Talk:Unification Church/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Initial text

(I think this was Ed Poor):

Note: I am a member of this church so I may be (a) biased in favor of it, but also (b) probably in a better position to understand its teachings and internal workings than others.

Yes, it was. I'm not sure when and where I should sign my contributions. I'm also trying to get a handle on the etiquette and mechanics of wiki in general. Any advice would be helpful. I mean, any helpful advice would be welcome! -- Ed Poor

There's plenty of stuff here in the Wikipedia FAQ and Wikipedia policy statements. In general, we don't sign contributions here, because no page really has an "author" per se; they are all collectively written. Commentary on talk pages, however, should be signed. --LDC

S'Okay, we all had to get started somewhere. Wikipedians are very helpful and friendly and will hold your hand as needed while you learn. Ask lots of questions when you're in doubt. You can use the Summary field for that when you submit something. --Dmerrill

Top

Moon used CIA contacts with Japanese Yakuza (mafia) to help get a foothold in Japan. Moon used old CIA contacts to help gain an audience with Nixon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.66.71.134 (talk) 19:06, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Why hide the fact that Moon helped the CIA with anti communist work in Korea? I first read this over ten years ago from a bography from a UC website.

The techniques used in Japan to coecer billions of yen should be discussed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.66.71.134 (talk) 18:51, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

The article clearly has a bias towards the UC. Known history is deleted and only critical comments that can be easily refuted are kept. The article has become a teatise on Moon's religion more than a Wikipedia article about the UC. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.66.71.134 (talk) 18:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm new to this, so please forgive any mistakes in form. I have never liked the "Easter time, April 17, 1935" in the "official" history. April 17 wasn't Easter, or even a Sunday. I believe April 21 was "Western" Easter that year.

I may comment on later sentences later.

OK, I added what I believe to be a brief overview of the beliefs most Unificationists hold, as well as removing the erroneous April 17, 1935 as Easter, replacing it with "spring of 1935."

I may not have the formating or placement correct, however.

Comments from Unficationists?

Charles 12:43, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

==

The page on the Unification Church is quite informative, but shouldn't it be clearly stated somewhere that Rev. Moon is mad?

This is an encyclopedia, not an opinion peace. Unless you can find research saying that Rev. Moon is considerd mad by some psychologist(s), stating here that he's mad would be agaqinst the core values of Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.37.73.43 (talk) 10:55, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

In this article, mention is made of their "novel view of the Trinity", while the Trinity article lists the Unification Church among groups that don't believe in the Trinity at all. It would be helpful to further describe what their view of the Trinity is and perhaps how it compares to the classical view. --Wesley, a trinitarian

I will write this up soon. For now, the UC considers God to be unique, absolute and eternal. Jesus is a human being who achieved perfection. The holy spirit is an essence or force. (This is rough and needs more detail, which is why there's no Unification Trinity article or section.) --Ed Poor

Selected quotes on Jesus from the Divine Principle:

Jesus may well be called God because, as a man who has realized the purpose of creation and who lives in oneness with God, he has a divine nature. Nevertheless, he is not God Himself.

While on earth, Jesus was a man no different from any of us except for the fact that he was without the original sin. Even in the spirit world, where he has abided since his resurrection, Jesus lives as a spirit, as do his disciples. The only difference between them is that Jesus abides as a divine spirit, emitting brilliant rays of light, while his disciples, as life spirits, reflect that light.

A 400-word explanation of Trinity is at [1] (Note that it's buzz-word laden. It contains 6 unique terms plus 9 terms used in special senses!)

Thanks Ed. I look forward to the fuller write-up. One thing I conclude from the above synopsis is that even though the Unification and Orthodox churches have very different teachings concerning the Trinity, the Trinity remains a practical doctrine, because it describes who God is, who we are, and what hope there is for the relationship between God and humanity. Peace, --Wesley

Um, was there a particular Washington Times article that link is supposed to point to, or is the Washington Times itself somehow related to the Unification Church? --Wesley

Rev. Moon directed members of the UC to start the Washington Times, in 1982. Ed Poor

Many say that he also funds the Times, which is a money-losing operation. I've added something to that effect. Rafaelgr

I think there should be an explanation of why it's called the Unification Church. I assume it has something to do with a desire for unity, but that's not explicitly spelled out. --Eric

Good point, Eric. My understanding is the Sun Myung Moon did not want to start just another denomination, but rather to create a movement that would unite all the denominations of Christianity. "Association for the Unification of World Christianity" is part of the long form of the church's name.

The church sees the Last Days as a time when the evil sovereignty of Satan will lose power and the good sovereignty of God will gain ascendancy. How quickly this happens is based in part on how much Christianity accepts the second coming of the Messiah, who will be born as a man on the earth.

Ed Poor

And that second Messiah is Sun Myung Moon, right? What would happen if he were to die? --Wesley

If Reverend Moon is "the Messiah" where are all the miracles? Where are the signs and wonders? "Tongue-in-cheek ED ly," one miracle was that Moon evaded taxes for a time. Next miracle would be for Ed to answer questions about his so-called software engineering skills. (then he get a plain cheese pizza slice, cold, to warm up in the microwave!)

In general, miracles are too flashy and expensive. The tax issue, which I was hoping not to get into will be covered in detail (since you ask) in a /tax case article (hint: the term trumped up charges comes to mind). As for my alleged software engineering skills, I'm still looking for the person who started that rumor. I'm a poor programmer, just ask my boss. But I will take that slice!! Ed Poor

You might have been (partly) kidding, but nonetheless I wrote these two articles in response to your comment: tax case, imprisonment

Thanks for restoring the nickname, Anome. User:Ed Poor

Thanks for thinking of my church, Vicki. Your edit has the "potential" to "warm" global interest in our international wedding <goofy grin>.

The church has been accused of doing so because of immigration rules.

Does the above mean "acceused of doing so to evade immigration rules, i.e., forming sham marriages for, say, economic advantage? If so, who is saying so, and what evidence do they give?

The only accusations I've heard were by the Phillipine government, which refused to recognize several marriages between South Koreans and Filipinas. Please tell what you know; such info should be in the article. Ed Poor 09:54 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

I put it vaguely because I couldn't remember whether it was Uruguay, Brazil, or another South American country: the accusation is that Moon deliberately arranged for church members from that country to marry Koreans so those Koreans could immigrate and own land. (I tried a quick Web search, but it seems to have slid out of the news stories. More later, if I get the time.) You seem to know more about this than I do--you could add the Phillipine info. Vicki Rosenzweig

There's a link to global warming at the bottom of the page, that points to the general article on global warming. That article makes no mention of the Unification Church. What does one have to do with the other?? I confess I'm a bit mystified. Wesley

I haven't the slightest idea, Wesley. I saw it last week and was going to remove it, but I make a policy of avoiding peremptory reversions on anything dealing with my church. I am such a fervent advocate for my church that I have frankly given up trying to write from a neutral point of view on it, so I look to people like you to keep me honest.

Interestingly, it was just after I fussed with Vicki over global warming potential that she adding something uncomplimentary about arranged marriages and immigration law to the Unification Church article. I'm going to let it stand, because I make it a point not to debate about my religion on wikipedia. Let others say what they will. Ed Poor

?!? Well, if there's no connection between the two, and the Unification Church has nothing to do with the global warming issue, I'm going to delete the link to global warming. If someone has a reason to put it back, I hope they'll share that reason, either by adding to the main article or explaining on this Talk page. As it is, it just looks very random. And Ed, I understand your reluctance, but if there's a clear factual misstatement and *nobody* is backing up the claim or providing any support for it, as seems to be the case here, I don't think you have anything to worry about. Wesley

Query about names: while looking for info about arranged marraiges and immigration, I came across this odd statement: "Mr Moon?s organisation has lately shed much of its spiritual identity, to concentrate instead on such issues as family values and world peace. Indeed it recently dropped the word "church", renaming itself the Association of Families for Unification and World Peace."

If this is true, it belongs in the article--but I don't want to do that on one source. Ed, it's your church: has it changed its name? Vicki Rosenzweig

Yes, for the most part. There are a few church entities that for legal or administrative reasons retain the old "Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity" name (HSA-UWC). For example, http://www.hsabooks.com (online church bookstore), and my friend Mike Shea hasn't changed the URL of the http:/www.unification.org website. But we've been "The Family Federation for World Peace" for several years now (see http://www.familyfed.org ).

One thing I want to make sure of is that people don't misunderstand the reason for the name change. The quote you cited seems like just the sort of misunderstanding we'd like to avoid: we didn't "shed our spiritual identity" if that means (a) transform into a different kind of religion or (b) change our name to conceal anything. If anything, we've broadened our aims, but we're still the same old Moonies you know and love :-) Ed Poor

Okay, so can you (as someone sympathetic to the church) write a sentence or two about this and put it in the article? I think the current name should be there. Vicki Rosenzweig

I'm not sure I can be NPOV about my religion. Let me pray about it... --Ed

I'm also not sure whether (a) the Unification Church itself is changing its name, or rather (b) the main projects the church has initiated are being combined into one over-arching organization. It might be some combination of A and B.

