Sun Myung Moon

File:Sun Myung Moon 2005.jpg

Sun Myung Moon in 2005.

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon (born February 25, 1920, lunar: January 6, 1920) founded the Unification Church (later renamed Family Federation for World Peace and Unification) on May 1, 1954, in Seoul, South Korea. Moon is the originator and co-author of the Divine Principle and with his wife, Hak Ja Han, he is co-leader of the Unification Movement, which includes the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace (IIFWP), Universal Peace Federation, and many other organizations. He has said that he is "humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent." He is also well-known for holding, since 1960, Blessing ceremonies, which are often called "mass weddings"; and for founding the Washington Times newspaper in 1982.

Name and forms of address

Sun Myung Moon's birth name was Moon Yong-myung (문용명, 文龍明), and he changed his given name upon reaching adulthood (to Sun-myung). The Hanja for moon (문, 文), the reverend's surname, means "word" or "literature" in Korean. The character sun (선, 鮮), composed of "fish" and "lamb" (symbols of Christianity), means "fresh." The character myung (명, 明), composed of "sun" and "moon," (which was part of his given name), means "bright." Together, sun-myung means "make clear." So the full name can be taken to mean "the word made clear." In a speech where he explained this, he concluded, "My name is prophetic."

Unification Church members call Rev. Moon "Father" (short for "True Father"). Some ministers who have recently come to associate themselves with the Unification Movement have taken to calling him "Father Moon". Similar titles are used for his wife.

At scientific or other scholarly conferences, the form "Dr. Moon" has been used since Rev. Moon received an honorary doctorate from Shaw Divinity School.

Early biography

Life in Korea

File:Sun-Myung-Moon-Prayer.jpg

Sun Myung Moon in prayer, probably in the 1970s

Moon was born in Sangsa-ri (上思里, lit. "high-thought village"), Deogun-myon, Jeongju-gun, North P'yŏng'an Province, Korea (now in North Korea) to Moon Kyung-yoo and Kim Kyung-gye. The Moon family held traditional Confucianist beliefs, but converted to Christianity when he was around 10 years old.

On Easter morning, April 17, 1935, when he was 16 (in Korean age reckoning), Moon says he had a vision or revelation of Jesus while praying atop a small mountain. He says that Jesus implored him to complete his mission of saving all of humankind.

Moon's high school years were spent at a boys' boarding school in Seoul, and later in Japan, where he studied electrical engineering. After the end of World War II, he returned to Korea and began preaching his message.

Moon was arrested in 1946 by North Korean officials. The church states that the charges stemmed from the jealousy and resentment of other church pastors after parishioners stopped tithing to their old churches upon joining Sun Myung Moon's congregation. Police beat him and left him for dead, but a teenage disciple, Won Pil Kim, nursed him back to health.

Moon was arrested again and was given a five-year sentence in 1948 to the Heung-Nam labor camp, where prisoners were routinely worked to death on short rations. Moon credits his own survival to God's protection over his life, and his habit of saving half his meager water ration for washing the toxic chemicals off his skin after long days work bagging and loading chemical fertilizer with his bare hands. After serving 34 months of his sentence, he was released in 1950 when UN troops advanced on the camp and the guards fled.

Moon was jailed briefly on counterfeiting charges during the Korean War when, shortly after escaping from North Korea, he tried to spend some North Korean currency in South Korea. He was released after his former kindergarten teacher vouched for him. He was also charged with draft evasion; these charges were eventually dropped, after it was determined that Moon was in a North Korean prison camp during the war. Later he would explain to his followers that as a man of God, he never wanted to be in a position where he would be required to kill his fellow men.

In 1954, he registered the 'Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity in Seoul' (also known as the Unification Church).

Marriage

Moon married Hak Ja Han, his third wife, soon after she turned 17 years old, in a ceremony called the "Holy Marriage." His first wife had left him due to conflicts over what he saw as his messianic role. Han, called "Mother" or "True Mother" by followers, and her husband together are referred to as the "True Parents" by members of the Unification Church.

Hak Ja Han gave birth to 14 children; her second daughter died in infancy. The family is known in the church as the "True Family" and the children as the "True Children."

Shortly after their marriage they presided over a Blessing Ceremony for 36 couples, the first of many such ceremonies.

Leading the Unification Church overseas

1980s

U.S. Tax Case

Moon was imprisoned in the United States for willfully filing false Federal income tax returns and conspiracy.

