Promotional Information

Lively and interesting, this book accurately reflects the disorienting effects of ventures into Heaven by men in space suits. -- James Gilbert, University of Maryland, College Park

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Blasphemy of Going Up
1. A Power Greater Than Any of Us: Religion and Secularity in the Formation of the American Space Program
2. Signals of Transcendence: The Rise and Fall of Space-Age Theology
3. Into the Other World: Anticipations of Spaceflight as Religious Experience
4. Perhaps a Meaning to Us: The Apollo Missions as Religious Experience
5. Evil Triumphs When Good Men Do Nothing: Religious Americans and NASA in the Autumn of the Space Age
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliographic Essay
Index

About the Author

Kendrick Oliver is a reader in American history in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Southampton, United Kingdom.

Reviews

To Touch the Face of God... support[s] the importance of the strength of individual faith, the power of community, and the American need for both heroes and villains of biblical proportions to change the world. -- David Rosman New York Journal of Books Oliver analyses spaceflight and religion in a sophisticated manner, well informed by the scholarly literature of 'new aerospace history,' which examines intersections between space history and other disciplines or themes... Oliver engages histories of theology and religious practice in a broad conversation of motivations, implications, transformations and reinforcements of religion in the history of spaceflight. -- Margaret Weitekamp Times Higher Education Religious and science colletions alike will relish this survey. Midwest Book Review To Touch the Face of God is well-written, with short, precise excursions into what almost amounts to poetry, for example: 'They [the astronauts in space] could not sit for a morning in the manner of Thoreau, slowly incubating epiphany'... It is an important contribution to the study of the complex connections between spaceflight and religion and thus highly recommended. -- Thore Bjornvig Quest: History of Spaceflight Quarterly Oliver's well-research book sparkles with graceful prose and cogent insights... Also refreshing is Oliver's breadth of knowledge, which leads to pregnant thoughts... To Touch the Face of God is a stimulating and original examination of the long Sixties. Looking at America through this unique window-actually a spaceship's portal-reveals things I had not seen before. -- Robert Spinney Fides Et Historia