In any case, the overall aims of the Unification Movement have not changed in the slightest. Father Moon is still trying to do what he set out to do in 1946 (eight years before the church founding), which is establish the Kingdom of God on earth. The structure and name of any organizations created to attain these goals can be varied as needed, I suppose, but the overall goal remains unchanged. Ed Poor 12:07 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Church members take its teachings, the Unification Principle or Divine Principle, seriously.

This seems pretty insulting to me. Could you imagine an article saying "Episcopalians take their Church's teachings seriously" or "Sufi Muslims really do believe in their own religion!" Am I missing something? DanKeshet 12:10 Aug 15, 2002 (PDT)

I agree. That sentence should be taken out. I have winced every time I've read it, and I'm the one who wrote it. --Ed Poor

From the article:

The church teaches that ...Reverend Moon is the messiah, and that all the historical founders of all other religions have recently, in Heaven, proclaimed Moon's messiahship.

This is not an official church teaching, although the vast majority of members believe that Reverend Moon is the Messiah. As for other founders' proclamation of Moon's messiahship, I would say that not so many members would endorse that. Quite a few of my fellow members have expressed doubt about the authenticity of recently channeled messages from the spirit world, such as that concerning the December 2001 "proclamation". FWIW, I believe both points; still, neither is an "official" church teaching. --Ed Poor

Ed, you're just plain wrong. This is the teaching of the Unification Church. It is the teaching of Reverend Moon himself. If you disagree with him, then you are rejecting a person that the Church teaches is the infallible messiah/leader. By definition, the teachings of the Unification Church are written by Reverend Moon, not the layity. RK

Regarding the anti-Semitism charge, none of the dozen or so Jewish men I know who have joined the church regard Rev. Moon or his teachings as anti-semitic (although having joined, they might be not be objective on this point). One of these men, Dr. Andrew Wilson, teaches Old Testament at our seminary. I recall reading the AJC report in the late 1970s shortly after joining the church, but it seemed to boil down to this:

So some people who have rejected Judaism, and joined what the majority of Americans view as a cult, don't have a problem with Rev. Moon? Of course not! By definition, anyone who accepts Moon as their infallible messiah won't disagree with them. But what does that prove? I am curious...why not respect the opinions of the majority of Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reform Jews who are deeply upset by Moon's statements? Jews find these teachings deeply anti-semitic and offensive. It doesn't matter if it is Rev. Moon saying it, or any of the pre-mediveal church fathers, or Martin Luther says it. Sterotyping and damning Jews is something Jews take offense at. RK

The church taught that (A) Jews committed sins during the Old Testament era, and (B) the worst sin was failing to recognize Jesus as the Messiah.

But Moon's claims are much worse than that. He repeatedly damns every Jew living at the time as a deliberate sinner. In modern terms, that is what many people would call hatespeech. How can anyone teach these things about Jews, yet expect them not to respond with pain and shock? RK

For those who consider any criticism of Jews as necessarily "anti-semitic", there is nothing more to be said. My church frequently criticizes sin, whether committed by its own members, historical personages (like Hitler and Stalin), or identifiable groups (like the Japanese nation in WWII, or Christianity during the Crusades).

That's insulting. No one ever claimed that any one particular criticism of any one particular Jew, or group of Jews, is anti-Semitic. Rather, it was pointed out that the slander of all Jews as damned sinners is what is so disturbing. Please do not obfuscate the point. RK

From my point of view, criticism is not necessarily adverse. If you look at Rev. Moon's Statement On Jews And Israel, whose URL I added to the article, you might see some of the positive things Rev. Moon has said. --Ed Poor 13:15 Aug 15, 2002 (PDT)

No one ever said that mere criticism is adverse. But anti-semitic canards are hatespeech. Your attempts to evade the point bother me. RK

Rabbi A. James Rudin, Assistant Director of the Interreligious Affairs Department of the American Jewish Committee wrote in December 1976 [2]:

A systematic analysis of this 536 page document reveals an orientation of almost unrelieved hostility toward the Jewish people, exemplified in pejorative language, stereotyped imagery, and sweeping accusations of collective sin and guilt.

Whether he is discussing the "Israelites" of the Hebrew Bible or the "Jews" as referred to in writings of the New Testament period, Rev. Moon portrays their behavior as reprobate, their intentions as evil (often diabolical), and their religious mission as eclipsed.

There are over 36 specific references in Divine Principle to the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) -- every one of them pejorative. The "faithlessness" of the Israelites is mentioned four times on a single page (p. 330).

I would like to replace the article's anti-semitism passage with the following:

In the mid-1970s, before the church was well known, some Jewish leaders accused it of anti-semitism. For example,

Nonsense. The church was very well known among cult experts, including the author of this study. RK

Rabbi A. James Rudin, Assistant Director of the Interreligious Affairs Department of the American Jewish Committee wrote in December 1976 that the Divine Principle's "pejorative language . . . reveals an orientation of almost unrelieved hostility toward the Jewish people." [3]

Rev. Moon responded with full-page ads in major newspapers, saying, "The Unification Movement categorically condemns anti- Semitism, the most hideous, abject and cruel form of hatred" and chiding those who "did nothing to rescue the victims who were the captives of [Hitler's] satanic plans and designs." [4]

--Ed Poor 14:57 Aug 15, 2002 (PDT)

I rejectany attempt at whitewashing this encyclopaedia entry. The small amount of text originally added was accurate and in accord with NPOV. I could have written several paragraphs, but refrained from doing so at the time. But this attempt to whitewash milennia-old anti-semitic canards as some kind of friendly constructive criticism is appalling, and not at all convincing. RK

I don't want a whitewash either:

Please note that the only change I have made to the article re: anti-semitism is to add the external link to Rev. Moon's Statement On Jews And Israel.
Rev. Moon isn't infallible: "You should not trust me so much. I am a man, and I can make mistakes. When you make a mistake, it is not such a big thing. But if I make a mistake, the entire providence may be affected. Instead of just trusting me, you should be praying for me, asking God that He will be able to guide me." (source: Dan Fefferman, former UC official)
Neither Rev. Moon nor the Divine Principle condemns "all Jews" or "every Jew living at the time" as damned sinners.

Have you read Statement On Jews And Israel? --Ed Poor

It seems that the page's section on the teachings of the church are inconsistent. It says that the church has a "strong denial that Jesus came to die" - and about two lines later it says that "Jesus had to go the alternate course of dying on the cross". So what is it - does the church believe that Jesus died or did not die? Andre Engels

Jesus did die (He was crucified by the Romans), but His death on the cross was not predestined. If his disciples had been more faithful, and in particular if John the Baptist had supported him, he would not have had to go the way of the cross. He could even have been accepted as the Messiah in his lifetime by the Jewish people.

Okay, I will adapt the page to say that in such a way that it's clear to me too. Andre Engels

I have edited in the text from "Unification Church and Jesus". In case anyone disagrees with any editings to that text I have made in moving it here, the original text was:

The Unification Church teaches that Jesus' supreme sacrifice at Calvary and the atoning blood of the cross grants us the redemption of sins. His resurrection was victory over death, hell, sin and the grave for all eternity

Andre Engels

Now that you mention it, I'm not 100% sure about "his death serves as a redemption of our sins". I'll look into it, next chance I get. --Ed Poor

"In 2002, the church published a message purporting that all the historical founders of all other religions have recently, in Heaven, proclaimed Moon's messiahship (see Clouds of Witnesses)."

This is ungrammatical. You can't purport something; you have to purport <infinitive> something. So it'd have to be "which purports to demonstrate that", or possibly "claiming that". I'm not modifying this myself since I haven't read the message in question and don't want to inadvertently misrepresent this; nevertheless it needs fixing. --AW

I don't want to squelch any "negative" information, but... does the paragraph about being forced to sell squid and being related to the Aum cult really belong here? Of course, I might be unconsciously biased, since I'm a member of this church :-) --Uncle Ed 20:45 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

You're right, Ed. It has nothing to do with antisemitism. The writing here is unclear, and it needs links to substantiate the claims. According to which ex-members? Says who? Which members are forced? How are they forced? When? Where? Why? How often? What do the ellipses at the end mean? And that's only the first sentence. It's painful. Here is the removed text:

According to ex-members the Unification Church members are forced to go sell church merchandiese such as pots and vases and dry squid etc....

In Japan, the unification church is known as brother cult of Aum the sarin terror cult. Some leaders of Aum were from the unification church.Hayakawa

Q 21:56 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Nice of you to take that unflattering stuff out, but I suppose we could dig up a paragraph or two of testimonies by ex-members. "They forced me to go fundraising 18 hours a day". The force being emotional and mental pressure, one supposes. Which of course leads into the whole brainwishing controversy. What strange power did Rev. Moon have over these hapless souls? How did he get American young people by the hundreds to give up promising careers to devote themselves, etc.? It's all rather boring to me, as Eileen Barker's book clearly shows that 90% of anyone who ever joined the UC in America simply dropped out within 6 months or so. People stay or go as they wish, so what's the fuss? --Uncle Ed

There's a controversy about brainwishing? I wish everyone had a brain! --Eloquence

I could while away the hours
Conferrin' with the flowers
Consultin' with the rain
And my head, I'd be scratchin'
While my thoughts were busy hatchin'
If I only had a brain. [5]

I meant brainwashing. Uncle Ed

Moved from Ed Poor's talk page:

Is Wikipedia one of Unification Church business? I was told so. Then I found you(The church member) are an administrator.

