite launch, Stout captured the first photograph of Sputnik 1 on October 4th, 1957 at 7:34 pm using his jerry-rigged equipment in Lavras.^[24]

The success of Sputnik quickly disrupted national confidence: the American failure to launch the first artificial satellite added to existing Cold War tensions as the US had lagged behind the Soviets in missile research and development in the 1950s.^[25] The incident fueled doubts in the US’s technological superiority following the Second World War, and heightened American fear of the Soviet Union. First achievements in space were intensively covered by both the media and government propaganda to showcase the power of each superpower to their shared international audience. US and Soviet national identities and ideologies were accentuated by their respective technological achievements and shortcomings. The Soviet Union derived ideological capital from its space program as it confirmed Soviet political, economic, technological and even spiritual supremacy through its achievements in space.^[26] For the Soviets, space achievements proved the superiority of socialism, science and atheism.^[27] Historian Asif A. Siddiqi noted how the Soviet Union’s initial wave of space milestones in the 1950s and 1960s led to the US’s “crisis of confidence” that threatened American national identity.^[28]

Evangelicalism During the Cold War

The Space Race carried the religious undertones of the Cold War: while space exploration provided proof that God did not exist for Soviet atheists who “stormed the heavens,” it intersected with Christian theological conceptions of the domain of God for many American Christians.^[29] From its beginnings, the Soviet Union led a campaign of religious destruction that discredited religion and offered an alternative belief system of “scientific atheism” that followed the Soviet’s space exploration program.^[30] Soviet ideology envisioned an enlightened world freed from “the darkness of religion by lifting the veil from the cosmos with the light of science.”^[31] On the other hand, the US experienced the greatest period of religious growth in the early Cold War. Due to postwar religious revivals such as the neo-Evangelical movement, many Americans identified the nation’s ties to the Christian faith as a spiritual foundation and legacy.^[32] In the decades after World War II, federal aid for religious organizations expanded greatly and resulted in bureaucratic and financial ties between church and state.^[33] Space also generated theological discourse for Christian America, as Christians became curious about the spiritual, moral, and ethical implications of exploring the universe. A 1958 Christianity Today article that asked twenty-five leading Protestant theologians and philosophers about the religious assessment of lunar exploration revealed that the majority did not perceive the Moon shot as harmful to the Christian faith, and some even supported the project as a glorification of God’s creation.^[34]

For many lay Christians, space and its celestial bodies symbolized the heavens as described by pagan conceptions of the universe and medieval Christian cosmology. Kendrick Oliver reflects on the evolution of Christian cosmography from before the Copernican revolution to the twentieth-century space age. Oliver notes how medieval Christian theology regarded God as a figure from above lending to a spacial conception of heaven as a realm above Earth in the skies, weakened by the increasingly larger universe revealed by astrological advances in the scientific revolution.^[35] By the early nineteenth century, theologians replaced the medieval conceptions of God and heaven with one that emphasized the immanence of God. This replaced the language of height with that of depth, shifting the language from a God “up and out there” to a God that is inherently present in the world.^[36] Despite this shift in theological thought, the majority of laity and clergy in the mid-nineteenth century onwards viewed God “upstairs.”^[37] David F. Noble comments on the effect of religious cosmology on the conceptions of spaceflight, as space technology allowed for an ascent back towards heaven that recovers the divinity that humanity lost in its Fall from Eden.^[38] Roger D. Launius goes even further, characterizing spaceflight as a religion itself with its deeply religious qualities and explaining how human space exploration captured the American public.^[39]

American exceptionalism derived power from scientific and technological advancements and its religious beliefs; its failure to compete against the more recently modernized Soviet Union was a source of national embarrassment.^[40] As a result, the US prioritized its investment in NASA and nationalist narratives about its space program to project a strong American identity at home and abroad. During President John F. Kennedy’s administration, the US ambitiously set a goal that would set the record straight against the Soviet Union. In his speech informing the public details about his goal to place a man on the moon before the end of the decade, Kennedy envisioned America as the leader in the emerging era of space exploration by 1970.^[41] In light of the Soviet Union’s continual victories, Kennedy’s “Moon shot” was an opportunity to show American scientific, technological, and ideological power to a global audience against the Soviet Union. The US, bastioned by its ideals of democracy, capitalism, and freedom, desired global praise and triumph over the Soviet Union once and for all.

