Reverend Moon and the Unification Church

Another new religious organization that made some people uncomfortable in the United States was the Unification Church, while others found in it a new spiritual home. Membership grew in the United States, South Korea and Japan, estimated to total between several hundred thousand to a few million. Its founder, the Reverend Moon, bought a daily newspaper, The Washington Times, which became a competitor of one the foremost newspapers in the U.S., the Washington Post.

Sun Myung Moon grew up in Korea in the 1920s and '30s. His family held traditional Confucianist beliefs, but converted to Christianity and joined the Presbyterian Church. Moon says he had a vision or revelation of Jesus while praying atop a small mountain. He says that Jesus asked him to complete the unfinished task of establishing God's kingdom on Earth and bring peace to the world.

When he was 19 he criticized Japanese rule over Korea in a graduation ceremony speech. After the Second World War, in Communist-dominated northern Korea, Moon was arrested and sent to a labor camp. Moon credits his survival to God's protection. It was the U.S. military that rescued Moon, when they pushed into northern Korea in late 1950. Moon fled to the south, and in the southern-most city of Pusan, during the great impoverishment that had accompanied war, he built a church of mud and cardboard boxes.

Moon is said to have had an exaggerated view of his place in the world. He is said to have claimed that he was fulfilling Jesus' unfinished mission, which set him apart from other Christian Koreans also living in dire circumstances. And to move Jesus' unfinished mission forward he put on paper what he described as Divine Principle, which was to become the basic textbook of his movement. Divine Principle was Moon's interpretation of Judeo-Christian history: God as the creator and source of truth, beauty and goodness -- God's purpose. And Moon's purpose, expressed in Divine Principle, was restoring the world to God's Ideal (what the Jehovah's Witnesses and others expected to come with Armageddon). In 1954, Moon's church was formally and legally established in South Korea's capital, Seoul, its name: The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity.

Moon's church grew during the restlessness of the 1960s, when many were searching for a spiritual home. Moon devotees were active on the Berkeley campus, and this writer was approached by a charming young woman who rose from a table in "Red Square" walked twenty yards and invited him to a dinner. At the dinner was a house full of sober and polite people, acting quite normal. The charming woman had many others to talk to. There was no sign of drugs that were then invading party-life in Berkeley. Unaccustomed to being around people who attended church, I detected church-going emotions, and feeling alone, I left after nibbling a little rice. Rather than feeling alone, others in the house seemed to enjoy each other's company, a benefit no doubt to the movement.

Moon's anti-Communism and his having benefited from U.S. military action put him in sympathy with the Republican side of politics in the United States. So did his almost Confucian emphasis on the importance of the family over the individual. In 1974 the Reverend Moon supported President Richard Nixon during Nixon's dark days of the Watergate scandal. The Unification Church took full-page ads in major newspapers defending President Richard M. Nixon. Church members prayed and fasted in support of Nixon for three days in front of the United States Capitol, under the motto: "Forgive, Love and Unite." And on February 1, 1974 Nixon publicly thanked them for their support and officially received Moon.

Moon's appeals for the beleaguered Nixon were met with scorn. He became a target for the media. Allegations from Korea were dug up. Moon was portrayed as a hypnotist and an agent of a foreign government. His church was described as a cult, a label that separated it from what the term's users considered a legitimate faith. Cults were said to use brainwashing. There were kidnappings. Thomas Ward was kidnapped and held 35 days against his will during which attempts were made to "deprogram" him and make him renounce Reverend Moon's teachings. Ward escaped and sued.

Back in 1974-1976, Moon talked about setting up a global infrastructure so that when the world economy faltered, "we would be there to feed people and give them jobs."

Moon made major speeches in 1976, one in Yankee Stadium in New York City and another on the ground of the capital's Washington Monument. Moon spoke on "God's Hope for America" to a crowd that he said included "representatives from all over the world." He continued in a speech that today can be read online:

Today we are living in an age when we must look at every individual and every nation as vital components of the world. In our world, there are basically two ways of life. One is the selfish way of life, and the other is the unselfish way of life where one thinks beyond himself and his family and lives for the greater purpose of the nation and the world. Throughout history, whether in the East or West, those who played important roles were public-minded or selfless persons. The well-being of the family should come before that of the individual; the nation should come before the family; the world before the nation, and God before the world. This is the philosophy of the selfless way of life. The righteous men and women and saints in history were those people who selflessly sacrificed themselves for God and mankind. Jesus Christ was indeed the supreme example of such a righteous man.

In 1982, when hostility to the Unification Church was intense, Moon was convicted by the U.S. government for filing false federal income tax returns and conspiracy. Moon was forced to have a jury trial, which he did not want. Moon supporters saw it as politically motivated and a hostile exploitation of circumstances that prosecutors misused. Based on the case, reporter Carlton Sherwood wrote the book Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Moon spent 18 months in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. Having endured imprisonment in North Korea, Moon had known much more severe persecution, and he was a believer in the United State and is said to have done his time and his prison work with diligence and good cheer.

In 2002, during the 20th anniversary party for the Times, Moon said, "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."

In 2003, Korean Unification Church members started a political party in South Korea. It was named "The Party for God, Peace, Unification, and Home."