By that standard, Wikipedia must be an atheist business, a gay business, and a German business, as there are admins from all of these groups. Not particularly telling, is it? --Brion

You left out the powerful vegan meat-eating communist anarchist lobby. Koyaanis Qatsi

Who is the communist ??? Ant

D'oh. Important word up there, "administrator." Tell Mr. McCarthy to go back to sleep, nothing to see here. ;-) Koyaanis Qatsi

As far as I know, the Unification Church (UC) does not own any businesses, at least in America; several UC members, however, have started business both to advance UC ideals and also (hopefully) to make money to contribute to the UC.
Wikipedia is not a business; soon, Jimbo will be incorporate Wikipedia as an official "non-profit organization". Moreover, neither Jimbo nor Larry, the two men who started Wikipedia, had had any contact with the UC until I jumped into the wiki-pond about a year after they started it.
If you're trying to discredit the Wikipedia by "linking" it to the UC, you'll have to try harder than that!
I haven't the slightest idea how I wound up getting sysop and developer rights, unless it's that I help out a lot and do what I'm told ^_^ --Uncle Ed 16:21 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps sie means that wikipedia is a "front" for the international Unificationist conspiracy? ;-) Martin

211.23.199.103 (Uncle Ed=Ed Poor, right?)

Since this site is maintained by unification church member,you cant trust all of information on this page.***

The article (not a site) is open for anyone to update. To say it is "maintained" by anyone is incorrect. -- Zoe

One of Wikipedia:Administrators is unification church member... maybe more?

So what? Anyone from anywhere has full access to edit these pages. -- Zoe

Thanks for the move (J & SMM) and cleanup, Zoe. --Uncle Ed 19:47 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

From the top of the article page:

Not related to the Unitarian Universalist Church

This is misleading. The UC's theology actualy is unitarian in that it believes in only one God -- as opposed to the "God in three persons" of most Trinitarian theologies. The UC's theology is also universalist in its teaching that every soul can, must and will eventually be saved.

The same can be said about Sikhism and some forms of Judaism, though they are in no way connected. I think we should be careful to avoid implying any link between the Unitarian Universalist Church and the Unification church, as they are plainly different organisations. Incidentally members of the Unitarian Universalist Church are not necessarily Unitarian, though I would be surprised if they were not Universalist. -- Chris Q 16:14 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

I guess the sentence was meant to prevent confusion, since Unification and Unitarian start with the same three letters and sort of rhyme a bit. I'd like to think, though, that the Unification Church has achieved sufficient name-recognition that disambiguation isn't really needed.

I should add a section to the article comparing and contrasting Unitarianism with Unificationism. --Uncle Ed 14:06 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

It may be misleading, but I think a line of that nature is useful - those of us who are unfamiliar with the UC and the UUC occasionally confuse the two. It could probably be phrased better, though, and maybe placed at the bottom instead of the top. Martin

As Eloquence notes, this article needs a lot of work. And *sigh* who better to fix it up than I? (If 26 years of membership in it has taught me anything...)

I'd like to start by noting that although the church's theology is "unitarian" (as opposed to the 90% of Christianity that is trinitarian), it has no relation to the Unitarian Church. Moreover, the theology and practice of the church are strongly "universalist" in the sense that it preaches that all souls can and must be saved -- and as soon as possible, let's hurry! However, it has no relation to the Universalist Church other than this single theological tenet. Despite Martin's caution, the contrast with Unitarian Universalism might be an interesting place to begin with the church's theology. I'd also like to get Wesley's advice on that, as he knows considerably more about Christianity in general than I do. I know little other than UC theology and how it differs from the mainstream.

Readers might also be interested to know a bit more history of the church, from humble beginnings in Korea to extraordinary prominence (or notoriety? :-) in America.

I'm open to suggestions about how to organize the article. Also, are there any questions people have? --Uncle Ed 21:41 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I don't know a huge amount about it (what I just added to the page ought to be taken in the spirit of a stub), but I've been hearing a lot lately about the Unification Church's political activities -- connections to various conservative causes in the US (particularly through the Washington Times and abstinence groups), and I hear a lot about their influence in Korea but I don't know much about it. There is a lot of information out there, maybe someone with more patience than me can put something a bit more adequate here. --Rafaelgr 14 Feb 2004

Biblical vs. biblical

When a word is derived from and begins with a proper noun, it should be capitalized.
One meaning of "bible" is the compilation most commonly known everywhere in the world as the Bible (proper noun)
The word "biblical" here is explicitly referring to this compilation
The word "Biblical" should generally be capitalized
The word "Biblical" here should be capitalized

Please reply to points, maybe we can get a policy for other articles. I must point out that in my favour the dictionary definitions of "biblical" I looked up never refer to any text other than the Bible, but in my disfavour they are not capitalized in the dictionary. silsor 21:20, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

The point I have the most problems with is "When a word is derived from a proper noun, it should be capitalized". We do not capitalize godless, for example, and I'm sure there are many others like it. The real reason for the capitalization seems to be not so much the avoidance of confusion, but the predominant role of Christianity. And that is not a valid reason in a neutral, academic work.

In any case, the authority for the spelling of words should be the usage in the majority of dictionaries. If we deviate from that usage, that could be interpreted as a subtle endorsement of Christianity (hence POV). Also, Britannica, Columbia and Encarta all use "biblical". If you want to argue about it, this is the central question I would ask in cases like this: Is there a real risk of confusion with other "bibles"? I think it is quite clear there is not. It's really a similar methodology to the one we use to determine whether disambiguation is necessary.—Eloquence 21:50, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

Trinity (again)

The following is a sample of a "buzzword-laden" explanation of the Unification view of the Trinity:

According to the Principle of Creation, God's purpose of creation is completed based upon the four position foundation, which is established by fulfilling the three object purpose through origin-division-union action. To fulfill the purpose of creation, Jesus and the Holy Spirit stand before God as object partners who separately manifest the dual characteristics of God. They unite through give and take with each other with God as the center and form the four position foundation. God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit thus become one, and this oneness constitutes the Trinity. [6]

Note that there are eight (8) distinct terms, all with specialized meanings! Without understanding at least "purpose of creation" and "dual characterstics" this passage is like Orwell's duckspeak. I think that over the decades, UC members have failed to appreciate how difficult our theological terms have been for outsiders. --Uncle Ed 16:29, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Anonymous "reporter"

(cur) (last) 18:36, 8 Sep 2004 24.4.217.200 (Totally untrue) (cur) (last) 18:32, 8 Sep 2004 24.4.217.200 (I'm a Salon.com reporter and Moon expert, and a lot of this was frankly bullshit)

If you're a reporter, why don't you quote sources or use your real name? I use MY real name...

Have you read the Fraser Report? If not, how do you know what's in it? I'm going to revert this and the other changes unless they're substantiated somehow. --Uncle Ed 21:46, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fishing industry

Discussion of the church's involvement in the US fishing industry really belong here -- not at the Sun Myung Moon article.

"The Unification Church has invested heavily in Kodiak. It owns International Oceanic Enterprises, the parent company of both International Seafoods of Alaska, a Kodiak processing plant, and U.S. Marine, a subsidiary which runs a fleet of fishing boats on the island. Moon’s church has become the largest tax-payer on Kodiak, and the largest private employer" [7]

Wall between church and CARP

In 1992, when I was bookkeeper for the Manhattan District of the Unification Church, I was asked to transfer around $1,500 to CARP. I refused, telling the leader who requested this that I had been expressly forbidden by the national church treasurer to "donate" church funds to CARP. The leader professed not to know or care that this was illegal and insisted it was no violation of church policy, so I suggested drily that if they could get the church treasurer (whose office was one floor below mine) to give me a written letter authorizing the transfer, I would be happy to do it -- knowing that Kevin (a fellow whose eyes well with tears when he describes his mission in terms of "protecting True Parents" would hardly do such a thing The leader made one or two additional angry remarks and departed. I never heard anything more about it, and needless to say, I never wrote the requested check! --Uncle Ed (El Dunce) 18:05, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Purported cult

These paragraphs are from the article List of purported cults, which we are paring down to a pure list. Editors here can best evaluate these statements and decide how to integrate them into this article. Thanks, -Willmcw 10:53, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Unification Church

Considered heretical by counter-cult groups for teaching that the Second Coming of Christ will be realized by the birth of a man on the earth who will get married and beget children having "no original sin"; for saying that founder Sun Myung Moon is this new Messiah; and for teaching that Jesus did not come to die on the cross but could have established the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth in his lifetime if the Jewish people (particular John the Baptist) had believed in him then.

Members have been called "Moonies" and branded a mind control cult by anti-cult groups who espouse the discredited "brainwashing" theories of Margaret Singer (see also Rick Ross or Steve Hassan).