As the worldview of good and evil emerged during the Cold War, evangelicals especially identified Christianity as a weapon against communism; they spiritualized the US as a “defender of the Free World” with America’s religious destiny and perceived cultural foundation as a Christian nation.^[42] In particular, the evangelical “born-again” experience connected every personal conversion to Cold War patriotism, as each individual conversion was extended to a growing struggle against the moral wrongs of communism.^[43] Reverend Stout was not unaffected by the Cold War tensions. The wartime message – that the moral character of people provided strength against the crisis of totalitarianism – carried into post-war rhetoric as religious belief combined with American nationalism.^[44]An evangelical missionary like Stout saw religious belief and renewed spiritual commitment as signs of allegiance to the moral integrity of the US’s social and political structures. Concerned about the “increased penetration of Communists into every phase of society,” Stout preached about the spiritual and moral threat of Communism to audiences in Brazil and carried this view with his ministry in the US.^[45] The lunar missions thus presented another opportunity for evangelical Christian America to rise above the spiritually bankrupt Soviet Union for Stout.

Stout’s Employment and Chaplaincy at MSC

After his time in Brazil and acquiring a master’s in chemical engineering at the University of Texas, John Stout switched gears to the government space program.^[46] He first worked as a Pan American Airways Guided Missile Division systems engineer at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to design a tracking system for the components and vendors for the Gemini rockets.^[47] Following his work at Cape Canaveral, Stout was hired as a documentation engineer by NASA subcontractor International Telephone and Telegraph (IT&T) to optimize the data organization of the Apollo project.^[48] Stout agreed to take the position in 1965 only if he could also serve as an unofficial chaplain at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, Texas.^[49] Programming for NASA was difficult to manage: to quote Stout, “there were programs, and programs within programs,” born from a hodgepodge of different programming languages used by different employees in the Apollo program.^[50] Though challenging, Stout standardized data management and programming techniques so his team could track the components of the Apollo command module across different teams within NASA.

At the same time, Stout founded Aerospace Ministries, a service-type nonprofit that began as a group of thirteen volunteer ministers in NASA that organized diverse ministries within the government agency.^[51] It received no grants or funds from NASA and relied on contributions from individuals and churches.^[52] This structure reflected evangelicalism’s traditional separationist identity in the early Cold War. Traditionally, evangelicals were distrustful of ties between church and state and civil religion and insisted on separationism and limited government.^[53] After World War II, evangelicalism had a political awakening as US defense needs aligned with the religious needs of the growing movement. Evangelical mission work aligned with US foreign policy goals, and evangelical nonprofits received monetary and bureaucratic support from the government to advance evangelizing efforts abroad. These included food distribution, founding religious educational institutions, and church building on military sites.^[54] Similarly, Aerospace Ministries depended on an existing government network for its programming which spanned from organizing local and international disaster relief efforts to fostering the study of Christian cosmology amongst members of the NASA community. However, the organization did not directly receive government funding, keeping true to its traditional evangelical roots supporting separationism.^[55] Stout ensured that his chaplains kept appropriate distance between their duties at NASA and their religious work, and stressed nondenominational service work for NASA members involved in the ministry.^[56]

Because NASA was a federal agency, it could not be openly religious. Nevertheless, the religious views of its members cultivated a sense of purpose amongst NASA employees. As the majority of the agency’s facilities were located in the American South, many NASA employees were embedded in the region’s Christian communities which were predominantly Southern Baptist. Local churches often provided entry points into social networks for NASA employees and their families that relocated to areas close to the NASA centers. Ministers were often closely associated with NASA administrators and astronauts and were attuned to the spiritual needs of their congregants.^[57] Church leaders regularly served as confidants, hearing the existential and spiritual concerns of their NASA-affiliated congregants. As a chaplain and information scientist of the Manned Spacecraft Center, Stout had a better understanding of the challenges that employees at NASA faced during the Apollo program compared to the local reverend in Houston.^[58] Through Aerospace Ministries, Stout reached a network of Christian believers at the Center, leaning on his spiritual and scientific experiences to serve as a trusted confidant for the NASA employees, especially the astronauts who trained at the Manned Spacecraft Center.

Astronauts, explorers of the final frontier, became national heroes and symbols of the space program, publicized and celebrated frequently. The press cast the Project Mercury astronauts as family-oriented and “brave, God-fearing, patriotic individuals,” another iteration of the All-American man and Christian father for the American public to consume in the media.^[59] During the height of the Cold War, the American astronaut directly contrasted the godlessness of their Soviet counterparts; after cosmonaut Gherman Titov returned from space in 1962, he announced that he saw “no God or angels” during his seventeen orbits of the earth and affirmed his belief in the strength, possibilities, and reason of man.^[60] Fitting the heroic image was an exhausting task for the astronauts, and the media’s demanding attention on these American heroes invaded their privacy. The astronauts were constantly badgered by the questions about their personal lives, as the public wanted to confirm that these men truly embodied the American national spirit in a world threatened by communism.^[61] Facing these societal pressures, the astronauts of the Apollo program could not openly share their fears to people who were so distant from the ambitious task of going to the moon and back. Stout realized that the astronauts “kept things from their pastors that they didn’t want them to know because NASA was trying to keep them as heroes.”^[62] Stout’s chaplain role for NASA offered an alternative resource for the astronauts to discuss their anxieties compared to individuals who were available outside of the space agency and likely would not understand the professional and personal concerns emerging from their time at NASA.

