3 Family

Moon had a son, Moon Sung-jin (文聖進) with Bak Choi Sun-kil, his wife since 1944, but she divorced him in 1957.

After his 1957 divorce from Bak Choi Sun-kil (崔先吉), Moon married Hak Ja Han Moon (韓鶴子) ("Mother Moon") in 1960. Hak Ja Han was 17 years old then. Together, they are the True Parents to UC members.

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.

4 Controversy

In the early 1970s, Rev. Moon was denounced as a " cult leader" who used " mind control" and " brainwashing" on his followers to extract money from them. The controversy over these charges peaked by 1976, and gradually diminished as his youthful American followers settled down, got jobs or started businesses, and built links to local churches in their communities. The APA's pronouncement that there is no scientific merit behind the theory of mind control removed the legal basis for deprogramming in the US. By the early 1990s Moon and his church had largely rehabilitated its public image.

Some critics continue to describe Moon as a "billionaire businessman" and who uses his followers as "political footsoldiers". They accuse conservative figures like Jerry Falwell of "compromising their stated beliefs to take his millions" (Moon lent Falwell $3.5 million for his struggling Liberty University.) His followers love him in spite of the criticisms, which they have often portrayed as an organized smear campaign.

And while the movement is out of the public eye, it has risen as an influential force in American civic life. Shunned as a convicted felon by Japan and the European Union, Moon has come to be seen as a martyr by his followers and even by some outside conservatives. By 2003, Unificationist missionaries were working for their longtime goal of sex purity in New Jersey public schools, on a government abstinence-based sex education grant.

After the end of the Japanese occupation of Korea, Moon personally suffered the brutal excesses of North Korean communism and he found a fellow opponent of Communism in Ronald Reagan. Moon spent a billion dollars of church funds to support the conservative, influential Washington Times, which in 2002 he called "the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world." And decades after Congressional scrutiny and a prison term for tax fraud, his generosity to the New Right (including opening an account for the "Contra" part of the Iran-Contra equation) has earned him a world of deference from his former enemies.

5 Name

The Hanja for "Moon" (文), the reverend's surname, means "word" or "truth" in Korean. The character "sun" contains Chinese character for fish. The character "myung" (明), part of his given name, means "bright" or "shining", and is composed of the Chinese characters for sun and moon.

Much wordplay has been made of the fact that Sun and Moon are parts of "Sun Myung Moon", although the Korean words carry no connotation similar to the English words they resemble. For example, Evangelical author Yamamoto entitled his theological critique on Unificationism The Moon is not the Son , a witty way of asserting that Rev. Moon is no Christ, i.e., not the " son of God".

The American press began using the term " Moonies" in the 1970s (short for "Moon children"), and the church wore the term as a badge of pride for nearly 20 years until publicly rejecting the term as a pejorative intended to tarnish their image.

6 Opposition

Rev. Moon, the most controversial religious leader of the 1970s, 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 cherished separtion of church and state, and that he would crush "individualism."

Christians object to his unusual theological demands ("take down the cross" was the theme of a 2003 campaign for Easter).

Jews have objected to his doctrine that the Holocaust is a consequence for killing the first True Parent. See Unification Church and anti-Semitism.

Gay rights groups resent his uncompromising calls for "sexual purity." Moon is implacably opposed to homosexuality, calling gays "dung-eating dogs" who would have no place in a "peace kingdom."

And early Congressional opponents like Donald Fraser dogged Moon for alleged (but admittedly unproven) ties to the Koreagate influence-peddling scandal, as well as alleged financial fraud. In the '90s, thousands of Japanese elderly claimed to have been defrauded of their life savings by Moon followers' "spiritual sales."

In the 1970s, Moon was accused of breaking up families by aggressively encouraging young college students to break off contact with the outside world, and sell trinkets to raise money for the church. Church sources counter that Moon urged members to "write a letter to your parents every ten days".

The Unification Church -- as well as the ACLU, coming down on the side of freedom of religious association -- has rejected foes' claims of coercive mind control. The church has had brushes with " deprogrammers" who kidnap family members out of the movement.