Also called the "Moon Organization" and branded a front group by US Rep. Donald Fraser who chaired a subcommittee purportedly investigating the church for illegal political ties; when the Fraser Report was finally published, it admitted (in one hard-to-find sentence) that none of the allegations asserted in the rest of the report could be substantiated, and Fraser lost his re-election campaign and the IRS granted the church tax-exempt status as a bona fide religious group.

Detractors often cite Rev. Moon's 1983 conviction on tax evasion charges as 'further proof' that the church is a mere fraud; friend of the court briefs from many organizations called the tax prosecution politically motivated (see Moon tax case).

Chyung Pyung

Can anyone shed any light on this stub: Chyung Pyung? Rd232 12:40, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

About Chung Pyung: Chung Pyung (Cheong Pyeong) is a small town in the northern part of South Korea. It is a popular holiday and vacation resort. The Unification Movement has a workshop center (or retreat) in the countryside outside Chung Pyung. It is called "Heaven and Earth Training Center". However, members commonly refer to the retreat also as 'Chung Pyung'. Over the last years it has gained in size and visitors due to many events taking place there. More could and should be said about the town Chung Pyung itself, I guess. Rjen 03:36, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

"Followers from other religious backgrounds consider Moon and his wife to be fulfilling the ideals of their teachings. Members honor them as True Parents, a term that transcends sectarian bounds."

These two statements are unclear, seem to be out of place, and have a POV problem. I'm going to remove them. -- Alan McBeth 15:22, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Cult status

This page refers to a cult. see moonies. Any attempt to remove mention of the fact that this is a cult, should be dealt with according to the strictest of wikipedia's policies. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.43.175.186 (talk • contribs) .

I've put it in a purported cult category. I don't quite see the point of that category, but I've changed it to be about groups that are alleged to be cults without clear concensus on the issue among scholars. (Nothing can be confirmed a cult, but you know) I'm not sure this was appropriate even still, but it now represents that some do call this group a cult. Is this satisfactory? On another issue was it a bad idea to suggest merging the List of Unificationists into this?--T. Anthony 07:36, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. We try to deal with every article according to Wikipedia policies. -Willmcw 06:34, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I've added the cleanup and NPOV tags, because this article is in very sad shape. Wikipedia is not a PR outlet.

I appreciate your desire to cleanup this article. Can you specify some areas where we can improve the NPOV? Thanks, -Willmcw 22:19, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't forget to mention that during his lifetime, Jesus Christ was considered a leader of a cult.--Objectivity 02:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The question of cult, sect, or religion status for a belief system comes down to numbers. Unfortunately, minority status for any social group generally carries pejorative baggage. The "purported cult" cat uses the qualifier to signal its negative image. If the category is to be differentiated at all, I suggest it be identified by group as a "minority religion", rather than a cult. --Blainster 12:49, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I didn't create that category and I'm not sure it should exist. However I did try to soften it with the explanation on the category page. As it stands now it should be more mild than Category:Cults. That said I don't think every minority religion is alleged to be a cult. I don't think the Religious Society of Friends represents more than 1% of any nation or US state, but I don't think they have faced cult allegations in over 200 years. (Outside of a few Christian Fundamentalist groups who deem all non-Fundamentalists to be a cult) The same could likely be said of the Zoroastrians or Unitarians.--T. Anthony 23:44, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Josh Freed

Perhaps a mention of him could be made as well? Seeing as he wrote a best-selling book about his efforts in pulling a friend of his out of the Unification Church, and his views on how it is a dangerous cult, would it not help the goal of objectivity to get his testimony in this? There's allready several quotes by Moon, perhaps this will help to balance things?

Here's a link to the book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0888930186/104-1205330-6948743?v=glance&n=283155

Intro sentence

Seriously, we can't start an article with a statement of opinion: "purported cult". The question of cultishness is discussed in the article, but it hartly qualifies for the definition. --Pjacobi 08:31, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, but we can. --Nugneant 19:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

This article needs to be more balanced

It is my view, especially for the sake of young impressionable readers, that this article needs to be more forthcoming, objective and balanced, in a comparative way, as to what the Unificationist worldview is and what their objectives are, especially in the light of civilization's collective historical experience. Unification beliefs shouldn't be presented here in just their own words, like a witnessing track, but also from an, hopefully, objective historical observer's perspective looking in. A young person has no way of discerning reality from someone's personal beliefs. This article is written in such a way, for the most part, to imply that these beliefs are to be assumed as empirical reality. I have a unique experience of being a teacher of Unificationism for about a decade. I have tried to edit the article, but so far all of my edits have been reverted by the user KI. I may have been over-zealous at first. I made some milder edits again. I would welcome a civil dialog to come to an understanding. Marknw 01:40, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Reverting non-vandalism without an explanation or discussion was against policy. The neutral point of view requires that all major viewpoints be included, without promoting any of them as the truth. The role of Wikipedia editors is to verifiably summarize reliable sources using the NPOV. All of our articles should be the best possible, both for young readers and for older ones as well. In this instance the best thing would be to link to books or articles (but not blogs or forums) that discuss the church and its teachings. As we proceed I ask all editors to participate with a civil and collegial attitude. Cheers, -Will Beback 01:25, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to continue vandalizing Wikipedia. Will appreciates it. Tchadienne 16:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Tchadienne I am happy to discuss with you the points you don't agree with and see if we can work something out. Marknw 23:14, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Marknw, thank you for your attempts to improve and balance this article. I am far from considering your edits vandalism, but I'm nevertheless worried about the new section "A Brief Critique of Unification Theology". If I don't misunderstand the meaning of "critique" here, it should at least be mentioned and referenced, from whon this critique originates. If it is your own analysis, it will fail our central policy of no original research. Also the notes on your userpage imply, that you write from personal experience and analysis. --Pjacobi 15:15, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. I need to think a little more about how to make it better I quess. I'm open to suggestions. Marknw 15:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

(after edit conflict, partially answering an older version of the above posting)

Actually not, if it is your own view -- except you have written a non-self-published book on the subject. But, looking for a pragmatic solution: I'd guess that the Unification Church isn't short on critics, right? Can't you find a published critique (hopefully by an author of some authority), which goes along the same lines as your analysis?

If you look around in Wikipedia for other articles of religions, you would (or should) usually not find criticisms of their beliefs. Note that, e.g. for agnostics, the belief systems of different religions look only marginally different absurd.

A typical method to "sidestep" this, is the specifically address conflicts of theology: "Whereas religion X claims to be the modern day religion Y, scholars of Y reject this claim and pinpoint these essential diiferences ...". Or "X uses the term Foo for ... but Foo originates in religion Y, where it quite contrarily meant ...". Even this more legitimate criticism needs carefull formulations.

Pjacobi 15:43, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I can see I have a lot of homework to do. I do not want to damage Wikipedia. If you see something you think I need to remove please let me know. Marknw 15:54, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Ed Poor

Thank you for your input on the edits I added to the Unification Church article.

Doesn't it seem clear from the Divine Principle that the "Kingdom of Heaven" is a political reality to Rev Moon and from the balance of all his speaches that a theocracy is exactly what he has in mind?

Do you have the result of Andrew Wilson's translation?

Thank you again. Marknw 18:41, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ed_Poor"

KOH

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:marknw"

the "Kingdom of Heaven" is a political reality to Rev Moon and from the balance of all his speaches that a theocracy is exactly what he has in mind

It depends on what "theocracy" means. If it's an old-fashioned, do-as-I-say-or-my-soldiers-will-kill-you sort of evil dictatorship, then I don't think that's what he hand in mind at all.

If it's a family atmosphere where everyone on the planet can feel God's presence and voluntarily refrains from doing anything that would give God pain, well duh! --Uncle Ed 20:22, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

So it seems we are in agreement Uncle Ed. It is a political theocracy. Whether it has the potential to become evil or not would be up to history to determine. My point in putting it in the article was to make the intent of Rev Moon's ideology clear for the those trying to understand what he is all about, not only from an insider's faithful beliefs, hopes and interpretations, but in the light of the sober reality of civilization’s historical experience. Take the Byzantine Empire or the Carolingian Empire for example. We have seen this kind of thing in Christianity before. Thank you again for the feedback. Marknw 21:05, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I agree with you that we are "in agreement". I do not interpret the passage as describing a political theocracy. Next time I get a chance to see Andy Wilson's translation, I'll post it here so you can see. I think it's just the opposite of what you think it is. Please don't get me wrong. --Uncle Ed 21:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Again, for me it is not just that one passage, but the bulk of Rev Moon's teachings and speaches discribe a political reality of an actual Kingdom and not just a "family" as you said. Some groups see the Kingdom of Heaven as a political reality, some see it as a metaphor. When I read the Divine Principle and Rev Moon's speaches, it seems clear to me that, to him, it is an actual political Kingship. In fact, he has established a "nation" of "Cheon Il Guk" that members are reguired to pledge aligence to as "Loyal Subjects" and "citizens" ( see "Love King".) Thank you again for the discussion Uncle Ed. Marknw 21:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

If you are using "political" to mean "imposed by force" than I disagree 100% with your interpretation of my church leader's words. But if "political" means "on a scale larger than family or clan", then I agree.