Ed White and the Apollo 1 Accident

It was through this spiritual role that Stout befriended astronaut Edward “Ed” White, a devout Methodist who believed his time in space brought him closer to God.^[63] White conversed frequently with Stout about the risks and enormity of his role as an astronaut. Stout and White shared the belief that the success of spaceflight, especially a lunar landing, was reliant on God. White believed that his time in space served as a spiritual awakening, a sentiment also shared by other astronauts such as John Glenn^[64] and Edgar Mitchell.^[65] While achieving America’s first spacewalk, White carried the first known religious symbols into space–a gold crucifix, a St. Christopher’s medal, and a Star of David– reflecting his “great faith in God” by taking symbols of religion most familiar to him.^[66] White wanted to further his religious identity by taking a copy of the Bible to America’s next target in space: the moon.^[67] In an interview with journalist Ronald Thompson, Ed White expressed his belief that “the best all-around volume of literature that you could take [to the Moon] would be the Bible.”^[68]

On January 27th, 1967, a preflight test for the first manned Apollo mission ended tragically when the Apollo 204 (now known as Apollo 1) command module caught on fire, resulting in the deaths of the crew, including Ed White.^[69] The accident deeply affected America's confidence in NASA, causing internal and external doubt in the space program’s capability to achieve the Moon shot. The manned lunar program was momentarily grounded by the accident, and members of the NASA community searched for answers and resolution in response to the astronaut’s tragic deaths. The Apollo 1 accident opened NASA’s eyes to their overconfidence and the dangers posed by President Kennedy’s ambitious timeline to put a man on the moon by 1970.^[70] NASA’s Chief Flight Director, during the Gemini and Apollo missions, Gene Kranz, delivered his famous “Kranz Dictum” two days after the Apollo fire at his senior staff meeting:

When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you'll do is write 'Tough and competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.^[71]

The employees at NASA – engineers, managers, contractors, astronauts, and more – profoundly felt the accident’s effects in their collective consciousness. Franz emphasized the collective responsibility that each employee had after the accident to return back to the workspace. The collective responsibility that Franz spoke of resonated with members of the NASA community who were tied to the intense pressure, responsibilities, and risks of the ambitious moonshot. The employees had to be “tough and competent,” and persevere to achieve the goals of the Apollo program, or else the lives of the Apollo 1 astronauts would be in vain. The emphasis on a collective effort between all people associated with NASA’s mission was one that increased its internal accountability and its affliliations with spiritual communities within and outside of the organization.

Expanding Aerospace Ministries

In the aftermath of the Apollo 1 accident, Stout felt a great responsibility to fulfill White’s goal to take the “Holy Scripture to its first extraterrestrial destination” and encourage prayer on Earth for the safety of NASA astronauts.^[72] Like Ed White, Stout believed that the Apollo missions actualized a “human spiritual odyssey” that would extend into the depths of the universe and reaffirm the greatness of Christianity.^[73] This was not possible without the spiritual dimension missing from NASA’s operations. As a result, John Stout expanded Aerospace Ministries into three branches: the Association of Space Support Chaplains, the APL Aerospace News Service, and the Apollo Prayer League (APL).^[74]

The Association of Space Support Chaplains was a group of thirteen volunteer ministers who provided spiritual support for the NASA community and continued the original ministry work of Aerospace Ministries.^[75] The APL Aerospace News Service (also known as the APL News Service) was an independent news service led by Mary Helen Stout that provided news of religious significance related to the space program. Secular and religious news services such as Columbia, Christianity Today, and Voice of America subscribed to the news services.^[76] The Voice of America was especially important as NASA allowed the Aerospace Ministries to broadcast updates about Apollo missions to APL members around the world through its network.^[77]

The APL was the center of Aerospace Ministries and it consisted of prayer groups from around the world that prayed for the safety of the astronauts and the skill of NASA employees behind each mission.^[78] The APL invited people who believed in “the power of prayer and would pray for the astronauts’ safety regardless of religious affiliation” to join their ranks.^[79] They did not seek to proselytize others and invited members of all religious backgrounds to pray for the missions’ success, the astronauts’ safety, and God’s guidance over the ground personnel involved in the missions.^[80] The APL’s nondenominational character is further reflected by Stout’s characterization of the organization as God’s “first interplanetary church.”^[81] Members were invited to participate in daily prayer and Bible study meetings hosted by the APL.^[82] Monthly newsletters written by the Stouts were sent out to members of the APL to share news about the upcoming Apollo missions, prayer requests from members, and updates about Aerospace Ministries and its branches.^[83]

