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Unification Movement International

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The Unification Church is a new religious movement started by Sun Myung Moon in Korea in the 1940s.

The beliefs of the church are explained in the book the Divine Principle and draw from the Bible as well as Asian traditions and include belief in a universal God; in the creation of a literal Kingdom of Heaven on earth; in the universal salvation of all people, good and evil as well as living and dead; that Jesus did not come to die; and that the Lord of the Second Coming must be a man born in Korea early in the 20th century who must marry and have children.

In 1954, the group was formally and legally established in Seoul, South Korea as The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC), reflecting Moon's original vision as an ecumenical movement. In the face of opposition by established churches, however, it developed not as a movement, but as a separate organization or religion and became known as the Unification Church.

Members are found in over 50 countries, with the majority living in South Korea or Japan.[1] Estimates of the number of its members range from 250,000 to 3,000,000.[2]

In the 1990s, Moon began to establish various peace organizations, including the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, which took over many of the spiritual and organizational functions of the church. In many parts of the world, the movement was incorporated as HSA-UWC, and that name is found on legal documents.

History

The Unification Church (UC) believes that Jesus appeared to Mun Yong-myong (his birth name) on April 17, 1935, when Moon was 15 years old (16 years old in Korean age reckoning), and asked him to accomplish the work left unaccomplished after his crucifixion. After a period of prayer and consideration, Moon accepted the mission, later changing his name to Mun Son-myong (Sun Myung Moon).

The beginnings of the Church's official teachings, the Divine Principle, first saw written form as Wolli Wonbon in 1946. (The second, expanded version, Wolli Hesol, or Explanation of the Divine Principle, was not published until 1957; for a more complete account, see Divine Principle.) Sun Myung Moon preached in northern Korea after the end of World War II and was imprisoned by the communist regime in North Korea in 1946. He was released from prison, along with many North Koreans, with the advance of American and United Nations forces during the Korean War and built his first church from mud and cardboard boxes as a refugee in Pusan.

Moon formally founded his organization in Seoul, Korea, on May 1, 1954, calling it "The Holy Spirit(ual) Association for the Unification of World Christianity." The name alludes to Moon's stated intention for his organization to be a unifying force for all Christian denominations. The phrase "Holy Spirit Association" has the sense in the original Korean of "Heavenly Spirits" and not the "Holy Spirit" of Christianity. "Unification" has political as well as religious connotations, in keeping with the church's teaching that restoration must be complete, both spiritual and physical.

In 1958, Moon sent missionaries to Japan, and in 1959, to America.

Moon himself moved to the United States in 1971. UC missionaries found success in San Francisco first, and by 1973 missions had spread to most of the nation's most populous cities.

Moon took full-page ads in major newspapers defending President Richard M. Nixon at the height of the Watergate Controversy, based on the principle that God works through designated central figures throughout history, and that America played a crucial central role in the ongoing Providence of God on the world level.

In 1975, Moon sent out missionaries to 120 countries to spread the Unification Church around the world and also in part, he said, to act as "lightning rods" to receive "persecution."

The theme of anti-communism was clearly expressed in two rallies, first at Yankee Stadium in New York, and in September on the grounds of the Washington Monument in the nation's capital in the bicentennial year 1976, where Moon spoke of "God's Hope for America." Attempts to court established Christianity and the conservative right were for the most part unsuccessful until a degree of success followed the publication of The Washington Times (founded 1982) and the Interdenominational Conferences for Clergy, beginning in 1985.

Eileen Barker, a sociologist specializing in religious topics, studied church members in England and in 1984 published her findings in her book The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? Barker wrote that she rejected the "brainwashing" theory as an explanation for conversion to the Unification Church.

In 1978, a Congressional subcommittee issued a report that included the results of its investigation into the UC, and into other organizations associated with Moon. Among its other conclusions, the subcommittee's report stated that "Among the goals of the Moon Organization is the establishment of a worldwide government in which the separation of church and state would be abolished and which would be governed by Moon and his followers."[3]

Celibacy and marriage

The Unification Church uses the term "absolute love" to refer to its teaching about sexual morality, which is essentially abstinence before marriage and fidelity thereafter.