Are we talking about scope and size and numbers of people? Or "degree of force used to impose the idea"? In heaven, there is no coercion. Please address this point and stop thanking me for agreeing with you when I don't! --Uncle Ed 15:05, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry Uncle Ed. I'm just trying to be polite and respectful. I do not doubt your sincerity or the sincerity of the church in thinking they are working for the sake of the good. But, doesn't every political movement think they are working for the greatest good? It seems to me whether or not the theocracy is popularly accepted or it is established through force is beside the point. I think most Americans would agree that any attempt, peaceful or otherwise, to dissolve our constitutional democratic republic would be contrary to our western values. Rev Moon and his followers spend a great deal of time and money trying to affect our political process. The important point to me is to understand what kind of political state Rev Moon is advocating for. Regards Marknw 16:18, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

FYI: Wikipedia has a wonderful article on what a theocracy is. They are not always "evil" as you said. But, I think most people would appreciate being informed by Wikipedia as to what a group actual stands for politically. It can be difficult with a religion to tell when it is speaking in metaphors and when it is not. With Regards and Respect Uncle Ed. Marknw 22:05, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Ironically, KOH is an anagram of HOK, architects of Green Cathedrals for the Church of Baseball. Wahkeenah 23:40, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Mark, despite what you said earlier about us "agreeing", it appears we disagree about what the UC's teaching are about democracy. Your remarks above imply a belief on your part that the UC is anti-democratic and that opposing democracy is anti-Western. The passage that follows, by Tyler Hendricks, convinces me at least that the UC is pro-democratic.

DP explicitly terms the separation of powers, 'to decentralize national power and prevent it from being concentrated in a specific individual or organization,' as the basis for 'the structure of the ideal society" (DP 469)." Dr. Hendricks goes on to say, "Divine Principle approves the structure of democracy; it is the spirit of the people which is the problem." ... The ideal of the Messiah's second advent, which Rev. Moon is pursuing, is not to create a new political system, but rather to do all he can to center the present system, democracy, upon God's will (DP 471)." [8]

I found this quote simply by googling "automatic theocracy" - and it was the second hit. If you have a few minutes to glance at the rest of Tyler's remarks, you might find that church teaching is much less anti-democratic than it's ofter portrayed, or maybe even not opposed to it all. --Uncle Ed 16:34, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Steve Hassan: "Moon's stated ambitions include the establishment of a one-world government run as an automatic theocracy by Moon and his leaders. Bush's faith-based initiative seems to be ideal to help them in their quest for a one world theocratic government. I am sure President Bush is not aware that Moon has repeatedly said that America (and democracy) is Satanic." [9]

The subtle (not so subtle?) difference here is that Hassan claims that Father Moon wants to govern the world personally, contrary to what Hendricks said; and that Hassan claims Moon called democracy Satanic, while Hendricks quotes Divine Principle as saying just the opposite.

I suggest we create a section on the article called something like "Teachings on democracy" which shows:

Quotes from church sources about democracy and heaven
Interpretations of these quotes by church leaders
Interpretations of these quotes by church opponents

How does that sound, Mark? --Uncle Ed 16:44, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I probably should get back to my real job this morning. But over time that sounds great. Regards (and thanks) Marknw 16:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Uncle Ed, I don't read, in the Divine Principle canon, that Rev Moon thinks democracy is evil or bad, but I do think he believes it is a necessary, but transient, stage of development in history that will eventually conclude in the establishment of a benevolent theocracy:

"Thus, when the Messiah returns to societies under the rule of democratic governments well-matured by the Christian spirit, he will be able to establish God's sovereignty upon the earth with the wholehearted support of the people. This will be the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. We need to understand that democracy was born to undermine satanic monopolies of power for the purpose of God's final providence to restore, by the will of the people, a heavenly sovereignty under the leadership of the returning Christ." -Divine Principle

Regards Marknw 19:03, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Good quote, Mark. Perhaps this also relates to the oft-neglected concept of "foundation of substance" or more specifically, "foundation for the Messiah". In order for a Perfect Adam (e.g., Jesus) to fulfill his messianic mission, the people have to want him to be the Messiah.

One might say, informally, that Messiahship is an elective post (but that's my own interpretation).

Another related concept (well understood here on the wiki!) is that you only have as much authority as other people give you. This holds true especially for relationships and associations of a voluntary nature, such as church membership or ball game attendance. As Yogi Berra said, "If the fans don't come out to the ball park, you can't stop them." Cheers. --Uncle Ed 19:40, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Uncle Ed. While what you say about authority is true, it does overlook the power of ideas and 'isms' to move societies emotionally in dramatic ways. The beauty of a forum like Wiki' is that people can rationally inform themselves from different points of view.

Some Christians see the "Messiah" as a metaphor for your own "christ nature" or Christ returning internally as the "king of your heart" or Jesus as the "King of the Jews" as a sacred allegory or the Kingdom of Heaven as a spiritual reality but not a political one, etc. Some see the Messiah as an actual historical religious and political leader that will come to establish an actual political kingdom with a king and queen and all that comes with it. From my experience and reading, Unificationism and most Unificationists are of the later point of view.

I feel this is relevant because Rev. Moon and the Unification movement is politically partisan and politically proactive in the U.S. and all over the world. Regards Marknw 19:59, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Is the church politically partisan and politically proactive? Can you give some examples of this for the article? Endorsing a candidate for high political office would be an excellent example, such as Reagan in 1980 (but only if you can document it).

I think rather that we make broad religious or philosophical statements about politics, rather than getting directly involved. In the United States, there are strict rules limiting "political activity" for churches who wish to keep their non-profit status.

On the other hand, some of the organizations Rev. Moon founded aren't churches, such as CARP.

The Unification Church has also been linked to a variety of associated organizations. Some of these include The American Freedom Coalition, Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), CAUSA USA, American Leadership Conferences, American Constitution Committee, National Committee Against Religions Bigotry and Racism, Conservative Action Foundation, National Council for Church and Social Action ... [10]

Wikipedia readers may be interested in how the UC views the relationship between religion and politics. This relates, as you probably know, to the "separation between church and state". The latter forbids the government to interfere with religion or to establish one religion as the dominant one. However, the UC maintains that there is no rule against churches trying to influence government.

For example, a campaign to get senators and congressmen, governors and judges, and the president himself to be more mindful of God (however they conceive Him) and to seek His guidance (e.g., via prayer) would not be illegal or unconstitutional in the US, would it? --Uncle Ed 13:46, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the vigorous discussion Uncle Ed. I may be mistaken, but I think Rev Moon's political involvements and monetary contributions are already well documented in Wiki'. My point is that the political activism (partisan is in the eye the beholder I guess) comes out of the Unification ideology. Most Wiki' readers, from my point of view, would probably appreciate a more complete insight and understanding of that. I'm trying to think of the one young person, doing a homework assignment, trying to understand the phenomenon of Unificationism. The article, the way it was before, seemed to lack an outsider's point of view about the ideology.Marknw 14:53, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Amount of members?

There should be something in the article about the amount of members in the US and in the rest of the world. At least just an estimation. As an outsider reading this article I can't tell if the amount of members is closer to 10 thousand or 1 million. -- S Sepp 12:28, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

It's closer to 10,000. A couple years ago, Tyler gave me a copy of the membership database which (as vice president and later president) he had compiled and maintained, with the help of his assistant Go Ezaki. The database then had 5,800 records. Sorry, I can't remember if that was "couples" or "adults". I'd have to check on that, but it definitely did not count children, even those who reached adult age. Those are in a separate Second Generation (UC) database with around 3,000 to 5,000 records. Sorry, again, off the top of my head.

I usually tell people the American (USA) church has around 8,000 members.

Tyler estimates there are over 100,000 ex-members. That is, people who joined as adults, moved in as a full-time volunteer for at least 6 months - and then quit.

Sociologist Eileen Barker might have more accurate statistics.

By the way, it looks like the attrition rate is rather high. By my reckoning, 92% of Americans who joined the church full-time left the church. (And if anyone thinks we've found a surefire brainwashing technique, they can think again. :-) --Uncle Ed 13:31, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Democracy and ecumenism

Cut from intro:

This vision, however, was not along the lines of the democratic model of ecumenism common in the West. Moon views himself as the new messiah, and as such Christianity (and by extension all religions) should unite around him.

Who says that Moon's vision contradicts the democratic model?

And can we get a source for "Xty and all religions should unite around him"? (Not denying this, but it seemed jarring in the opening following hard on the heels of "not ... democratic" esp. in view of recent discussions with Mark about "automatic theocracy".) --Uncle Ed 16:55, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Uncle Ed, I thought I did link ot to the "Cloud of Witnesses" USA today advertisement. Is that not enough? I can find more quotes if you like.

