Pineridge Blog

The First Presbyterian on the Moon

Sunday I told a story about the first communion on the moon that came floating up in my memory as I looked at the picture on the screen of Earth-rise taken from the moon. I was going from memory, which is always danger-ous. While I believe that all stories are true (and some actually happened), I wanted to at least verify what I could as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the event.

Buzz Aldrin may have been the second man to walk on the moon, but he was the first Presbyterian to do so. Aldrin was an elder at the time at the Webster Presbyterian Church in Houston, TX, near Mission Control in 1969. And being a devout Christian he wanted to do something special to express his thanksgiving after landing safely on the lunar surface.

Armstrong and Aldrin had about three hours after landing to rest from the harrowing flight and to prepare for the first ever moonwalk. As is described in the article https://www.history.com/news/buzz-aldrin-communion-apollo-11-nasa
“As the men prepared for the next phase of their mission, Aldrin got on the comm system and spoke to the ground crew back on Earth. “I would like to request a few mo-ments of silence,” he said, “I would like to invite each per-son listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own individual way.”

“Then he reached for the wine and bread he’d brought to space—the first foods ever poured or eaten on the moon. ‘I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup,’ he later wrote. Then, Aldrin read some scripture and ate.”