Though Aerospace Ministries identified mainly with its nondenominational mission across its three branches, it frequently espoused Christian theology and cosmology in its newsletters. The language of the APL newsletters often invoked this quality: in a special 1970 newsletter dedicated to Thanksgiving, Stout wrote that America is a nation that is “moving forward and upward under God,” alluding to space program’s progression and the language of height associated with Christian theology.^[84] APL members such as pastor John E. Fellers, quoted in the March 1970 APL Newsletter, prayed to God to support space exploration so that humanity “may have a clearer knowledge of thee,” connecting an increasing knowledge of the cosmos to a growing understanding of God.^[85] For Americans who saw a divine purpose in the space program, NASA’s missions had religious symbolism that gave it meaning outside of its scientific and technological accomplishments. To Stout, humanity’s search for truth in science and technology correlated with a search for spiritual truth, and glorified God’s power outside of Earth.

APL Lunar Bible Project

The APL spearheaded the Lunar Bible Project to make Ed White’s dream to take a Bible to the Moon a reality.^[86] If successful, the Lunar Bible Project would be a symbolic victory for Christian America, defending the expanses of space–and by extension, heaven–from the atheist Soviet Union. The Lunar Bible Project unfolded during the Apollo 12, 13, and 14 missions, and faced three main problems. First, Stout knew that a standard printed Bible would not be approved for the spacecraft’s manifest due to concerns about its physical form. The standard Bible was flammable, heavy, and took up precious space in the spacecraft from the actual operations of the mission. Any unnecessary mass onboard the spacecraft was an additional expense for the American taxpayer, as an enormous amount of fuel must be used to pull even a small object outside of Earth’s gravity.^[87] Second, the plan to take a Bible to space risked violating the Constitutional separation of church and state, as the Bible is a religious object that would be taken aboard on government property to fulfill a religiously motivated agenda. Finally, the Lunar Bible Project required discreet coordination between the overlapping networks of the Apollo Prayer League members, NASA administrators, and the astronauts to make Ed White’s dream a reality.

Microfilm Bibles

Stout turned to microfilm technology to find Bible suitable for space. A microfilm Bible was the best solution as it reduced large quantities of documents to a single tiny slide. He discovered that the National Cash Register Company (NCR) had already published the King James Bible (KJV) on microfilm, reducing the 1,245 pages of the Old and New Testaments to a “piece of film less two inches square and weighing only a fraction of a gram”.^[88] This microfilm edition of the Bible would be small and light enough to fit in the personal preference kits (PPK) of the Apollo astronauts. The PPKs contained the private property of the astronauts, and their contents required approval by NASA administrators prior to takeoff. For the Apollo missions, the dimensions of the PPK bag were 8 x 4 x 2 inches and could weigh no more than eight ounces.^[89] The NCR microfilm Bibles could easily be stowed into the PPK due its compact form, making them suitable for the expensive constraints of space travel. The dimensions of the microfilm Bible also offered a comparative advantage over other designs; due to their weight, hundreds of copies of the microfilm Bible could conveniently be stored in a PPK place of a miniature print Bible like the one carried by Alan Bean.^[90]

To fund the production of the lunar Bibles, APL members collected over $8,750 ($61,693.59 when adjusted for inflation).^[91] The November 1970 APL newsletter emphasized the costly nature of the project, informing members that the “cost of this undertaking must be borne by Christians,” since the government could not be involved in religious matters.^[92] To fund the project, the APL encouraged members to invite new members or other potential donors who could help finance the project. Other fundraising efforts included the sale of NCR KJV microfilms as replicas of the Bibles that traveled to space on the Apollo 12 in the March 1970 newsletter^[93] and commemorative coins for the Apollo 13 mission.^[94]

