Sun Myung Moon is the founder of a sect called the “Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity”.
It is an organization that mixes Eastern principles: Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist, with Christian doctrines and a good dose of nationalist and anti-communist ideals, as well as some spiritualist and pseudo-scientific teachings. They believe that Jesus was a failure when he died on the cross and that Sung Myun Moon is the present Messiah.
A follower of Moon writes to us: “this is the time in which we await the Messiah, who will come in the flesh, as the first time. God will choose another person, different from Jesus but with the same mission, and he will live with the inspiration of Jesus himself, to continue the mission that he could not complete. We believe that he has already come; he was born practically after the Second World War, he is among us, and he is the REV. SUNG MYUNG MOON”
The Founder
Moon, a North Korean, was born on January 6, 1920. His spiritual vocation, which according to him originated in a vision of Christ at Easter in 1936, led him to move from the Presbyterian Church, to which he belonged, to Pentecostalism and then to found his own sect in 1951.
He was imprisoned in 1948 because of disturbances caused by his preaching; and in 1949 he returned to prison accused of adultery. In 1950 he was set free by the United States government, on account of the Korean War. In 1955 he returned to prison accused of adultery and bigamy.
After four divorces, Moon married, in 1960, an 18-year-old young woman, Han Hak, to whom he gave the names New Eve and True Mother of the Universe.
Moon and his wife would be “the parents of humanity”; his followers, “the members of the family”; and those born in the sect, “the pure men, the sinless ones”. In the 1970s Moon moved to New York and from there began promotional campaigns in the United States and Europe.
A New Messiah
Myung Moon presents himself as the Third Adam, as a new Christ, wiser than Solomon and more charitable than Jesus. He presents himself as the true father of the new humanity and the lord of the second advent.
Referring to his Korean homeland, he calls it a land of faith, the new Jerusalem, and a bastion of the free world; he calls himself the “shining ray” of which the Bible speaks, which, coming out of the East, comes to the West to carry out its work.
Moon has a magnetic force in his words. Although he preaches only in Korean and uses an interpreter, he has won many followers.
His organizing charisma led Moon to found several organizations in North America and Europe to spread Moonist ideals, among them the “Unification of World Christianity”, the “International Federation for Victory over Communism”, the “Freedom Leadership Foundation”, and the “International Cultural Foundation for the Search for Absolute Values”. These present themselves as pioneers of a New Age.
Moon is immensely rich. He himself states that money attracts the contemporary world. Among his properties are arms-manufacturing companies, pharmaceutical-product companies such as the ginseng tonic; he owns newspapers in Washington and New York, and the New Yorker Hotel, converted into a World Mission Center.
His companies include Tong Il Titanium Industrial, Korea Titanium Ltd., Ilhwa Pharmaceutical, and Ilshim Handicraft. There are also hotels and newspapers of Moon’s sect in Latin America.
It is said that the basis of these fortunes was the subsidies of some governments that saw in Moon an ally in the anti-communist struggle, and also the contributions of members of his church, committed to helping “with their blood, their sweat, and their goods”, since every cent obtained is “a victory for God”.
The Moonists
Many of Moon’s followers are young people, attracted by ideals of peace and universal brotherhood, and by the denunciation of everything that is wrong in the world. Many of them have been scandalized by the lack of solid principles in contemporary society. As in most sects, its appeal lies in an apparent promotion of certain values that are in crisis in society. Later, when the adherent is already dependent on the sect, ideas and demands increasingly contrary to Christian morality and faith will be presented to him. By then many are no longer able to discern on their own.
Moon’s Teachings Are Incompatible with Christianity
Jesus Christ: A “Failure”
According to Moon, the first Adam failed in Paradise before the temptation that the devil made to him through Eve. The second Adam, Jesus, according to Moon, died a failure on a cross. The Cross would not have been willed by God, and Christians, by insisting on it, would fall into error. Furthermore, because Jesus did not marry and left no descendants, his work could not be fully affirmed. He triumphed spiritually, but not bodily.
Moon denies that Jesus is God and describes him as a man very open to divine action; to explain this, he uses complicated phrases and expressions, which seem written in that way so as not to scandalize Christians and to draw them slowly into the sect.
All Religions Are a “Failure”
Religions too, not excluding Christianity, have according to Moon been a failure, because, he says, they have not known how to unite the riches of the East with the successful achievements of the West. Moon claims to be the answer to that problem.
For This Sect, Power Is in Moon, a New Messiah Who Conquers Not with Poverty but with Money
The Moonist ideal consists of a religious thought strongly seconded by temporal powers. This union of the spiritual and the temporal should have been carried out by the ancient people of Israel. Since they failed to do so, God chose the Romans, who also failed in their endeavor. Then God set his eyes on the British Empire, and since it failed, the new chosen people is now the United States.
According to Moon, North America is the hope for the present world, and it must serve Moon as a secular arm to help him in his struggle against Marxism and against Islam. He says that the world urgently needs surgery and that he is the doctor; the world is ablaze with hatred and violence, and Moon is the firefighter. That is, he proposes himself as the solution to humanity’s problems. He is a new savior of the world.
Absolute Obedience to Moon
What has most stirred worldwide indignation and provoked condemnatory statements from many bishops has been the seduction of young people, who are taken away from their homes, gathered into communes where they cannot have contact with the outside world, brainwashed, and sent out as missionaries of the sect. It is a psychic violation that can lead to madness or fanaticism.
The obedience demanded of Moon’s followers is total. These phrases of the founder give an idea of it:
“I am a thinker. I am your brain. If you want to unite your effort to mine, you will do so by obeying me strictly. For what I do, I do not do blindly; it is under God’s command.
There will be no complaints or objections about what must be done, until we have established the Kingdom of God on Earth”.
This absolute obedience is not in reference to the Christian faith, revealed by God in Jesus Christ, but absolute obedience to Moon.
Prearranged Marriages
Total obedience goes so far as to hand over to Moon and to the organization the decision about the person with whom one must contract marriage. Famous is the ceremony in which Moon blesses thousands of couples at the same time, and then advises them to observe a more or less lengthy period of conjugal continence.
In the blessing ceremony, Mr. and Mrs. Moon officiate together in order, according to them, to represent God better, in whose likeness man and woman were made. The “grooms” must be at least 24 years old and the “brides” one year younger. Moon recommends that the couples be as well matched as possible in age, race, nationality, and formation. Once the couples have been configured, the wine ceremony begins. This celebration gives the new marriage a characteristic of unity, which is broken only when one of the spouses leaves the Moonist Church or commits adultery.
Many young people with emotional problems see in the sect a way to solve their problems, since even a spouse is provided for them without their having to go through a courtship process that many find difficult.
THE INTERNATIONAL FORUMS
As a form of penetration, Mr. Moon has promoted the holding of international forums whose objective is to fight communism and to facilitate exchanges among people of different religions, philosophies, races, or ages.
At his meetings it is not unusual to see former presidents, politicians, writers, and world-famous leaders as participants, lending their presence to the spread of the Moonist movement.
Apostasy
Once in the sect, the religion of origin is relativized, since Moon invites his followers to overcome the secondary forms that separate them from others and to seek the common root. For this reason, in some statistics published by the “Universal Unification Church”, it is admitted that 40% of its adherents come from Protestantism and 36% from Catholicism. Thus three quarters were former Christians who have replaced Jesus Christ with Mr. Moon.