It does seem pretty clear that Rev Moon's vision of the future does not look like the democracy we have today. Doesn't it? Or am I wrong about that? At the risk of sounding disingenuous, I'm not trying to be hostile towards the church. I do however think that it is important to look clearly, soberly and objectively at the implications of the Unification Ideology as it has been articulated by Rev Moon from the very beginning in the Divine Principle and continues until today. I think we just have to take him at his word. It would be up to the observer to decide whether that is good or bad. But an observer can't make that decision without having it all clearly out in the open. Rev Moon says many nice and wonderful things about love and peace. Everybody likes those kinds of things. Where the rubber meets the road, however, is the applied political ideology. With Regards Marknw 17:48, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

What are you saying? That heaven will not be a democracy? (All religions teach this.) Or are you hinting with phrases like look clearly & rubber meets the road that you see contradictions in the teachings?

Perhaps instead of conductiong your own analysis (see Wikipedia:Original research) it would be more fruitful to quote a critic directly. Try this format:

Moon opponent Dusty Rhodezze says that the church's theology is "utterly at odds with its political activism ... they say that democracy will lead to heaven, but I say they're bent on destroying democracy with a Taliban-style religious dictatorship."

I hope this helps. --Uncle Ed 18:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it does help. And thank you. As I said before, I know I have a lot of homework to do to make my contribution better. And I am grateful to you for your guidance and feedback. I tried from the beginning to use as few as my own words as possible and let the Divine Principle and Rev Moon's words speak for themselves in illustrating the political aspects of the theology. The article, the way it was before, seemed to me to be written only from the point of view of a believer and the points of theology implicitly assumed to be objective reality. Even when you said above "What are you saying? That heaven will not be a democracy?" that speaks volumes about your own beliefs about heaven. Many people don't see heaven in those kinds of terms. I will try to make it better. With Regards Marknw 18:56, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Lofland book

Cut:

An American sociologist, John Lofland, encountered one of the first UC missionary groups in America, associated himself with them, and observed them over many months. His account of this experience is published in Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith. Lofland does not identify the group explicitly, and disguises the identities of the individuals. He later indicated that he thought that the movement would soon fade away, and he wanted to spare any embarassment to the individuals involved, many of whom he judged vulnerable.

Did Lofland ever concede (in writing, maybe?) that the group he mentioned in his book was indeed the Unification Church?

User:ianpanderson Yes he does, see his webpage at University of California, Davis [[11]]

Also, did he tell them he was "thinking of joining"? If so, was this true or a ruse? If he studied them under a ruse, we should mention this in the article.

User:ianpanderson Agreed

I think an article about his book would be better, first, then summarize his findings or "experience" and cite the article with the {{main}} template. --Uncle Ed 17:01, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

User:ianpanderson I think this is a fascinating historical resource from an an observer who had a unique perspective on the first members of the Unification Church, and I would still like to see it linked from the UC page.

I agree that it's a fascinated resource about how this Korean-born church took hold in America, even if Lofland changed all the names and faked his true intentions. I wish someone would read the book (or at least skim it) and then summarize its findings. It's the earliest non-UC account of the US history of the church. --Uncle Ed 13:48, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Automatic theocracy again

A Google search for "automatic theocracy" "Andrew Wilson" led me to the following - but it wasn't easy to find:

Dan Fefferman: He never used words even resembling "automatic theocracy" but rather described "heaven on earth" as naturally emerging from a succession of democratically elected honest politicians.
Sun Myung Moon (retranslated): God is active in the realization of all human affairs. Therefore, when the democracies produce a succession of many uncorrupted politicians, it will become heaven on earth. Don't you agree that this is the way it should be? [12]

I'd prefer for the article to used the retranslation only, unless you'd care to collaborate on a "theocracy dispute" section - which I'd be glad to do. Church opponents say things like:

Opposition to constitutional democracy is a theological premise of The Divine Principle, the basic text of Unificationism. Moon's speeches are riddled with contempt for "American-style democracy," which he denigrates as "a good nursery for the growth of Communism." "We must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world," Moon has declared. [13]

I think that should be balanced with former church official Dan Fefferman's statement: He never used words even resembling "automatic theocracy" but rather described "heaven on earth" as naturally emerging from a succession of democratically elected honest politicians.

And also balanced with the DP idea about the balance of powers, comparing legislative, judiciary, and executive branches to 3 functions of the human body (lungs, heart, stomach I think).

Sound like a plan? --Uncle Ed 19:17, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good, thank you. Do you approve of the changes I made? I think that I would like to leave the other translation up if that's ok, given what a direct statement it is, unless the church somehow officially retracts that version of the speech as an error. Marknw 23:42, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Before I answer that, I'd like to call your attention to the "show preview" button. Rather than saving dozens of time per edit, would you perhaps consider using this button to see how each minor change looks before committing your changes? This makes it easier for others to follow the article's progress. --Uncle Ed 13:50, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I have two answers. I disagree with used by Rev. Moon and his followers to justify his authority but I really like how you fixed the "automatic theocracy" thing. --Uncle Ed 13:53, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Theology

The section I renamed is inaccurate about the "orgins" of UC theology:

Unification Church Theology is based on Rev. Sun Myung Moon's and his early follower's mostly literal and historical re-interpretation of selected Biblical narratives, a self-referential religious re-interpretation and specious revision of world history, and a pseudoscientific ontology of the universe dictated into a book called the "Divine Principle" also referred to, in Unification Church teachings, as the "Completed Testament."

In 29 years of church membership, I have seen no evidence that UC theology has been influenced by any followers, early or not. It's all been a one-way transmission from Moon to followers. Who says that followers had any influence on theology?

And who uses phrases like self-referential (sounds like a dig), specious revison of history, and pseudoscientific? We need to identify the source of this POV rather than stated it as fact. --Uncle Ed 14:22, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I can see why you feel the way you do. The way I phrased that was kind of harsh. But I see it as simple statements of fact in the light of reason, rather than a POV. That is why I put the DP quotes there to illustrate my points. This is an encyclopedia after all and encyclopedias originated in the age of enlightenment and reason. It doesn’t take an external exposé to show that there are some simple things that you can point out about the DP. It is like saying the "the grass is green", "the sky is blue." It is not meant as a dig. I think even folks who are involved in UC would appreciate knowing how DP compares to modern scholarship. Isn't that the very reason why someone would look-up Unification Church in an encyclopedia, say rather than a church flyer? Many churches have to deal with the reality that a lot of their beliefs do not square with modern science and research. That reality does not diminish the value of the religion at all. Look at the Catholic Church for instance. It may be an opportunity to deepen a persons faith that they may not get any other way. The basic thrust of this paragraph needs to be in the article somehow. You may like my improved version even less. I’m willing to work with you. Regards Marknw 15:21, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I deleted the entire section. It's a hopeless mishmash. I suggest you work on it by yourself, say at User:Marknw/Moon quotes. --Uncle Ed 15:39, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear Uncle Ed. I want to work with you on this, but you can't just delete whole sections without discussion. We need to colaborate on this. Please restore what what you deleted. Regards Marknw 15:53, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Discussed at length. It's all your own argument that the church is wrong: it contradicts itself or its ideas don't "match reality".

We can collaborate in your userspace, where I have preserved the deleted text.

Before your work can go into a Wikipedia article, it has to meet encyclopedic standards such as Wikipedia:NPOV and Wikipedia:Sources. I'm glad to help you with this. Then we can put the section back. --Uncle Ed 17:03, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear Uncle Ed, The way the article stands now, it is written from the Unification Church POV. I agree that my edits need to be refined. But I do not think that they should be sent to my user area. This feels like censorship. I have a feeling, no matter what I post there that is not from your own POV, you're not going to like it. Isn't the real reason you deleted it is because it does not agree with your own POV? For the record, I have not deleted one word from the article. I'm sorry we can't seem to work this out. And we were doing so good. I think I will just let other users weigh in on it. With Regards Marknw 17:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

No, censorship would be if I just deleted your contributions and refused to discuss them, as User:FeloniousMonk and User:ScienceApologist do at Intelligent design. --Uncle Ed 19:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
If the entire article is written from Unification Church POV then slap an {{npov}} label on it. But until you came along, the consensus was that it was no more pro-church than any other article about a church.
If you think the parts of the article that explain the church's teachings are biased, how about giving an example? It's not "from church POV" to say that "the church teaches X", is it?
Surely you don't think that "founded in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon" is written from the Unification Church POV - I wonder if you are just making a tit-for-tat response because I userfied most of the quotes section you were developing. --Uncle Ed 19:32, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear Uncle Ed, I appreciate the points you have made. But, I feel the points I was trying to make in the article were also very important. I think it is best to let a third party weigh in on our edit dispute. I did enjoy the exchanges we had. I hope we can come to an understanding, or at least agree to disagree. Have a good weekend and Happy Fathers Day if it is appropriate. Regards Marknw 20:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Allegations of marriage and sexual crimes

Cut from article:

However, Moon fathered at least two illegitimate children: one, named Hee-Jin, by a Korean student who is euphemistically referred to as Moon's "second" wife, although they were never married, and another whose identity was disclosed by Nan Sook Hong in her book (referenced below). There are claims of others (e.g. Myung-Shik Woo). Moreover, former Unification Church leaders have claimed that Moon and his wife had an enormous row in London in 1978 after their daughter found out about his plans to father children by yet another woman.