Power of the Miniature

Despite losing their readable functionality as religious tools, the microfilm lunar Bibles became transcendent symbols of the Christian faith, ritualized the Holy Scripture, and invoked a sense of spiritual importance for their viewers. The lunar Bibles for each of the Apollo 12, 13, and 14 missions had different goals in mind, resulting in various designs of the Bibles for each mission. These nearly postage-stamp sized miniature Bibles are unreadable to the naked eye, making them virtually unusable as texts intended for scriptural studies. In his essay about miniature texts, religious scholar J. W. Watts draws attention to how the physical size of an object provides the worshiper a means for ritualizing the symbolic nature of the book.^[95] Because miniatures lose functionality as they are less readable, they are instead ritually displayed to their audience, calling attention to its small dimensions and iconic meaning.^[96] Their small size makes it portable and potentially of a lower expense than the original work, creating pragmatic qualities of the text.^[97] Most importantly, miniature books facilitate the private ritualization of the text itself: when a written work is ritualized for its iconic dimension, the book’s authority is legitimized by those who encounter it.^[98] Another religious scholar Dorina Miller Parmenter underlines the power of miniatures while examining the history of miniature Bibles in America. Although the Bibles may be too small to read, their audience could still engage in the material practice of touching and seeing the miniature text, which triggered feelings of holiness and power that is connected to the sacred texts’ past associations in other social contexts.^[99] An unnamed astronaut said to have taken an APL bible with him on his flight was reported by the APL News Service to have said that “if you don’t take Him with you, you are not going to find Him up there.”^[100] For the astronaut, the Bible served as a medium to channel and encounter God himself in addition to spreading the power of the Christian faith into space. Its presence in space also countered the atheist campaign of the Soviets: American Christian leaders such as Norman Vincent Peale were worried that the Soviets would get to the moon first with their equivalent of the Bible: The Communist Manifesto.^[101]

Apollo 8 and the Separation of Church and State

NASA previously sparked public debate about the separation between church and state during Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon. On Christmas Eve of 1968, Apollo 8 crew members Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders entered lunar orbit and did a live television broadcast. The broadcast showed the Earth and Moon as seen from Apollo 8 and ended with the reading of the first ten verses from the book of Genesis to millions viewing on Earth.^[102] The Genesis passage covered the Christian creation narrative, and its reading by the first American astronauts to the moon linked the scientific exploration of the universe to God’s creations on the Christian holiday. Activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair denounced the Apollo 8 astronauts’ reading of the Book of Genesis, their public prayers in space, and other Christian references during the mission, stating that the broadcast violated the separation of church and state during a government funded mission.^[103] O’Hair had previously appealed a lawsuit that led to the 1963 Supreme Court decision banning prayer and Bible recitation in public schools.^[104] By the late 1960s, the constitutional environment was less lenient towards public officials who directed religious expression in a state-controlled environment.^[105] Though O’Hair started a petition to protest Bible reading and prayer by the astronauts, religious radio show host Loretta Fry started a counter-petition with half-million signatures that endorsed the right of astronauts to worship on manned space flights.^[106] Stout himself organized at least 40,000 APL members to sign the petition.^[107] Though the controversial Apollo 8 broadcast was resolved with the support from the American Christian community, NASA was reminded first and foremost that it was a scientific enterprise funded by public taxpayer dollars in accordance with the Constitution and left religious matters as employees’ private affairs. Future incidents of publicized religious activity were characterized as private affairs for the astronauts, and reminded the public about the constitutional boundaries between church and state.

By placing the Bibles in the private belongings of the astronauts, the APL avoided the murky waters between the separation of church and state within NASA’s spacecraft. The Lunar Bible Project relied on APL members to leverage connections with astronauts who would take the Bibles in their PPKs and to facilitate the process of acquiring NASA’s quiet approval for this venture. Since these microfilm Bibles were so small and did not threaten the structural integrity of the spacecraft, the astronauts selected to carry the Bibles in their PPKs generally agreed to help the APL with its mission. NASA employees affiliated with the APL assisted both with the creation of the lunar bibles and navigating the approval process for the project within NASA’s bureaucratic hurdles.

Three Attempts to the Moon

Apollo 12

The Apollo 12 mission was the first lunar landing mission intended to take the Bible to the lunar surface. Lunar module pilot Alan Bean was friends with Stout’s brother, making him the most likely candidate to carry the Lunar Bible in his PPK for the APL.^[108] Bean agreed to store a microfilm of the KJV produced by NCR at Reverend Stout’s request.^[109] He also carried a red 3 x 5 inches printed Bible for the APL in his PPK, resulting in two Bibles accompanying the Apollo 12 mission.^[110] Bean’s PPK was accidentally stored in the Command module and not in the Lunar Module. Although the Bible orbited the moon, it did not reach the Moon’s surface.^[111] Bean returned the printed Bible to Stout after the mission and was allowed to keep the microfilm Bible as a souvenir.^[112] Stout was not discouraged by this development, and aimed higher in his next attempt.