During the church's period of early growth (1970–85 in America), most church members lived in intentional communities. The majority of members' marriages were arranged by Moon personally. In recent years this rule was relaxed, with parents often helping to arrange their children's choice of spouse and church leaders suggesting matches for members.

Many members considered it the ultimate test of their faith to accept a match arranged by Moon, and the church's increasingly large marriage blessings have attracted much notice. These large group weddings, dubbed "mass marriage" by the press, are the one feature of the Church that is perhaps the most unusual to Westerners. Moon has presided over marriages of groups of hundreds or even of tens of thousands of couples at once. Many of the arranged marriages paired people from different countries, races, and cultures. Moon teaches that such "exchange marriages" will help build connections among the divided human family, as people stretch their hearts to love spouse, in-laws, and children.

Moon teaches that his Blessing cleanses believers of original sin.

Several church-related groups are working to promote sexual abstinence until marriage and fidelity in marriage, both among church members and the general public.

The Unification Theological Seminary in Barrytown, New York was founded in 1975.

The Washington Times newspaper in Washington D. C. is owned by church members and considers Rev. Moon to be its founder.

The Professors World Peace Academy was founded on May 6, 1973, in Korea, by Moon declaring its intent to "contribute to the solutions of urgent problems facing our modern civilization and to help resolve the cultural divide between East and West". PWPA now has chapters in over one hundred countries.

In the United States the church and church members own fishing interests, which are for-profit businesses and pay taxes. The biggest are in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Alaska and Alabama. In Kodiak, Alaska the church "runs a fleet of fishing boats ... [and is] the largest private employer" in Kodiak. [1]

The church itself or members also play roles in a variety of other business including Atlantic Video, a Massachusetts Avenue video post-production facility; the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Connecticut; a cable television channel called the AmericanLife TV Network, the firearms manufacturer Kahr Arms, and the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan. Church members in other nations have also founded many businesses.

In the United States the church was instrumental in the formation of the American Clergy Leadership Council (ACLC), an association of mainly African American Baptist and Pentecostal clergy.

The Unification Church was a major financial backer of the World Anti-Communist League.

In the 1980s church members in South America, following Moon's direction, founded the anti-communist organization CAUSA.

Controversy

The Unification Church is among the more controversial religious organizations in the world today. Governments of most countries have recognized it as a bona fide religion entitled to tax exempt status. (In the United States tax exempt status has nothing to do with being a "bona fide religion".) A number of opponents denounce it as a cult.

Cult of personality: money, aggrandizement

A frequently heard criticism of the Unification Church (UC) is that it's not really a church at all but a cult. By the sociological definition of "cult", the UC may no longer qualify (has grown too big, is less in tension with the larger society than in the 70s, or may in fact have always had too many beliefs in common with mainstream Christianity), in spite of its reputation for having some bizarre features, as emphasized by numerous media reports [2]. The value-neutral sociological identification is not usually what critics mean, however. The Anti-Cult Movement and the Christian countercult movement have definitions that suit their purposes[not specific enough to verify], and that some scholars consider to be arbitrary.[4] Most sociologists of religion prefer the term "new religious movement" (or "NRM"). Other scholars find the term "cult" to be useful if the term is carefully defined.[5]

Some detractors have claimed the church's main purpose is to enrich Moon personally or to advance (what they suppose are) his political aspirations. In response, Moon, who has never run for public office, asserts that he has no political aspirations and ridicules the idea that his followers are stupid enough to sacrifice themselves for his personal aggrandizement: "They are smart, idealistic and determined." (Newsweek International interview with Chesnoff and Nagorsky, 1973). There has also been much criticism of his ties to the Republican Party.

The Japanese Supreme Court upheld a 1997 fraud charge against the Unification Church of Japan with regard to certain fundraising practices, but it has also upheld the church's status as a religion whose members have a right to practice their beliefs.

