Erasmus | Religion and space

A high vantage point

Russia has outdone America in its zeal to proclaim the faith in heavenly places

By B.C.

FOR people who recall the early days of the space race, it was an iconic moment—at least in the loose, modern sense of the word. On Christmas Eve, 1968, as Apollo 8 orbited the moon, the three crew members took turns to "send a message to all the people back on earth" which consisted of the opening verses of the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void: and darkness covered the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters..."

In the Soviet Union back then, things were quite different. In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev had claimed that Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, found arguments for atheism during his journey to the heavens. "I flew into space but didn't see God," he was supposed to have declared. This apocryphal line was used by the Soviet leader to fuel his campaign against religion. (Contemporaries of Gagarin strongly deny that he ever said that, and have insisted he was actually a Christian believer.)

Anyway, these days, Russia outstrips America in its zeal to bring Christianity and its symbols to the starry skies. Images of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, as well as copies of the Scriptures and other sacred objects, have been brought to the International Space Station (ISS) by Russian cosmonauts, and this has been sympathetically received in their homeland. Not that American participants in the ISS—a showpiece of post-cold war co-operation—have been neglectful in their spiritual duties. Ronald Garan, an American cosmonaut who is devoutly Catholic, brought tiny fragments of the remains of Therese of Lisieux, a French saint, up to the giant laboratory. But the Russians have been the most emphatically pious.

In the latest display of stellar devotion, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artyemev posted a picture on his blog of himself and two comrades floating about the station; they were brandishing an icon of one of Russia's most revered saints, Sergius of Radonezh, with more familiar Christian images visible in the background (pictured above).

The photo was taken on July 18th, one of the feast days dedicated to this shadowy but archetypically important holy man: a 14th-century ascetic who led a life of prayerful self-discipline in remote Russian forests and somehow became an adviser to a monarch, Dmitry Donskoy who defeated the Tatars in 1380. As with many saints who were both detached from the world and very much involved in worldly affairs, his story mixes images of humility and power, peace and war. While the cosmonauts posed with their medieval hero, whose 700th anniversary (of birth) is being celebrated this year, President Vladimir Putin was adding his voice to the tributes, calling the saint a universally acknowledged "teacher and builder of Russia."

But Saint Sergius, like any other holy person or symbol, can mean different things to different people, depending on whereabouts in heaven or earth you are standing. For some patriotically minded Russians, this man of the forests is their guide and patron in all earthly endeavours, including fighting the Ukrainians. The Russian press has alleged that in the contested city of Luhansk, a church dedicated to Sergius was shelled by the Ukrainian army on the saint's feast day. But proud Ukrainians affirm that they, too, honour the holy man; "Sergius is on our calendar and we venerate him like any other saint," a spokesman for the Kiev Patriarchate, a bastion of Ukrainian sentiment, insists.

Now you would think that in space, of all places, humans would have an overwhelming intimation of the common destiny of mankind, and the futility of war. Maybe that is why the 1968 message was addressed to "all the people back on earth"—whether or not the Genesis narrative corresponded to their vision of the universe.

But in practice, human activities in space have teetered between ruthless competition and inspiring collaboration. The space race was intimately bound up with American and Soviet efforts to build rockets that could have annihilated mankind; and yet at the height of the cold war, in 1975, there was a spectacular meeting in space between American and Soviet craft.

In recent years, the Americans and Russians have cooperated closely to staff and supply the ISS. If there was any competition (over who could bring up more holy relics, for example) it was pretty friendly. When the Russian Orthodox Patriarch made one of his regular telephone calls to the station to wish his compatriots well, he generally remembered to send greetings to the Americans too.

But that era may be drawing to a close. In May, as part of a package of "counter-sanctions" in response to punitive measures imposed by America, the Russian government said it was withdrawing cooperation from the ISS. It said this would force the closure of the station in 2020, rather than keeping it till 2024 as the Americans wanted. Optimists say there is still time for the two sides to patch things up and keep the station going. But on the face of things, this is depressing news for the people on earth, whatever they hold sacred.

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