Apollo 13

Stout then persuaded the Apollo 13 crew to carry 512 microfilm lunar Bibles in their PPKs using his connection with then-Congressman George H.W. Bush. Bush shared a mutual interest in both Christianity and the space program with Stout, and he agreed to present the APL lunar Bibles to the Apollo 13 crew prior to the launch.^[113] Additionally, Commander Jim Lovell agreed to leave a special fireproof copy of the Lunar Bible on the “altar of rocks” on the Moon.^[114] This special microfilm Bible–called “The First Lunar Bible”–was lined with gold so that it could last a thousand years on the lunar surface and had an American emblem that covered its exterior.^[115] The First Lunar Bible was paired with a certificate that provided a description of the Bible, its origins, and United Bible Societies’ translations of the first verse of Genesis in sixteen languages.^[116]

The second attempt of the Lunar Bible Project dramatically increased the number of Bibles carried for the APL to a total of 513 and expanded the mission of the Lunar Bibles during the Apollo 13 mission. Originally, the Lunar Bible Project intended to take a Bible to the lunar surface and back to Earth, but Stout now wanted to leave a copy of the Bible on the Lunar surface on top of transporting hundreds of microfilm Bibles to the moon and back. In an APL newsletter section titled “A Space Bible for the Universe,” Stout proclaimed that the Lunar Bible Project had a divine purpose:

“...the preparation of a “fireproof” bible to be left on the surface of the moon as part of a shrine not only in memory of the first complete bible to reach the surface of another planet, nor the memory of Astronaut White and other space travelers who wanted to take and use their bibles in space, but also as a great missionary gesture culminating two thousand years of Christianity that has made us where we are or hope to achieve today. Perhaps this gesture will cause a back to the bible movement…Some day [sic], after our earth has polluted, bombed, starved or hated itself out of existence, some lone space traveller from a distant world might land upon the moon to study this earth which was, and by chance or divine guidance he might find it and take it home. By studying it which we should have done, perhaps his world can succeed where outs had failed.^[117]

To Stout, space represented a spiritual frontier, a place that has been left untouched by the teachings of Jesus since the dawn of creation. The Bible was not just intended to be taken to the moon: it was to be left on its surface as a “great missionary gesture” that has advanced humankind and its aspirations. Stout invokes the social and political fears of his audience, calling on environmental concerns by human impact and Cold War tensions between nations that resulted in war. By justifying the microform Bible as a safeguard to store the Word of God away from our destructive planet, Stout hoped that a future generation of Christians from beyond could take the teachings of the Bible and apply it to their own society. Stout was unsure of what existed outside of Earth, but wanted to leave the best representation of his faith on the lunar surface for all inhabitants of God’s creation. While analyzing the missionary spirit of exploration, Jacques Arnold notes that the Christian economy of salvation relies on the sanctions of its believers, and remains a spiritual struggle that relies on human action to spread the Gospel to the known world and beyond its boundaries.^[118] Following the missionary tradition from the Acts of the Apostles, Stout calls on the Apollo Prayer League to acknowledge how this space Bible would reflect the universalism of Christianity for all inhabitants of the universe.

Unfortunately, the Apollo 13 crew faced an onboard explosion that prevented the men from reaching the lunar surface. Though the Lunar Bible Project failed again, the APL saw the miraculous return of the Apollo 13 crew as an incident made possible through their prayers, as the APL members and millions around the world prayed for their safety.^[119] For the APL, “the most important thing in the world was prayer” when the Apollo 13 mission faced impossible odds, and its successful return to Earth was due to the spiritual power of a unified global effort to pray for the safety of the astronauts.^[120] The lunar Bibles, originally intended to symbolize the missionary spirit of the APL, became physical reminders of the power of prayer for the APL members.^[121] By carrying the Bibles on the Apollo spacecrafts, the mission was protected by the spiritual strength of Christian believers. The APL later called the prayers made during the mission as the “Apollo XIII Prayer Mission” and created coins to commemorate the APL’s prayers during the Apollo 13 mission.^[122] Stout later asked Bush to present a copy of the Lunar Bible to the Smithsonian Institution to preserve what he saw to be an important part of history.^[123] Director Michael Collins of the National Air and Space Museum later accepted the copy of the Apollo 13 microform Bible from then-US Ambassador to the United Nations Bush, where it remains in the collection.^[124]

Apollo 14

The third and final attempt, the Apollo 14 mission, learned from the mistakes of the previous missions and incorporated new ideas from APL members. Improving on the idea of “The First Lunar Bible,” Stout designed a special “multi-focal” microfilm Bible dedicated to the memory of Ed White.^[125] Stout worked with Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell to stow the Lunar Bibles in both the lunar module and command module. However, Mitchell requested that subsequent designs of the Bible intended to be left on the Moon could not be easily duplicated and would omit the decorative American emblem. The astronaut firmly believed that the Apollo missions were for the whole of humanity. Following the public success of Apollo 11, the US lunar landing missions were viewed not as exclusively as American achievements, but rather representative for all of humankind. Historian Teasel Muir-Harmony underlines the disjunction between the US’s intended message through the Apollo program and actual reception by the world. The ideas of US greatness and strength did not resonate with their audience; rather, they connected to the themes of global interdependence and community from the Apollo missions.^[126] This disagreement between Mitchell and Stout, like many aspects of the Space Race, represented the overlapping interests between the broader public, Christian believers, and American excellence.^[127]