Recruitment and brainwashing

In the United States in the 1970s Unificationists, the media reported on their high-pressure recruitment methods and sometimes said that the church separated vulnerable college students from their families through the use of brainwashing or mind control.[6]

Moon dismissed these criticisms, stating in 1976 that he had received many thank-you letters from parents whose children became closer to them after joining the movement. (In 1977, Moon had a notice posted in all Unification Churches in America, mandating that all members write their families no less than once every 10 days.)

Moon and his wife were banned from entry into Germany and the other 14 Schengen treaty countries, on the grounds that they are leaders of a sect that endangered the personal and social development of young people. The Netherlands and a few other Schengen states let Moon and his wife enter their countries in 2005. In 2006 the German Supreme Court overturned the ban. [7]

Political activities

See: Politics and the Unification Church

Critics of the Unification Church have accused the organization of being closely involved with covert CIA-authored operations against Communism in Korea during the 1960s, largely due to similarity in names of the actual Korean CIA director and Won Pil Kim, the teenage follower who accompanied Sun Myung Moon on his journey from North Korea to the safety of Pusan during the Korean War, and who became the first long-time member. The Church is known to have been involved with weapon and munitions manufacturing in Korea since the 1960s, as documented in a 1978 United States Congressional Report on the Unification Church. The explanation given by Korean Unification Church members is that all manufacturers seeking to do business in South Korea were required to supply the military, and the actual products made were shell casings.

From 1977 to 1978, Moon's group was the subject of an investigation by the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the United States House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations, chaired by Rep. Donald Fraser of Minnesota. The report issued by the subcommittee alleged widespread fraud as well as ties to the Koreagate influence-peddling scandal. The report asserted that the Unification Church and other related groups constituted a single, monolithic "Moon Organization". Like-minded critics accuse the church of working to further a political agenda in both the Far East and in the United States. Sun Myung Moon's controversial religious and political Unification Movement, which includes not only the Unification Church but an enormous constellation of civic organizations, including the Washington Times foundation, allied politically with evangelical Christians such as Jerry Falwell and Tim LaHaye. Advocates adhering to this point of view have challenged the church's tax-exempt status in the US, arguing that the political activities of church-related groups comprise an impermissible intrusion of the church into political areas.

Defenders of the church dismiss this argument, on the grounds that the Unification movement is properly divided into distinct organizations, each of which should be judged by the laws relating to its type. Thus, church-owned businesses pay taxes, while the church itself largely need not. Church missionaries who decided to campaign for Ronald Reagan, had to resign from church leadership positions (at least on paper) while conducting their non-church political activities (private communication from Dan Peterson and Tom Carter). Moon has said that his order to Unification Church members to support Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign in New York City helped Reagan win the presidential election that year.

The church-related Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), which has a different type of tax-exempt charter, has more freedom than the church itself to engage in political speech and hold demonstrations on political topics. Church treasurer Kevin Smith said (in 1992) that the church is not permitted by US law to give any money to CARP, a fact that even some low-level church leaders might not even be aware of.[not specific enough to verify]

South America

Authorities in Brazil and Paraguay have expressed concerns over the Church's purchases in recent years of large tracts of land in South America, ranging in the hundreds of thousands of acres.

In May of 2002, federal police in Brazil conducted a number of raids on organizations linked to Sun Myung Moon. In a statement, the police stated that the raids were part of a broad investigation into allegations of tax evasion and immigration violations by Moon's organization. The Moon-funded Association of Families for Unification and World Peace was the target of the raids, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and the personal residence of Moon's primary representative in Brazil, Reverend Kim Yoon-sang. As of 2007 no legal action has been taken by the Brazilian government resulting from their investigations.

Accusations of anti-Semitism

See Unification Church and anti-Semitism.

In 1976, the American Jewish Committee accused Reverend Moon of anti-Semitism, based on his writings. Supporters state, however, that he does not regard Jews as being any better or worse than the rest of the human race which he considers to be stained with fallen nature (acquired at the beginning of human history and subsequently augmented by personal, collective, and inherited sin). There are members of most American ethnic groups among the Unification Church membership in the United States, including Jews, some of whom have served in leadership postitions within the church. Jewish non-members work for the Washington Times, the Unification Theological Seminary in Barrytown, NY, and other Unification Church related organizations.

