Tag Archives | Moonies

The International Cultic Studies Association has a roundup of life advice from the just-deceased reverend, whose spiritual insight led to a multibillion-dollar business empire, millions of devotees, and the admiration and friendship of presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush:

On Democracy: “My dream is to organize a Christian political party including…all the sects. Then, the communist power will be helpless before ours….But when it comes to our age, we must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world.

On Lies: “If you tell a lie to make a person better, then that is not a sin.”

On Race: “Father thinks about the three races, yellow, black, and white. Orientals can contribute in the spiritual aspect, white people can contribute in the analytical, scientific area, while black people can contribute in the physical area.”

On Marriage: “You will be happy to die on the earliest possible date. You will be pleased, won’t you?

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His ideas were insane and his vast influence dangerous, but viewed as performance art, his mass weddings of thousands of international strangers at basketball arenas must be appreciated. Via the Los Angeles Times:

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed Messiah from South Korea who led the Unification Church, one of the most controversial religious movements to sweep America in the 1970s, has died. He was 92. At the height of his popularity, he claimed 5 million members worldwide…followers [who] were mocked as “Moonies.”

Moon offered an unorthodox message that blended calls for world peace with an unusual interpretation of Christianity, strains of Confucianism and a strident anti-communism. He was famous for presiding over mass marriage ceremonies.

What also made Moon unusual was a multinational corporate vision that made him a millionaire many times over. He owned vast tracts of land in the U.S. and South America, as well as dozens of enterprises, including a ballet company, a university, a gun manufacturer, a seafood operation and several media organizations, most notably the conservative Washington Times newspaper.

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