IRS investigation

Upon arriving in the United States, Moon had established an account at Chase Manhattan Bank with approximately $1 million on deposit. Some of this money went to support his family, and was recorded as salary on his personal income tax returns. The funds were transferred to the Unification Church upon its incorporation. Moon did not take a deduction for donating the hundreds of thousands of dollars remaining in the Chase account. Justice Department investigators considered this a sign that Moon and his church both clearly considered the money to have been church property all the time. They note that he would have saved considerable money if he had taken a deduction.

After personnel from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) spent two years poring over all the church's financial records, three Justice Department officials independently concluded that there was no wrongdoing. Moreover, they emphasized that the amount of possible tax liability was too small (less than $7,500 per year over a three-year period) to merit prosecution.

Federal prosecution

In 1982, Moon was charged with three counts of willfully filing false Federal income tax returns (for the years 1973, 1974, and 1975) under 26 U.S.C. § 7206, and one count of conspiracy -- under 18 U.S.C. § 371 -- to file false income tax returns, to obstruct justice, to make false statements to government officials, and to make false statements to a grand jury.

The charges stated that Moon failed to declare as income (and pay taxes on) $112,000 in earned interest in a Chase Manhattan bank account, and on the receipt of $50,000 of corporate stock. The prosecution maintained that both the bank account and stock were his personal property.

One of the defenses used at trial was that the funds were not really his, but were held in trust for members of the Japanese Unification Church. The United States church had only about 300 members at the time and had not yet incorporated. Moon claimed that, after using a small portion of those funds for his family's living expenses (and declaring the portion used on his income tax returns), he transferred the balance to the Unification Church of America after its incorporation. Holding church funds in a minister's name is a fairly commonplace action, particularly in small churches, and many churches filed amicus curiae briefs in Moon's support.

There was quite a bit of sentiment against Moon and his church in the United States at that time. Moon and his supporters felt that they were being specifically targeted because of their religious beliefs and practices. The judge forbade any mention of religion at the trial and denied Moon's request to have a bench trial..

The jury did not accept the defense's contention that the funds in question were being held in trust for the church Rev. Moon was building.

Moon was convicted on all counts in 1982, and the convictions were upheld on appeal. He was given an 18-month sentence and a $15,000 fine.

He served 13 months of the sentence at Danbury minimum-security prison and because of good behavior was released to a halfway house before returning home.

Supporters regard the tax case as politically motivated. The prosecutors offered to drop the case in return that Moon surrendered his green card, which he chose not to do.

A Senate subcommittee, chaired by Senator Orrin Hatch, conducted its own investigation into Reverend Moon's tax case and published its findings in a report which concluded:

We accused a newcomer to our shores of criminal and intentional wrongdoing for conduct commonly engaged in by a large percentage of our own religious leaders, namely, the holding of church funds in bank accounts in their own names. Catholic priests do it. Baptist ministers do it, and so did Sun Myung Moon.

No matter how we view it, it remains a fact that we charged a non-English-speaking alien with criminal tax evasion on the first tax returns he filed in this country. It appears that we didn't give him a fair chance to understand our laws. We didn't seek a civil penalty as an initial means of redress. We didn't give him the benefit of any doubt. Rather, we took a novel theory of tax liability of less than $10,000 and turned it into a guilty verdict and eighteen months in a federal prison.

I do feel strongly, after my subcommittee has carefully and objectively reviewed this [Reverend Moon's tax] case from both sides, that injustice rather than justice has been served. The Moon case sends a strong signal that if one's views are unpopular enough, this country will find a way not to tolerate, but to convict. I don't believe that you or I or anyone else, no matter how innocent, could realistically prevail against the combined forces of our Justice Department and judicial branch in a case such as Reverend Moon's.

Under the Schengen Treaty the Reverend Moon is banned from traveling to major continental European countries. Several Schengen nations have, however, overruled that ban. In November 2005, during a visit in 13 European Countries - part of a 100 City World Tour ending in December 2005 - to deliver a keynote address at the inauguration of the Universal Peace Federation, Sun Myung Moon and his wife were allowed to enter The Netherlands and Denmark.

Other 1980s events

The second son of Hak Ja Han and Rev. Moon, Heung-Jin Moon, died in 1984 from injuries sustained in a car crash in December 1983; a jack-knifed truck entered into his lane while he was driving two friends. According to the two other people in the car, Heung-Jin swerved to take the brunt of the impact on himself and saved the lives of others. .

In Washington, Moon found common ground with strongly anti-Communist leaders of the 1980s who appreciated Moon's fierce opposition to the USSR and support of President Richard Nixon. He found a fellow opponent of Communism in Ronald Reagan and Moon reportedly spent a billion dollars over the next twenty years, most of it in the Washington D. C. area, to establish and support the influential conservative newspaper The Washington Times, which he called in 2002, 'the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world'.