Introducing a passage with "however" implies that Wikipedia itself casts doubt on what came before. But it is not the place of the article or its contributors to argue pro or con (see WP:OR).

But we can fix this passage and then put it back.

Who uses the claim of illegitimate children to bolster the charge of sexual abuse of female members? We need to name them, and say WHY they believe one thing is related to the other.

Or if it's an unrelated matter, then it should not be introduced with a however. One is a charge of sexual abuse (a crime in both Korea and the US); another is an assertion of fathering a child out of wedlock (not always a crime).

It would be interesting to readers to know whether the church acknowledges any children fathered by Sun Myung Moon other than those mothered by his wife of 64 years, Hak Ja Han Moon. --Uncle Ed 14:22, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Here's an interesting passage from former church official Dan Fefferman, from a church-related web site:

Hee Jin Nim was acknowledged by Father as his son during his lifetime and honored publicly after his death. Some of Father's early speeches and prayers make reference to Hee Jin's death in similar terms to Heung Jin's. (both were "second" sons, both died tragically in accidents as teenagers.) When I was in Korea in 1970 Father, Mrs. Won Pok Choi and President Young Whi Kim explained the conception of Hee Jin in these terms: Father's first wife (the other Mrs. Choi) was in the process of divorcing him. The process is a long drawn out affair in Korean law. During this time in the mid 50s, Father began cohabiting with Ms. Myung Hee Kim. Because her pregnancy would have negative affects on Father both in terms of the divorce and in terms of criminal law, she moved to Japan to avoid getting Father in trouble. The baby was born there. However, while in Japan, she was either raped or seduced by a Japanese man. Father told us that if she had returned to him after that, he would have accepted her. However, she was so ashamed, that she hid from Father and stayed in Japan, returning only years later (perhaps after Father's marriage to mother.) She offered Hee Jin to Father, and Father accepted him as his son. So the answer is that
1. Father and his first wife were no longer married from God's viewpoint as Father understands it and
2. the relationship with Myung Hee Kim was acknowledged, but not at first, because of legal implications. [14]

I would interpret this as an assertion by church sources that:

Moon's first wife left him, at which point (from UC POV) Rev. Moon was "single"
Thereupon, he married Myung Hee Kim (from UC POV) but he could not register this marriage legally. At this point, he would be "remarried" in the eyes of the church but "still married to his first wife" by Korean law (I guess)
Finally, he married his third wife (then-teenaged Hak Ja Han) in early 1960. This marriage is recognized legally by Korea.

The question of what viewpoint one takes when interpreting events is paramount in this matter, as in controversies over fundraising and conversion. If earthly law alone is considered, then some things look irregular or even criminal. If there is no afterlife, then contributions to a church can't affect the fate of departed loved ones: non-existent people neither suffer nor feel joy any more Harry Potter (a fictitious character). If God and the afterlife do exist, but Rev. Moon isn't the Messiah (and DP isn't true), then all UC evangelism is dedicated to a false end, a chimera, an unattainable goal, and induces people to waste their lives for nothing.

Fortunately for us Wikipedia contributors, we don't have to settle this matter or any other matter. Wikipedia's neutrality policy allows (requires actually) articles to duck questions of which POV is correct. We need only describe each POV fairly.

So the church asserts one thing, and its opponents assert another. That's all. --Uncle Ed 14:49, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Political views

Mark, I'm glad you didn't give up on the politics of the Kingdom of Heaven. Lord knows, someone has to do it.

I only spotted two errors this time, neither one important enough to justify another Wikipedia:Text move or "userfying". I've marked them with the {{citation needed}} template.

Keep up the good work! :-) --Uncle Ed 15:24, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear Uncle Ed, Thank you for your kind words and feedback. I made some changes in wording. Please let me know what you think about them. With Regards Marknw 16:20, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Mark, I recast your argument as assertion by (unnamed) critics, but you still need to name them. You can't just make up your own anti-UC argument and put it in the argument. --Uncle Ed 16:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I guess I don't understand why you would recast this part that way. Isn't it a main tenant of the church?

Some critics assert that the conclusion of the Divine Principle titled "The Second Advent" is an attempt to persuade the reader that the "Second Coming of Christ", as foretold in the New Testament Bible, has been an actual historical event in the country of Korea [citation needed].
They interpret the following quotation as indicating that Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his followers to justify his authority as the "Christ of the Second Advent" and rightful spiritual and political monarch of a literal and external, rather than a metaphorical or internal only, "Kingdom of Heaven on Earth." [citation needed]
Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon was chosen by God and called by Jesus Christ to fulfill the mission of the Messiah, Savior and Lord of the Second Advent with the responsibility to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. "True Love King" According to Rev. Moon, this nation of Cheon Il Guk has already been established. [citation needed]

Thank you Marknw 17:24, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

There's a difference between a "tenet of the church" that something is predestined to happen and "an attempt to persuade the reader" that it DID happen.

I'm also doubtful that the UC claims SMM as the "rightful ... political monarch" of the entire world. Unlike Strider in The Lord of the Rings, Rev. Moon is not a "king in hiding". By church thinking, a man can become The Messiah only by the will of the people. Before and unless they will it, even a perfect man or restored Adam is not a messiah.

The aspect of the people's decision to accept (or exalt?) someone as the Messiah is perhaps what you are missing here, Mark. Please review the DP regarding the Foundation for the Messiah. The fact that Wikipedia has no article no this topic should be a clue that it's not an easy one to explain or understand. --Uncle Ed 17:32, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear Ed, The point I was trying to make in the article was that the DP teaches that the Messiah is an actual person rather than just a metaphor, as other religions believe, and that belief enfluences the UC political outlook. Isn't it common knowledge that the UC asserts that Rev Moon is that person? Respectfully Marknw 18:30, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I made the politics section much more generic and without opinion (I hope). What do you think? Regards Marknw 17:46, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear Ed, I am so sorry to hear you are going. I valued your feedback. In Buddhism it is believed that it is your adversaries that make you better. Like sandpaper. I think that is why Jesus said "love your enemies." I feel that my edits are better because of your feedback. I enjoyed our bantering back and forth. With Regards and Thanks Marknw 18:47, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ed_Poor"

Exucmember Edits

Hello Exucmember, I would like to change some of the edits you made. It is wikipedia policy to colaborate on major changes to an article. You made some statements that seem heavily from your own POV. It is polite to ask before moving a whole section. I would like to change back some of the edits you made to the politics section I was working on. I would also like to colaborate with you if you have an interest in this subject. With Regards Marknw 05:08, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Exucmember response

I would like to ask for help in solving a major problem on this page, the disproportianately large section on politics in Divine Principle. Marknw disagreed with my interpretation of Wikipedia:Article size guidelines and reverted my edits, including deleting my summary and clarifications (the clarification was of an otherwise misleading statement he made - source of claim in USA Today ad should be identified). I am not interested in getting into an argument with him, and I will leave it to others to resolve.

1. Article size and creating new, linked articles.

Wikipedia:Article size:

Readability issues

Readers may tire of reading a page much longer than about 6,000 to 10,000 words, which roughly corresponds to 30 to 50 KB of readable prose. Thus the 32 KB recommendation is considered to have stylistic value in many cases; if an article is significantly longer than that, then it probably should be summarized with detail moved to other articles (see Wikipedia:Summary style). For most long pages, division into sections is natural anyway; even if there is no "natural" way to split a long list or table, many editors believe that it should be done anyway, to allow section editing.

Technical issues...

Wikipedia:Summary style:

The length of a given Wikipedia entry tends to grow as people add information to it. This cannot go on forever: very long entries would cause problems. So we must move information out of entries periodically. This information should not be removed from Wikipedia: that would defeat the purpose of the contributions. So we must create new entries to hold the excised information. This style of organizing articles is somewhat related to news style except it focuses on topics instead of articles. The idea is to summarize and distribute information across related articles in a way that can serve readers who want varying amounts of detail. Thus giving readers the ability to zoom to the level of detail they need and not exhausting those who need a primer on a whole topic.

This guidelines article goes into much more detail, and by my reading, corresponds very well to the edit I made by creating a new, linked article just for Marknw's analysis of politics in Divine Principle. What do others think?

2. Original research

I was hesitant to mention this, because I think something like what Marknw wrote is a valuable contribution, but his analysis of the political ideology in Divine Principle may violate Wikipedia official policy unless he gets substantial help in rewriting it.

Wikipedia:No original research:

Original research is a term used on Wikipedia to refer material placed into articles by Wikipedia editors that have not been previously published by a reputable source. It includes unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, and ideas; or any new interpretation, analysis, or synthesis of published data, statements, concepts, or arguments that appears to advance a position … What is excluded? An edit counts as original research if it proposes ideas or arguments. That is, if it does any of the following: …It introduces an analysis or synthesis of established facts, ideas, opinions, or arguments in a way that builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source.

emphasis in original: Wikipedia:No original research (official policy).

Notice that the mention above of citing a reputable source refers not to such citations in the course of making one's argument, but rather that the analysis itself must be attributed to some reputable source. It seems that Marknw's analysis as currently presented is an original analysis, and as such violates Wikipedia's official policy. Opinions?

