“As much as ever, there’s something weirdly religious about space” (x), Mary-Jane Rubenstein writes in the opening pages of Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. Weirdly religious, that is, for those of us who have failed to notice that the “‘NewSpace race’ is as much a mythological project as it is a political, economic, or scientific one” (x). This mythological project, Rubenstein argues, emerges directly from Christianity and more specifically “imperial Christianity” that “teamed up with early capitalism, European expansion, and a particularly racist form of science to colonize the earth.” (x). Drawing direct parallels between the doctrine of discovery, manifest destiny, and NewSpace, Astrotopia shows how the efforts to colonize outer space share remarkable historical similarities with the spread of earthly colonization that began in the 15th century.
Rubenstein makes an explicit connection between religion and science by detailing how the “eco-destructive legacy” of Christian biblical teachings—which are now out of step with most mainstream Christians—has been taken up by institutional sciences and “masquerade as secular, universal, and therefore unchangeable, principles” (40). Rubenstein also makes an explicit connection between earthly frontierism and astrofrontierism by explaining the centrality of “manifest destiny” in the United States space program from its very inception. NASA astronauts were conceived of as pioneers on fittingly titled “missions” to “a new New World: a place of adventure, danger, political freedom, economic opportunity, and endless promise” (70). American politicians and scientists justified the space program as carrying out “the will of God and the sacred destiny of humanity” (75)—a sacred destiny that was furthered by NASA’s decision to appoint a Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing (96), and the subsequent decisions to recite Genesis and perform the star-spangled banner upon reaching the Moon (81).
By outlining Jeff Bezos’ and Elon Musk’s competing visions of space, Rubenstein extends the argument that astrofrontierism relies on manifest destiny into the present. She explains how these billionaire utopians are selling an old religious story of domination: “salvation through imperialism” (4). While Musk and Bezos present two different utopias—“‘fuck Earth and occupy Mars’ versus ‘save Earth by drilling the universe’” (23)—both utopias are predicated on the notion that “the promise of deep space is the promise of infinite resources” (111). Caught in the cyclical logic of capitalist growth, Musk and Bezos, among many others, believe that we should mine outer space so we can live, work, and explore there, and we should live, work, and explore outer space so we can learn how to mine it (111–12).
Rubenstein’s argument is compelling, and she draws from incredibly diverse source material—including NASA publications, Disney films, and presidential speeches. Although outside the author’s stated scope, Astrotopia’s focus on the NewSpace race in the United States, and more specifically the legacy of imperial Christianity to this NewSpace race, points to potential future research questions regarding the relationship between religion and space in places that do not share the same biblical heritage.
In the final two chapters of the book, Rubenstein asks us to consider how our relationship to the astronomical world might change if we move away from the assumption that it belongs to us and instead ask ourselves how we belong to it and how it belongs to itself (140). To answer these weighty questions, she suggests that we might attribute memory and agency to the Moon. As an active landscape, the Moon resists human desires and efforts to plunder it, as evidenced by the trouble the Moon gave Armstrong and Aldrin when they tried to install the first flag (150). Rubenstein also suggests we might shift the way we talk about the astronomical world. Whereas westerners call the astronomical world “outer space” and describe it as infinite emptiness, the Bawaka people of Australia’s Northern Territory call it “Sky Country, where the ancestors live and which is subject to the same protocols of care and respect as the people’s terrestrial homeland” (151). This is just one of the many examples of how we might re-think our relationship with space. Rubenstein refers to these examples as “other spacetimes”—spacetimes that are “guided by kinship, caretaking, and listening rather than conquest, war making, and profit” (180). She elaborates on several spacetimes that are found in Indigenous philosophies, Afrofuturism, and even a white paper written by a group of astrophysicists.
Astrotopia is a thoughtful and provocative piece of scholarship that incorporates a wide array of important sources. Moreover, the book is a delightful read thanks to Rubenstein’s accessible prose. She invites the reader into her son’s space-themed bedroom (2) and her family’s Passover Seder (31), and it is hard not to laugh at her witty remarks and be swept up in both her love of space and her rage against those who seek to destroy it. Astrotopia belongs just as much in a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on religion and place, where I first encountered the book, as it does in an undergraduate course on American religion or religion and science. Arguably, though, this book best belongs in the hands of any reader who has never once thought about religion, space, or the relationship between the two.
Claire Rostov is a PhD candidate at Duke University.
Claire Rostov
Date Of Review:
October 11, 2024