{"id":229,"date":"2011-04-01T12:04:40","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T16:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/?p=229"},"modified":"2011-04-01T12:09:28","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T16:09:28","slug":"yuri-gagarin-first-human-in-space-was-a-devout-christian-says-his-close-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/04\/yuri-gagarin-first-human-in-space-was-a-devout-christian-says-his-close-friend.html","title":{"rendered":"Yuri Gagarin, first human in space, was a devout Christian, says his close friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The first man in outer space 50 years ago believed fervently in the Almighty — even though the atheistic Soviet government put famous words in his mouth that he had looked around at the cosmos and did not see God.<\/p>\n

Mankind’s first space flight lasted 108 minutes on April 12, 1961.<\/p>\n

It was the height of the Cold War. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was proclaimed by the Soviet leadership to have announced,\u00a0“I went up to space, but I didn\u2019t encounter God.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he never\u00a0uttered those often-quoted words, says a close friend. And it seems that the Soviet Union lied about a number of aspects of the 1961 space flight.<\/p>\n

For example, they\u00a0covered up the fact that he landed more than 200 miles away from where they were expecting him, a new book discloses. The Soviets\u00a0trumpeted his mission, the first manned flight into space, as a major Cold War propaganda coup, portraying it as a glitch-free triumph of Communist ideology, writes Russian journalist Anton Pervushin in his book, 108 Minutes That Changed the World.<\/em><\/p>\n

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in line with the official atheistic Soviet line,\u00a0proclaimed that Gagarin had told him the famous line about not seeing God in space. But nobody else ever heard Gagarin say it –and he never repeated it.<\/p>\n

In fact he was a baptized member of the Russian Orthodox Church. Due to Soviet repression of Christianity, he kept that to himself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A\u00a0new book published on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s famous flight reveals that Soviet scientists\u00a0severely miscalculated where he would land. “For many years Soviet literature claimed that Yuri Gagarin and his Vostok I\u00a0landing capsule had come down in the area it was supposed to,” writes Pervushin.\u00a0“They\u00a0had been expecting\u00a0Gagarin to land almost 250 miles further to the south So it turned out that nobody was waiting or looking for Yuri Gagarin. Therefore the first thing he had to do after landing was set off to look for people so he could tell the leadership where he was.”<\/p>\n

The Soviets also lied about the manner of his landing, claiming that he had touched down inside the capsule — which landed on dry land, unlike American space capsules, which splashed down in water. In fact,\u00a0Gagarin bailed out and landed by parachute.<\/p>\n

The book reveals a touching letter Gagarin wrote to his family before the mission in which he pondered his own mortality, telling his wife not to “die of grief” if he never returned. “After all life is life and there is no guarantee for anybody that tomorrow a car might not end one’s life.”<\/p>\n

Earlier, the Soviets had sent Laika, a dog,\u00a0but had made no provision for her to return to earth — so she died in orbit.<\/p>\n

“Gagarin also became well-known for the phrase he is said to have stated, a phrase that was used extensively by the atheist propaganda of the time,” writes Nafpaktos Hierotheos Vlachos, the head of today’s Russian Orthodox Church.\u00a0“And I say ‘he is said to have stated.'”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In fact, \u201cGagarin was a baptized faithful throughout all his life,” says General Valentin Petrov, Professor of the\u00a0Russian Air Force Academy and\u00a0a personal friend of the cosmonaut. “He always confessed God whenever he was provoked, no matter where he was.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a 2007 article titled \u201cYuri Gagarin, the Christian,\u201d by\u00a0Maria Biniari, she wrote on his birthday in 1964, he visited a monastery, the Lavra of Saint Serge, and met with the Prior — the\u00a0monk in charge.<\/p>\n

There, he had a photo taken of himself, which he told the priest \u201cthis is for those who don\u2019t believe.\u201d He signed it “with my best wishes, Yuri Gagarin.\u201d<\/p>\n

“That famous phrase which has been ascribed to him, well, in actual fact it was Khrushchev who had said it,” says Petrov.\u00a0“It was heard during a meeting of the Central Committee, whose desire it was to promulgate anti-religious propaganda.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“Khrushchev had mockingly addressed the following words: \u2018Why didn\u2019t you step on the brakes in front of God? Here is Gagarin, who flew up to space, and yet, even he didn\u2019t see God anywhere.\u2019<\/p>\n

“Immediately after that, those words were placed into another\u2019s mouth, because the people would have believed more in Gagarin\u2019s words than Khrushchev\u2019s,” says Petrov.<\/p>\n

In fact, Gagarin should be remembered for completely different words, says his friend:<\/p>\n

” I always remember that Yuri Gagarin said: \u201cAn astronaut cannot be suspended in space and not have God in his mind and his heart.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first man in outer space 50 years ago believed fervently in the Almighty — even though the atheistic Soviet government put famous words in his mouth that he had looked around at the cosmos and did not see God. Mankind’s first space flight lasted 108 minutes on April 12, 1961. It was the height…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nYuri Gagarin, first human in space, was a devout Christian, says his close friend - On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/04\/yuri-gagarin-first-human-in-space-was-a-devout-christian-says-his-close-friend.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yuri Gagarin, first human in space, was a devout Christian, says his close friend - On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The first man in outer space 50 years ago believed fervently in the Almighty — even though the atheistic Soviet government put famous words in his mouth that he had looked around at the cosmos and did not see God. 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