Religion and Space
Religion has accompanied humans into space from the beginning. Astronauts have carried sacred objects, adapted rituals to microgravity, prayed in orbit, and interpreted extraordinary experiences through religious and spiritual frameworks. These examples offer a small introduction to some of the ways religion and spaceflight intersect.
Communion on the Moon
After Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin asked listeners on Earth to pause for a moment of reflection. He then privately took communion using bread, wine, and a small chalice he had carried with him.
A Torah in Orbit
On STS-75 in 1996, astronaut Jeff Hoffman carried a small Torah into space. Working with Rabbi Shaul Osadchey, Hoffman found a scroll compact enough for flight while remaining a fully usable Torah. After returning to Earth, the scroll continued to be used for Jewish ritual and educational occasions.
Islamic Prayer in Microgravity
Malaysian spaceflight participant Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor traveled to the International Space Station in 2007 during Ramadan. Malaysian Islamic authorities developed guidance for carrying out religious obligations in orbit, including prayer, fasting, purification, and determining the direction of Mecca. In this video, he demonstrates prayer in microgravity.
Further Reading
The literature on religion and outer space has expanded rapidly in recent years. The works below include scholarship directly focused on religion in space, as well as anthropological studies that help establish the wider cultural context.
Religion and Outer Space
Jenia Gorbanenko. Orthodox Icons and Cosmonaut Exemplars: Which Way to Heaven? Routledge, Anthropology of Outer Space series. Appearing 2026–2027.
A new book directly examining Russian Orthodoxy, cosmonaut exemplars, sacred imagery, and the extension of religious life into outer space.
Catherine L. Newell. Destined for the Stars: Faith, the Future, and America’s Final Frontier. 2019. University of Pittsburgh Press.
A major historical study of the religious, millennial, frontier, and destiny language behind early American enthusiasm for spaceflight, especially the work of Chesley Bonestell, Willy Ley, and Wernher von Braun.
Joel L. Parkyn. Exotheology: Theological Explorations of Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life. 2021. JSTOR.
A sustained Christian theological treatment of extraterrestrial intelligence, including creation, incarnation, redemption, and the plurality of worlds.
Mary-Jane Rubenstein. Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. 2022. Bibliovault.
An influential critique of salvation narratives, promised lands, limitless growth, colonization, extraction, and techno-utopianism in contemporary NewSpace.
Michael Waltemathe. “The Promise of Space: Prospect for a Brighter Future or Tourist Destination?” Dialog, 2022. Wiley Online Library.
Considers space exploration itself as carrying quasi-religious promises and eschatological expectations, from internationalist rhetoric to NewSpace.
Jenia Gorbanenko. “Krestnyǐ khod po orbite: votserkovliaia nauku i planetu” [“Cross Procession in Orbit: Enchurching Science and the Planet”]. 2023. Author website.
A Russian-language study of Orthodoxy, cosmonautics, religious practice, and the extension of sacred activity beyond Earth.
Eric Michael Mazur and Sarah McFarland Taylor, eds. Religion and Outer Space. 2024. Routledge.
One of the most useful recent general collections devoted explicitly to the subject, ranging across Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Indigenous, and Black religious imaginaries, science fiction, sublimity, spaceflight, and future religious transformation.
Jörg Matthias Determann and Shoaib Ahmed Malik, eds. Islamic Theology and Extraterrestrial Life: New Frontiers in Science and Religion. 2024. Bloomsbury.
A major contribution that moves the extraterrestrial-life discussion beyond Christianity, with chapters on Qur'anic interpretation, jinn, salvation, moral personhood, and Sunni and Shi'i theology.
J. W. Traphagan. “Space Expansion and Politico-Religious Ideology: A Consideration of Civil Religion and the Future of Space Exploration.” Theology and Science, 2024. Taylor & Francis Online.
Connects American space expansion to civil religion and considers how those ideological structures might accompany humans into the solar system.
Kelly C. Smith. “What Can We Reasonably Predict Concerning Alien Religion and Ethics?” Theology and Science, 2024. Taylor & Francis Online.
Asks whether evolved extraterrestrial intelligences might themselves develop phenomena recognizable as religion or ethics.
James F. McGrath. “Theology, Anthropology, and First Contact with Non-Humans.” In First Contact: Aliens and Humans in Contemporary Science Fiction, 2026. Springer.
Brings anthropology and theology together through first-contact fiction, radical cultural difference, alterity, and the difficulty of imagining genuinely nonhuman intelligence.
Anthropology of Space
Aaron Parkhurst and David Jeevendrampillai. “Towards an Anthropology of Gravity: Emotion and Embodiment in Microgravity Environments.” Emotion, Space and Society 35, 2020. ResearchGate.
Treats altered gravity as an embodied, affective condition that changes emotion, cognition, social relationships, and experience.
David Jeevendrampillai and Aaron Parkhurst. “Making a Martian Home: Finding Humans on Mars Through Utopian Architecture.” Home Cultures 18(1): 25–46, 2021. UCL Discovery.
Useful for thinking about utopia, imagined futures, habitation, and cultural assumptions hidden inside supposedly technical plans for human life elsewhere.
David Jeevendrampillai, Victor Buchli, Aaron Parkhurst, Adryon Kozel, Giles Bunch, Jenia Gorbanenko et al. “An Ethnography of an Extra-terrestrial Society: The International Space Station.” In The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space, 2023. Routledge.
Treats the ISS not simply as a technical facility but as an emerging extraterrestrial human society, opening questions about religion, ritual, transcendence, identity, and cosmology off Earth.
Jenia Gorbanenko, David Jeevendrampillai and Adryon Kozel, eds. Exploring Ethnography of Outer Space: Methods and Perspectives. 2025. Routledge.
A methodological collection establishing the developing anthropology-of-space field, including chapters engaging Thai Buddhist concepts and Korean shamanism and astrology in the Space Age.
Istvan Praet and Perig Pitrou, eds. Otherwhere Ethnography: An Introduction to Outer Space Studies. 2025. Oxford University Press.
A broad outer-space studies collection that asks anthropology to reconsider terrestrial/extraterrestrial, material/immaterial, colonial, and epistemological categories.
One to Watch
Mary-Jane Rubenstein and Lance Gharavi, eds. Cosmic Missions: Religion and Space Exploration. Forthcoming December 2026.
An announced collection spanning Cold War salvation narratives, Islamic space ethics, Buddhism, UFO spirituality, Indigenous perspectives, transhumanism, and Silicon Valley techno-utopianism.