In Washington, however, Moon first found common ground with strongly anti-Communist leaders of the '80s who appreciated Moon's fierce opposition to the USSR and support of Nixon in his hour of need. Today, much of George W. Bush's faith-based initiative is being indirectly promoted at the grass-roots level by Moon organizations, who share a common interest in sexual abstinence, and in increasing religious participation in government-funded social services.

6.1 Imprisonment

Sun Myung Moon has been imprisoned six times: twice in North Korea, three times in South Korea, and once in the United States. Members of the Unification Church generally consider these examples of religious persecution.

The first time, he was jailed by North Korea for preaching Christianity, forbidden by the communist government. The way the church tells it, the charges stemmed from the jealousy and resentment of other church pastors after parishioners stopped tithing to their old churches upon joining Rev. Moon's congregation. Police beat him and left him for dead, but teenaged disciple Won Pil Kim nursed him back to health.

The second time, Rev. Moon got a five-year sentence in Heung-Nam labor camp, where prisoners were routinely worked to death on short rations. After serving 2 years, 10 months of his sentence, he was liberated when UN troops advanced on the camp and the guards fled. In South Korea, Rev. Moon was imprisoned three times, one of which was for using North Korean money during the civil war. He was released when one of his old schoolteachers vouched for him. He was also charged with draft evasion; these charges were eventually dropped.

The third time, he 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.

The sixth time Rev. Moon was imprisoned was in the United States on charges of tax evasion and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Congressional investigators such as Robert Boettcher discovered what they described as breathtaking financial misdoing, including a scheme to raise money for a church PR fund that disguised itself as a fundraiser for sick children. Congressman Donald Fraser also investigated the church's aggressive recruitment practices.

6.2 US Tax case

Upon arriving in the United States in the early 1970s, Rev. Moon had established an account at Chase Manhattan Bank with approximately one million dollars in funds. 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.

Rev. 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 an IRS team spent two years poring over all the church's financial records (they were provided an office in the church's New York headquarters), 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 3-year period) to merit prosecution.

Nonetheless, in 1982 U.S. federal prosecutors charged Rev. Sun Myung Moon with criminal tax fraud, and a federal Grand Jury brought forward an indictment. The charges stated that Moon failed to declare as income (and pay taxes on) $112,000 in earned interest on a Chase Manhattan bank account, $50,000 of corporate stock.

The judge forbade any mention of religion at the trial and denied Moon's request to have a bench trial.

The prosecution maintained that both the money and stock were his personal property, and that his non-payment of approximately $22,000 in taxes was deliberate and thus criminal.

Rev. Moon's defense was that as a minister he was holding the money and stock on behalf of his church -- and, therefore, that neither the funds in question nor the income it generated was actually his.

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 opposition claimed that Moon was a con artist and that his organization was a criminal enterprise.

The charge of criminal tax fraud carries a high legal requirement -- the prosecution must prove to a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant intended to evade paying taxes, not simply that the taxes were unpaid due to a mistake or failure to understand the law. And they did not accept the defense's contention that the funds in question were being held in trust for the church Rev. Moon was building. Indeed, the judge forbade any mention of religion at the trial.

Moon critics have often portrayed the jury verdict as a "failure to pay taxes" that was an "intentional evasion rather than a misunderstanding of the law". But a careful search of on-line sources and library materials finds no acknowledgement of the legal theory that Moon (a) was a reverend; (b) that his Japanese followers regarded him as holding the money in trust for them pending incorporation of the church in the US; (c) that disputes over tax liabilities ten or a hundred times as much, have been regarded as mere accounting oversights when the taxpayer was popular; or (d) that it doesn't make sense for someone to put his own money in the biggest bank in America and then give the money to a church without claiming that funds transfer as a non-taxable donation (it would have reduced Rev. Moon's adjusted income for that year to zero, and he wouldn't have had to pay ANY taxes on the money he spent on his family.

Moon was convicted of the charges, and 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 half-way house.