1990s

Politics

Rev. Moon initially opposed U.S. President George H. W. Bush's 1990 plan to use military force against Iraq (which had then recently invaded its oil-rich neighbor, Kuwait). Moon wrote a letter to Bush that said, 'George Bush, President of the United States, you cannot win this battle without the help of God Almighty'. A letter to Mikhail Gorbachev in January of 1991 asked the Soviet leader to spend forty days in peace negotiations.

Fundraising scandal and lawsuit in Japan

In the 1990s, thousands of Japanese elderly people claimed to have been defrauded of their life savings by Moon followers' spiritual sales, a civil suit upheld in 1997 by the Supreme Court of Japan.

Daughter-in-law's book questions role as "True Parent"

Moon's oldest son Hyo Jin Moon had repeated problems with substance abuse, pornography, infidelity, violence, and run-ins with the law. When he was 19, Sun Myung Moon had picked a 15 year-old wife for him, Nansook Hong, who bore him 5 children. After years of abuse, she left the Moon estate with her children and in 1998 published a tell-all book, In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family (ISBN 0-316-34816-3). For many Unification Church members, this book was a revealing portrait of the way Sun Myung Moon and his wife had raised their children, and caused a great deal of soul-searching. (See for example this review of the book by a church member.)

Son's possible suicide

Moon's sixth son, Phillip Young Jin, may have committed suicide on October 27, 1999. He fell to his death from the seventeenth floor of a Reno, Nevada, hotel. Moon dispatched three top aides to Nevada to investigate his son's death and prepare the body for burial in Reno. After Moon concluded that his son did not commit suicide, the casket was exhumed and a formal Unification funeral was held in Seoul on November 10, 1999. Young Jin was not heavily involved in the church and did not give speeches or stand on stage.

2000s

In 2001, Roman Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo was married to Maria Sung, a Korean acupuncturist, by Rev. Moon. This attracted world-wide media attention.

In February 2003, Moon and Han re-affirmed their wedding vows after 43 years of marriage in a ceremony named the 'Holy Marriage Blessing Ceremony of the Parents of Heaven and Earth.'

Some of Moon's followers are indirectly supporting George W. Bush's faith-based initiative at the grass-roots level, due to a common interest in increasing religious participation in government-funded social services, and in encouraging sexual abstinence as a solution to unwed pregnancy over an emphasis on contraceptive promotion. By 2003, some Unification Church members were working for their longtime goal of abstinence in New Jersey public schools, on a government abstinence-based sex education grant.

That same year some Christian ministers began joining Rev. Moon's 'take down the cross' campaign theme which was started in the belief that the cross was a symbol of religious intolerance to many non-Christians, especially Jews and Muslims.

In 2004, at a March 23 ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Rev. Moon's head. This event attracted a lot of attention in the media. (see article: Sun Myung Moon Coronation)

120 City World Speaking Tour

In September 12, 2005, at the age of 85, Moon inaugurated the Universal Peace Federation with a 120-city world speaking tour. At each city, Moon delivered his speech entitled "God's Ideal Family - the Model for World Peace".

Daughter on Survival of the Richest

In 2006 the Moons' daughter, Yeon Jin (nick-named Kat), was a contestant on the WB network show, "Survival of the Richest".

Views on Communism

After the end of the Japanese occupation of Korea, Moon was abused and tortured by the North Korean government. Some writers point out that Rev. Moon would be anti-communist anyway because communism denies the existence of God. Other writers have asserted that Moon's anti-communism is a reaction to his personal suffering, as opposed to having any spiritual or religious basis. Many critics have seized upon this point of view as evidence for their claim that the Unification Movement has primarily a political basis; thus, they argue, his Unification Church is a cult as opposed to a religion.

Others argue that the only reason the Communists put him on trial and sentenced him to a death camp was because of his religious teachings. After an 11-month study of the worldwide Unification Church, Distinguished Philosophy Professor Frederick Sontag (whose view of the church is not favorable) concluded that "one thing is sure: the church has a genuine spiritual basis."

A German court found that

Moon, who was born and grew up in a Japan-occupied Korea, started to preach his religious teachings back in 1945 or 1946 before he personally encountered difficulties with communism. Following Moon's torture and imprisonment by the North Korean communists from 1947 to 1950 he was not reported to have engaged primarily in political agitation, but rather in daily worship. Furthermore, he was barred from the Presbyterian Church as early as 1948 owing to his different religious teachings. These facts alone prove that Moon's teachings have a religious foundation and do not result solely from his personal experience with communism.