The Tragedy of the Six Marys

In 1993, Chung Hwa Pak released the book Roku Maria no Higeki (Tragedy of the Six Marys) through the Koyu Publishing Co. of Japan. The book contained allegations that Moon conducted sex rituals amongst six married female disciples ("The Six Marys") who were to have prepared the way for the virgin who would marry Moon and become the True Mother. Chung Hwa Pak had left the movement when the book was published and later withdrew the book from print when he rejoined the Unification Church. Before his death Chung Hwa Pak published a second book, The Apostate, and recanted all allegations made in Roku Maria no Higeki.[8]

According to investigative journalist Robert Parry, Pak withdrew the book under intense pressure from the Unification Church, and the allegations made in Roku Maria no Higeki tracked closely with U.S. intelligence reports of the same period and interviews with former church leaders.[9][10] No one has come forward and claimed to be a victim.

References

  1. ^ A Unification Church International Directory lists contact information for 56 countries.
  2. ^ This fact sheet passes along the Unification Church's claim that it has approximately 3 million followers worldwide, but sociologists of religion who have studied the church believe this number is greatly inflated. The Adherents.com site specializes in religious demographics; it also gives direct and indirect reports of the numbers originating from Unification Church sources (1-3 million), as well as one source estimating 250,000, and another estimating "hundreds of thousands."
  3. ^ Investigation of Korean-American Relations; Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Comittee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives
  4. ^ Miller, Timothy. (2003). Religious Movements in the United States: An Informal Introduction. Miller (University of Kansas) writes "If the term ['cult'] does not enable us to distinguish between a pathological group and a legitimate one, then it has no real value. It is the religious equivalent of 'nigger'—it conveys disdain and prejudice without having any valuable content."
  5. ^ Cults, Psychological Manipulation, and Society: International Perspectives - An Overview, Michael D. Langone, paper presented at the AFF Annual Conference, May 14, 1999
    Zablocki defines a cult as "an ideological organization held together by charismatic relationships and demanding total commitment." According to Zablocki, cults are at high risk of becoming abusive to members, in part because members' adulation of charismatic leaders contributes to their becoming corrupted by the power they seek and are accorded. The power these corrupt - or corrupted - leaders come to wield can also result in social harm, such as law-breaking and the undermining of democratic values.
  6. ^ See Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, 1900- . New York: Wilson, 1905- . v.1- .
  7. ^ Report released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. State Dept.
  8. ^ A speech made by Pak titled "Retraction of The Tragedy of the Six Marys" can be found at www.tparents.org.
  9. ^ Dark Side of Rev. Moon: Truth, Legend & Lies
  10. ^ For The Record radio program #491 summary: 4th Interview with Robert Parry

See also

Annotated bibliography

  • Barker, Eileen, The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? (1984) Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK ISBN 0-631-13246-5.
  • Chryssides, George D., The Advent of Sun Myung Moon: The Origins, Beliefs and Practices of the Unification Church (1991) London, Macmillan Professional and Academic Ltd. The author is professor of religious studies at the University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom.
  • Fichter, Joseph H., The Holy Family of Father Moon (1985).
  • Hong, Nansook, In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family. Little Brown & Company; ISBN 0-316-34816-3; (August 1998). The book is written by the ex-wife of Hyo Jin Moon, Reverend Moon's son (to whom she was married, handpicked by Moon, at 15 years of age) and details various abuses she says she suffered from members of the Moon family.
  • Lofland, John, Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith first published Prentice Hall, c/o Pearson Ed, 1966. Reprinted Ardent Media, U.S. ISBN 0-8290-0095-X
  • Matczak, Sebastian, Unificationism: A New Philosophy and World View (Philosophical Questions Series, No 11) (1982) New York: Louvain. The author is a professor of philosophy and a Catholic priest. He taught at the Unification Theological Seminary.
  • Wright, Stuart A., Leaving Cults: The Dynamics of Defection, published by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion: Monograph Series nr. 7 1987 ISBN 0-932566-06-5 (Contains interviews with ex-members of three groups, among others the Unification Church)

Supportive views

Opposing views

Heavenly Deception

Balanced views

News

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