The special Apollo 14 Bible “First Lunar Bible” consisted of two microfilm prints–the King James Bible (KJV) and the Revised Standard Version (RSV) used by White–placed front-to-back and divided by a thin piece of glass.^[128] This decision to feature two versions of the Bible reflected the shifting religious fabric of American Christianity. The KJV Bible was first published in 1611and served the traditional translation of the Bible used by Anglicans and English Protestant denominations. It embodied the Anglo-American religious heritage and was faithfully used by conservative Southern Baptist denominations. The RSV Bible was created in 1951 by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA to provide a more modern and literal translation of the Bible in “direct and plain” English that is “meaningful to people today.”^[129] Its accessibility offered a huge advantage over the outdated language in the KJV translation to English speakers, and thus gained popularity in the mid-twentieth century.^[130] After Director Maxine Faget of Engineering and Development at NASA approved for NASA employees associated with the APL to use the photographic lab in the Manned Spacecraft Center after-hours, the employees created the Lunar Bible in a lengthy process. The APL members manually cut and pasted each page of the KJV and RSV Bible onto separate boards, photographed the pages, and then reduced the images onto microfilm.^[131]

The Lunar Bible was packaged with another copy of the certificate from the Apollo 13 “First Lunar Bible” and a “First Lunar Bible Honor Roll.” The Honor Roll was a microfilm containing 3549 names of individuals and organizations submitted by APL members that had made a contribution to their lives or to a worthy cause. Names on the Honor Roll ranged from family and friends of APL members, historical figures, and household names like Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr.^[132] This addition to the Lunar Bible Project likely drew inspiration from the 1967 idea to send a microfilm “Lunar Roll of Honor” in a time capsule on the lunar surface, though the idea was eventually scrapped by employees at NASA.^[133] The lunar Bibles and names on the Lunar Honor Roll generated early media attention about the Lunar Bible Project prior to the flight.^[134]

Mitchell stored 100 copies of the NCR microfilms with the First Lunar Bible in the lunar module and an additional 200 in the command module in case the Bibles in the lunar module were lost.^[135] An unmarked and secret PPK containing 212 Bibles was stowed onboard the command module Kitty Hawk by Harold Hill, an APL board member and microbiologist on the decontamination team for the spacecraft. Because he inspected and decontaminated the spacecraft immediately at the beginning and end of the flight, Hill could enter the spacecraft before everyone else and was also the last person to exit it.^[136] Though Hill’s actions certainly raise eyebrows today, it was not uncommon to store additional items on the spacecraft without reporting their presence on the manifest. According to Elizabeth Suckow, an archivist with NASA's History Division, it was not unusual for undocumented items to travel as part of an astronaut's PPK. This resulted in a grand total of 513 Bibles on the Apollo 14 mission.

The APL Bibles finally reached the Moon’s surface onboard the lunar module Antares on February 5th, 1971.^[137] Mitchell was unable to leave the First Lunar Bible packet on the Moon due to his official responsibilities for the mission, and thus prioritized his mission critical tasks on the Moon over his secondary tasks from the APL. He later returned all the APL materials carried onboard to Stout after his quarantine.^[138] Stout inscribed the 100 NCR microfilm Bibles from the lunar module with a microscopic five-digit serial number that indicated its “sequence and placement on the command module or lunar module” in order to catalog the Bibles in circulation.^[139] These lunar Bibles were recorded in the APL Lunar Bible Registry, a valuable resource that would later distinguish authentic lunar Bibles from fakes sold on the space memorabilia market.^[140] Twenty-seven lunar Bibles were cut into 2-page and 5-page segments to increase the distribution of the limited quantity of Bibles that reached the lunar surface.^[141] An article written by UPI reporter Preston F. Kirk mistakenly announced that the Bible was the first Book to reach the Lunar surface, generating nationwide media attention for the lunar Bibles in spring of 1971.^[142] The Apollo 14 Lunar Bibles from the command module and lunar module were distributed by Stout to churches, time capsules, museums, press reporters, and dignitaries who were associated with the APL.^[143] Celebrities and politicians who received a Lunar Bible included George H. W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and Bob Hope.^[144]

Conclusion

Today, the lunar Bibles are found in libraries, museums, and private collections around the world. They continue to generate interest as unique pieces of space memorabilia, resulting in a market of counterfeit lunar Bibles online.^[145] Though the lunar Bibles on the Apollo 12 and 13 missions did not reach the lunar surface, the lessons learned from each attempt shaped the course of the Lunar Bible Project.