Rev. Chung Hwan Kwak, of the Unification Church wrote,

'In the 1960's he spoke about communism as having only 70 years to prosper, from 1917 to 1987, after which time it would decline rapidly. In 1984 he asked me to convene an international conference in Geneva on the theme, "The Fall Of The Soviet Empire." Many leaders advised him not to use this title. But he insisted, and the conference, on that theme, was held. A few short years later, communism was turned upside down.'

In the 1990s Reverend Moon visited some of the formerly and some of the still communist nations. In 1990, he organized a major meeting of government and media in Moscow. This fulfilled a pledge he had made in 1976 that one day he would organize a "great rally for God in Moscow." During this conference, on their thirtieth wedding anniversary, Reverend and Mrs. Moon met with President Mikhail Gorbachev. They gave several interviews together, televised and in print. Reverend Moon traveled to North Korea in December 1991, and met with President Kim Il Sung, under whose regime he had been tortured and sent to a labor camp.

General criticism

Some, in the media and elsewhere, have criticized Rev. Moon for having created a cult of personality, a double standard for the use of money for his family (as contrasted with that of the members), an apparent disregard for laws which seem to interfere with his plans, a willingness to withhold what some would consider vital information from a membership that sacrifices a great deal to devote themselves wholeheartedly to his teachings and organizations, and many other charges and accusations.

Prison terms

Opponents often cite the fact that Moon has served time in prison for tax evasions and has been banned from traveling to some countries as proof that he is illegitimate, and has been called a cult leader. Moon's supporters dismiss the prison terms and travel bans as examples of persecution, arguing in particular that Jesus himself was persecuted and ultimately executed by the Roman government.

Political donations and influence

Moon, although he has never run for political office, has an extensive history of making political donations through the various conduits he controls such as the Women’s Federation for World Peace and the Washington Times Foundation, with his money flowing through the religious right in particular. A number of journalists have alleged that this is to buy influence and access to government, lobbying George H.W. Bush for a pardon for his 1982 felony tax evasion conviction for example.

The Bush family has a long history with Moon. In the mid-1990s George H.W. Bush accepted millions of dollars from Moon's Women’s Federation for World Peace to speak on his behalf around the world, a fact that Moon touted to his advantage in his media outlets.

In June 2006 the Houston Chronicle reported that in 2004 Moon’s Washington Times Foundation gave $1 million to the Greater Houston Community Foundation, which in turn acted as a conduit for donations to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library.

Robert Parry, an American investigative journalist, claims that Rev. Moon exerts considerable influence over the Bush family and thus indirectly over the government of the United States.[1]

Other issues

Rev. Moon, perhaps one of the more controversial current religious leaders, has been criticized by a wide range of opponents. Some civil libertarians consider his call for unity between religion and politics a violation of democracy's separation of church and state, and that he would crush individualism. The leading civil libertarian organization in the USA, the American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus curiae brief in support of Rev. Moon during his tax case, however.

Some Jews have objected to his doctrine that the Holocaust is partly an indirect consequence for some important Jewish leaders, especially John the Baptist, not supporting Jesus which contributed to his murder by the Roman government. See Unification Church and anti-Semitism. Moon has invested much effort for the cause of reconciliation in Israel between the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), by organizing peace pilgrimages with religious and political leaders.

Gay rights groups object to his uncompromising calls for a heterosexual-only society. For Moon, it is equally unacceptable for relationships between multiple partners, including heterosexual couples, as he believes it is against the will of God and rooted in the Fall of Man. Moon is implacably opposed to homosexuality and multiple heterosexual relationships, calling gays "dung-eating dogs" who would have no place in a "peace kingdom." He also has stated "There is no homosexuality in the animal world. It was made by Satan. Satan's armaments are drugs and free sex."

The Unification Church has rejected foes' claims of coercive mind control. The church has had brushes with deprogrammers and claimed that they were "kidnapping" members out of the movement.

Some Christians criticize some of Moon's statements, which they feel are insulting to Jesus, most notably those from a speech made on Christmas Day 1994. Moon stated at one part "In order to restore the failure of Jesus Christ, as a tribal messiah, all Blessed couples need to restore 160 families so that you will be able to inherit Father's foundation." Later on in the same speech, he states "The Fall of man took place in the family of Adam and this represented the first failure of Adam. The second failure of Adam was Jesus Christ death on the cross." Some critics of the Unification Church question whether it is a Christian organization, and ask if these statements are blasphemous as they state Jesus' mission was "a failure", and also ask if, by these statements, Moon considers himself superior to Jesus Christ, God and The Bible.