7 Moon Crowned by US Congressmen

As part of an Ambassadors for Peace ceremony, Rev. Moon was one of several dozen honorees at a ceremony at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on March 23, 2004. The media chose to ignore the event at the time, but a blogger, John Gorenfeld, spent the next three months interviewing congressmen who attended the event, inquiring as to the nature of the event's sponsorship. The story broke on June 24th with the New York Times claiming the "awards ceremony was not quite what was advertised."

In what the Times labelled "a coronation ceremony", the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was given a bejeweled crown by Rep. Danny K. Davis, D- Ill and Moon announced that he would save everyone on Earth as he had saved the souls of even such murderous dictators as Hitler and Stalin -- who had been born again through him. Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vouched for him from the spirit world, calling him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent ."

The awards ceremony was the grand finale of the Family Federation 's coast-to-coast "take down the cross" tour, intended to remove Christian crosses from almost 300 churches -- the idea being that the cross has been an obstacle to uniting religions. Wealthy churches largely have refused to participate in the tour, and nearly all the church's success has been in poor neighborhoods.

Critics claimed later that most of the congressmen in attendance didn't expect a coronation but thought the awards dinner was only to honor activists from their home states as "Ambassadors for Peace." A flier for the event claimed an impressive list of attendees, including Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland and Charlie Black , a top Republican strategist. Democrats were named, too, like Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee.

8 Quotes

• "The separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most."

• "Through the principle of indemnity, Hitler killed 6 million Jews." - The word indemnity is a reference to Moon's belief that Jews ought to have accepted Jesus as the Messiah, and that their failure to do so implicates them in murder of Christ; taken from the speech "Father's words and Hoon Dok Hae" [3/02/03]

• "I am determined to liberate all the Jewish people and protect them and restore all of this history." [2]

• "Do you like the smell of your husband's semen? Answer to Father. Does it smell good or bad? You may not like the smell of your wife's stool, but do you smell your own? Why don't you smell your own but you smell your wife's? Because you are not totally one." - From a speech entitled "WHO WAS I?" [2/13/94]

• "The white race are the descendants of polar bears. Their ancestors were Viking pirates. Wherever the white race goes there is always bloodshed." - From a speech entitled "WHERE AND HOW DO YOU WANT TO LIVE YOUR LIFE?" [6/9/96]

• "Homosexuals and fornicators are like dirty dung eating dogs." - From the speech: "THE FAMILY FEDERATION FOR COSMIC PEACE AND UNIFICATION AND THE COSMIC ERA OF BLESSED FAMILY" [6/4/97]

• "As a man, in your right front pants pocket is a small inside watch pocket. Keep pliers there, and when you go to the bathroom, once a day, pinch your love organ. Cut the skin a little bit as a warning. If your love organ does not listen to your conscience, then you should cut off the tip. Even if it takes that extreme measure, we have to make sure our mind and body become one." - Love organ is a reference to the penis. From the speech: "Purity, Lineage and the Love Organ (of Life)" [2/18/01]

9 Speeches

• Purity, Lineage and the Love Organ (of Life)
• WHO WAS I?
• Father's words and Hoon Dok Hae
• WHERE AND HOW DO YOU WANT TO LIVE YOUR LIFE?
• THE FAMILY FEDERATION FOR COSMIC PEACE AND UNIFICATION AND THE COSMIC ERA OF BLESSED FAMILY
• TRUE GOD'S DAY MIDNIGHT ADDRESS
• IN SEARCH OF THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE
• Building a World of the Culture of Heart Based on True Love

10 References

• article about church members in the Alaskan fishing industry
• GLAA: Dung-Eating Dogs
• Bush and the Moon Men
• Instructions for the 3-Day Ceremony - From the Unification Church's website, this page details how couples are supposed to enage in sex
• Bad Moon on the rise
• Christianity Today: With Their Leader in Prison, Moonies Pursue Legitimacy (9/7/84)
• Transcript of the Moon coronation event
• Hail to the Moon king - Article by John Gorenfeld, who largely broke the story of the Coronation ceremony on the Hill
• More info on the coronation
• Moonie's Rally Against Free Sex
• Rev. Moon's Curtain Call

Moon, Sun Myung Moon, Sun Myung Religion in South Korea Moon, Sun Myung

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