There is in the western secular establishment an ongoing and insidious movement to expunge Christianity from public life, a process which I believe will lead to untold social and political problems as the spiritual basis of the western democracy is removed. It is already beginning to happen in North America and Europe, with the rising backlash to political correctness, a form of thought control, and the increasing unpopularity of the hitherto largely invisible Eurocrats, divorced from large sectors of the less affluent communities and contemptuous of their cultural and Christian heritage..
The story below, which shows how the move to expunge reference to Christ from public life was beginning to happen c.1970, as exemplified in these background stories of the Apollo moon missions.
Even after some promising changes to the American judiciary following the 2016 election it still raises eyebrows if 'God' , the very kernel of reality, is mentioned in public life.
It was Christmas Eve
1968 when the first words of Genesis chapter 1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth....
streamed from Apollo 8, in orbit around the moon, into our small black and white TV set. Each of the three astronauts in turn read a short passage. I was a science-obsessed agnostic at the time but
click here
for a video on the astounding story behind this photograph.
it stirred me deep down because it said that God was a real presence and power in the Universe, albeit a transcendental one, even though most of the time I either half acknowledged our Creator’s existence or was unaware of it entirely. It also revealed vividly to the world that humankind was one species on one precious planet in a vast universe.
Since then Hugh Ross (search YouTube by his name for numerous videos) and others have alerted me to the fact that Genesis 1:1 is unique among the creation poems of ancient times in asserting that the stuff of the universe is not eternal and self existing but was created from nothing before space -time-energy existed, via the Big Bang. Since the time of Apollo 8 modern cosmology has discovered that Genesis was 100% right on this: the universe was created from a reality beyond the realm of scientific investigation.
Madalyn O’Hare, it appears, was also stirred; but in her case it was to
anger and hatred. She brought a lawsuit against NASA for promoting religion. From thenceforth astronauts and NASA as an
organisation would be forbidden from associating themselves with Christianity.
She had already succeeded in getting prayer banned in US state schools, after
which crime levels by young people rapidly escalated. Her speech showed deep phobia against Christianity and was sometimes vitriolic, peppered with four letter words.
The lawsuit, based on the separation of church and state,
forbade future astronauts from religious rituals during missions. They saw this
as an infringement of their rights under the First Amendment and various
subterfuges took place. The following is based on an excellent article in Spaceflight
(Dec 2011), On the Wings of Apollo by Dwight Williams:
- Aldrin wanted to take Holy Communion on the Moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission and so smuggled aboard a ‘communion kit’ in a pouch, part of his Personal Preference Kit. He took Communion shortly after landing on 20 July and read out John 5:15 from a card: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit....’
- The Apollo 11 crew left a silicon disc on the Moon with the voices of world leaders, including Psalms read by Pope Paul VI.
- The Rev John Stout, inspired by the devout Ed White who died in the Apollo 1 fire of 1967, started the Apollo Prayer League with 40,000 members and resolved to have bibles placed on the Moon. 300 microfilm bibles were indeed smuggled aboard Apollo 14 by Ed Mitchell.
- Ed Mitchell of Apollo 14 announced at a business conference that the Apollo 13 mission had been saved from disaster by public prayers after its oxygen tank had exploded. Mitchell, I understand, had an IQ of 180 and proposed theories concerning the nature of awareness, quantum physics and the interconnectedness of life.
Madalyn O'Hare, the founder of American Atheists, had a tragic life. In 1993 she and one of her sons, Jon Murray, and her grand daughter Robin Murray O'Hare were murdered and mutilated by the former office manager of the American Atheists, David Roland Waters. The details are complex but it appears to have been the result of a financial dispute. Kyrie Eleison.To me it is heartening to note that her son William J Murray is now the leader of a Christian church and author of My Life Without God.
Western critics of Christianity, who are usually comfortably off, should take a hard look at the world and ask themselves whether there are any nations without a Christian heritage where they would rather live. The West can be criticized for its past and it repeatedly rebukes itself; but by what standards, if not those of Christ?
John Sears
Author, 2077: Knights of Peace
cosmik.jo@gmail.com