Unificationists respond that Jesus' feelings are not hurt by someone trying to be equal to or better than him, pointing to a saying by Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. -John 14:12

Other Christians answer that such reasoning is invalid as that verse was being applied to the Apostles.

Sociological views

Some sociologists and scholars of new religious movements have written that Moon's leadership of the Unification Church is based on charismatic authority.

Quotes

"Through True Love our family shall accomplish the True Family of the Filial Child, the Loyal Subject, the Saint and the Holy Child of the Cheon Il Guk (God's Kingdom on earth.)"
- Church Motto, Sun Myung Moon, January 1, 2003,,

"As citizens of Cheon Il Guk, please have the wisdom to protect and love nature. Return to nature and enjoy a life of liberation and complete freedom. To love nature is to love God and humanity. When human life resonates with nature, human character can blossom in perfection. The flowers of a true culture of heart, a true artistic world, will bloom. It will be the Garden of Eden, the original ideal where human beings and all creation live in complete harmony and express their original nature." Cheon Il Guk is the Ideal Heavenly Kingdom of Eternal Peace June 13, 2006

"This country desperately needs a God-centered president, senators and congressmen. America's intellectual establishment is liberal, godless, secular, humanistic, and anti-religious. We are declaring war against three main enemies: godless communism, Christ-less American liberalism, and secular-humanistic morality. They are the enemies of God, the True Parents, the Unification Church, all of Christianity, and all religions. We are working to mobilize a united front against them. "
- Rev. Sun Myung Moon, August 29, 1985

"But when it comes to our age, we must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world. So, we cannot separate the political field from the religious. Democracy was born because people ruled the world, like the Pope does. Then, we come to the conclusion that God has to rule the world, and God loving people have to rule the world -- and that is logical. We have to purge the corrupted politicians, and the sons of God must rule the world. The separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most."
- Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Third Directors' Conference, Master Speaks, May 17, 1973

"After 7,000 biblical years--6,000 years of restoration history plus the millennium, the time of completion--communism will fall in its 70th year. Here is the meaning of the year 1978. Communism, begun in 1917, could maintain itself approximately 60 years and reach its peak. So 1978 is the border line and afterward communism will decline; in the 70th year it will be altogether ruined. This is true. Therefore, now is the time for people who are studying communism to abandon it.” “The Way of Restoration” given in Paris in April, 1972 reprinted in the book God’s Will and the World published in 1985

"Modern war has occurred primarily in the Western culture. Western culture is short-tempered in a sense, always resorting to showdowns with weapons. It originated in the cold North with hunters who killed to eat and then moved on. The tradition of Vikings and pirates is strong in Western culture, and when Western culture moves into a new territory it is accompanied by rifles and guns. You don't like to hear this because you are Westerners, but someone must wake you up." "New Morning of Glory" January 22, 1978 Belvedere, New York Translator - Bo Hi Pak

"There is no doubt that this kingdom is one that the children of God's direct lineage can reign over by upholding the heavenly decree. In other words, it is a nation in which they rule on behalf of God's commands and kingship. Democracy and communism cannot exist in such a kingdom. Once established, it will remain as an eternal state system. Considering these things, isn't it mortifying that you have not yet become the citizens of that kingdom?"
- Sun Myung Moon, March 4, 2005

External links

Supportive views

• Rev. Moon's Teachings: introduction and Divine Principle (regarded as main scripture).
• Official biography at US church home page
• Universal Peace Federation, aka Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace.
• Unofficial website of the Unification Church, which contains information and past speeches by Moon.
• Information about revelations/testimonies in connection with Sun Myung Moon.
• True Love King: website about Rev. & Mrs. Sun Myung Moon
• landSlide - The Unification Movement and/or Sun Myung Moon
• Rev. Moon banned from Germany - church activist argues that ban is unfair

Critical views

• Dark Side of Rev. Moon
• Bush and the Moon Men
• Moon Shadow: The Rev, Bush & North Korea
• Where in Washington, D.C. is Sun Myung Moon?
• Sun Myung Moon's son Hyun Jin Moon assaults Tim Folzenlogen

• Former Moon follower recounts 10 years under Sun Myung Moon in his book - Site includes book excerpt.

Balanced or neutral views

• An introduction to Unificationism (Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church) including both support and criticism from current and former Unificationists.
• Sun Myung Moon, The Early Years, 1920-53, unofficial biography by Michael Breen, a Seoul-based author and journalist.
• Holy Mackeral! Guess who controls Portland's sushi supply?