The Lunar Bible Project, cautious of publicly violating the lines between church and state, relied on its APL network to ensure its success. The APL had many connections to both the astronauts and administrators of the space program, as it had members that hailed from both categories. These contacts in the space agency were essential for the logistics of the Lunar Bible Project, as administrators granted permission for the presence of the microfilm Bibles in the spacecraft and astronauts allowed the APL to store the Bibles in their PPKs.

Because the Moon was perceived as property of Earth–and by extension, all of humanity–its evangelization will be through the APL’s construction of a shrine on moon containing a copy of their microfilm Bible. The Bibles’ portable and symbolic form allowed the astronauts and Apollo Prayer League to carry the gravitas of the Christian religion into space with its symbolic and inherent power that resides in the scriptures. Stout’s language mirrors the American evangelical movement of the mid twentieth century after the Second World War, invoking the significance of the bible with his reference to “the bible movement.”^[146] The Apollo program presented an opportunity for Americans to link their beliefs to the advances of lunar exploration, showing to a global audience that Christianity would grow as the American space program would explore into the universe’s expanse.

Aerospace Ministries reflected the American religious identity during the Cold War. By the Apollo 13 mission, Stout connected the lunar Bibles to a popular narrative of America’s Christian heritage. In his Thanksgiving message to the APL, Stout invokes John Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill” speech to connect the US space enterprise to the experiences of the Pilgrims.^[147] Stout believed that space exploration was not a matter of “being first to something,” but rather America’s “ability to move forward and upward under God…to reach the top of the hill,” just as the Pilgrims had.^[148] For Anglo-Americans, the Pilgrims symbolized a freedom to worship God to Stout and religious heritage guaranteed in the Constitution. In Stout’s eyes, it was important for the APL to follow the Pilgrim forefathers and thank God for his blessings and protection, and join “His Cosmic Ministry” during the modern space age.^[149]

John Stout has received increased attention from his involvement with the lunar Bibles, and his life has been popularized by works by author Carol Mersch and even a Facebook page.^[150] Stout’s life reveals much insight into the religiosity of the Cold War and, by extension, the Space Race. His leadership in the Aerospace Ministries and involvement in the Lunar Bible Project mirrors the theology and political views of the mid-twentieth century American Evangelical movement. Stout constructed an APL-specific theology that connected spaceflight to the greatness of God for believers around the world, and prayed for the safety of the American enterprise in space.

Overall, this paper offered a new perspective on the development of American Evangelical Christian networks by uncovering how John Stout organized a religious organization within one of the largest government agencies during the height of the Space Race. John Stout led Aerospace Ministries from NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center and promoted evangelical Christian beliefs as competing national ideologies emerged during the Cold War. The APL’s Lunar Bible Project resulted in a grand total of 1,028 Bibles sent to space during the Apollo 12, 13, and 14 missions. The miniature size of the microfilm lunar Bible facilitated ritualization of the Bible, despite being unreadable without a powerful microscope. The Lunar Bible Project not only fulfilled Ed White’s wish to take a Bible to the Moon, but also expanded its mission, aspiring to evangelize the Moon by bringing it the physical manifestation of the Word of God.

Acknowledgements

This JP would not have been possible without a great deal of support and assistance from many individuals. I would like to first thank my advisor Professor Michael Gordin for his insights about historical research and guidance throughout the entire process. I would like to acknowledge Professor Jack Tannous, Professor Jacob S. T. Dlamini, and Professor Seth Perry for helping me brainstorm ideas and identify sources for this project. I would like to give special thanks to Preston F. Kirk for sharing his experiences with the APL to me and Carol Mersch for her own extensive research about John Stout and the APL. Without Carol Mersch’s generous support for my work, much of this paper would not have been possible. I would like to thank librarians Brian Shetler from Princeton Theological Seminary Library Special Collections for his research assistance in the James I. McCord archives, Kristy Sorensen from the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary Library for sharing materials from APTS’s Apollo Prayer League collection, and Alain St. Pierre from Princeton University for helping me access periodical archives. I would also like to thank Dr. Roger D. Launius and Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony for their insights into space history and sharing valuable research materials with me. Finally, to all the people I discussed my research with: thank you for providing stimulating discussions about my work, and I hope you enjoyed learning about John Stout and the lunar Bibles.

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