Hello Exucmember. Welcome to the discussion. I guess I'm a little at a loss understanding your protest. The article has 6,512 words, the section I added has 601 words, of which 89 words are of my creation. Here are the words I wrote:

"Divine Principle political ideology

The Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, is portrayed in some church publications as a monarch of the nation Cheon Il Guk.

Rev. Moon was also portrayed as the leader of all religions in a nationwide USA Today advertisement "Cloud of Witnesses" and the church website "Messages From Spirit World."

Political statements in the Divine Principle

The Divine Principle asserts that existing modern democracies have been a necessary, but temporary, stage in history and politics:

Political statements in Rev. Moon's Speeches"

Out of those, which do you object to? The majority of this article is dedicated to discussing the theology in the DP (much of which from the UC worldview) and UC idealism. I am curious why you're focusing your objections on just what I wrote. There is a political ideology clearly codified in the DP. I feel this needs to be illustrated (also) to add balance to the article itself. Do you have a suggestion as to how the DP & UC political ideology can be discussed in the context of this article? Thank you for your collaboration. Respectfully Marknw 23:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I have shortened the political section. You may need to empty your browser cache (hit refresh 3 times or so) to see the latest. Regards Marknw 14:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

What do others think?

I have delayed responding, as I found your (Marknw's) earlier actions offensive and your subsequent response disingenuous, but have no desire to be in conflict with you or to express any emotion in my comments. You say it is Wikipedia policy to "colaborate" on major changes to an article, but all I did was create a new page for the large section you wrote, which conforms in an exemplary manner to Wikipedia guidelines, as the page was getting too long (more than 32k), and that section was the most peripheral in my judgement (and, I would guess, in the judgement of most readers). Many people are honored to have a new page created from their material, and some editors boast about new pages they've created, even when they are not very substantial. Wikipedia guidelines repeatedly urge editors to be bold in editing. I am happy to collaborate, and I took the appropriate first step in doing so. Perhaps you thought I should ask your permission first before editing anything you wrote. You said you would like to collaborate with me, yet your actions - deleting everything I wrote - do not seem to conform to that claim.

You claim that what I wrote in the article (a small summary of your material) "seem[s] heavily from you own POV." I do not think so, I don't think most editors would think so, and I think it's odd that you would say so; I did not contradict your assertions or edit your content. Ironically, I think most readers might well characterize your section as POV. It certainly is out of place at present, discussing political implications in Divine Principle on the Unification Church page (section 5) before the book is even discussed (section 6.1). This doesn't really belong on the Unification Church page at all; it should be discussed very briefly on the Divine Principle page, with a link to the substantial essay that you wrote.

Your presenting a thesis and defending it with quotations from the book is prototypical of "original research" in the humanities, which is not allowed on Wikipedia. You should be careful how you present it. -Exucmember 21:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Second Coming of Christ

Dear Steve Dufour,

Regarding your edit:

Many other Christians, most of whom expect Jesus to return in a supernatural way, strongly reject such a proclamation, citing the Gospel of John (see Chapter 14, verse 6) in which Jesus of Nazareth states with finality that "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

I consider myself a Christian but I do not believe that Jesus will return in a supernatural way. I believe that Christ returns every day in the hearts, thoughts and actions of good men and women (metaphorically speaking). I would say that most Christians probably believe that the Second Coming of Christ is mysterious and transcendent of their ability to understand, but not "supernatural." It just seemed like a sweeping personal view on your part to say that "most of whom expect Jesus to return in a supernatural way." You may be correct. I just don't know. Do you have a source for that info?

What do you think? With Respect Marknw 16:20, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

It has always been my understanding that the majority of Christians believe in the Second Coming of Christ in a literal way. I would consider the return of a dead person to life to be supernatural. If you want to take out my comment that is fine. Maybe it doesn't belong there. BTW in my experience most Christians are do not "strongly reject" or show "offense" at my beliefs as a Unificationist even if they don't agree with them. However the dedicated anti-Unificationists (who are mostly ex-UC members) are always saying that they do, as they did a number of times in the article.Steve Dufour 06:49, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Steve for your reply. I would only like to humbly suggest that you may be able to re-phrase your statement in a more accurate way. There would be a difference between say, the popular beliefs about the second coming (see folk religion) and the official statements of beliefs by the clergy. If you wanted to draw a comparison, as you did, it would be more accurate to compare the official beliefs of the UC with the official beliefs of each denomination - to say it in a different way; compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges. It is from the dominant UC POV and self-interest to want to frame the discussion of the messiah and the second coming only in literal historical terms. There are other ways of interpreting them both that are valid. By adding your phrase "most of whom expect Jesus to return in a supernatural way" you are turning the paragraph into comparing one literalist interpretation (Moon as the "historical" "messiah") with another literalist interpretation (supernatural physical raising from the dead of Jesus) subtly implying that those where the only two choices. The way the paragraph was before the passage from John is open to many interpretations. Christianity itself is going through a period of challenge and self-examination regarding the literal (fundamentalist) interpretation of the sacred scriptures and reconciling that with modern scholarship. From my own POV, the big question in Christianity today (and all religions for that matter, including the Unification Church) is can there be an ulterly sacred and religious way to read the holy scriptures (including the DP) without reading them literally? For myself, and many others, the answer is a resounding yes. In regards to your edit, it is not a matter of being "offensive", it is a matter of providing Wiki' readers with a more complete picture of the debate.

If I may, I would like to respectfully suggest that criticism does not necessarily mean "anti-Unificationist." I do see myself as highly critical of fundamentalisms of all kinds, but I would defend the right for the UC to exist. It would be unfortunate and self-defeating for the UC to see (and paint) critics as only "dedicated" enemies. Criticism makes us better, don't you think? That is the beauty of living in an open society. Moon and the UC make some incredible claims and are very aggressive and proactive (God bless'm) in the marketplace of ideas both political and religious. The UC is also very critical of other schools of thought and does not hold back in its public criticism of them. It would be only natural and right for the UC ideology to be examined rigorously in a like fashion. I don't want to remove anything you wrote. I do think it is important to try to keep the content quality of Wiki' as high, balanced and comprehensive as possible on this subject. Sincerely Marknw 21:38, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Mark. I agree with you on many things. I myself do not take everything in the Divine Priciple or Rev. Moon's talks literally. I think the move away from fundamentalism is a good thing, mostly. I sometimes attend services at a local Unity Church, which, as you probably know, has moved a long ways from fundamentalism.Steve Dufour 03:50, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

"Sexual Improprities"

I took this section out because I don't think any serious, sincere student or critic of the UC makes this claim. Besides it is far from the most serious accusation that has ever been leveled against Rev. Moon or our church. I think the most serious would be that by being anti-communist we were really planning to provoke a global nuclear war between the USA and the USSR which would wipe out all life on earth. A much more serious charge than, "an 86 year old man had sex with someone he shouldn't have 50 years ago"; don't you think?Steve Dufour 03:53, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Steve. I am certainly in no position to judge Moon on his sex life, but it does seem relevant to this article. It seems, like the rest of us, Moon has had trouble, all along, practicing what he preaches.

"Hee Jin Moon and Myung Hee Kim
Dan Fefferman December 25, 1998
Question: Why did Father take a concubine Miss Kim who gave birth to their son Hee Jin while he was married to his first wife Song Gil Choi? Why was this never acknowledged?
Hee Jin Nim was acknowledged by Father as his son during his lifetime and honored publicly after his death. Some of Father's early speeches and prayers make reference to Hee Jin's death in similar terms to Heung Jin's. (both were "second" sons, both died tragically in accidents as teenagers.) When I was in Korea in 1970 Father, Mrs. Won Pok Choi and President Young Whi Kim explained the conception of Hee Jin in these terms: Father's first wife (the other Mrs. Choi) was in the process of divorcing him. The process is a long drawn out affair in Korean law. During this time in the mid 50s, Father began cohabiting with Ms. Myung Hee Kim. Because her pregnancy would have negative affects on Father both in terms of the divorce and in terms of criminal law, she moved to Japan to avoid getting Father in trouble. The baby was born there. However, while in Japan, she was either raped or seduced by a Japanese man. Father told us that if she had returned to him after that, he would have accepted her. However, she was so ashamed, that she hid from Father and stayed in Japan, returning only years later (perhaps after Father's marriage to mother.) She offered Hee Jin to Father, and Father accepted him as his son. So the answer is that
1) Father and his first wife were no longer married from God's viewpoint as Father understands it and 2) the relationship with Myung Hee Kim was acknowledged, but not at first, because of legal implications. BTW, this is the Ms Kim who was blessed on stage at MSG to Confucius." [15]

I would agree with you. The political goals, like establishing a fundamentalist theocracy ("Declaration of the Establishment of Cheon Il Guk") on the Korean peninsula, is what concerns me the most. There were about 4 million casualties of brave men, women and children during the Korean war in the effort to keep South Korea a free secular democracy with the freedom for all religions. Regards Marknw 18:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem most people have with Rev. Moon is that he teaches that the Christ should marry and have children, not that he has "trouble practicing what he preaches". I am a little disappointed in you Mark. I thought you wanted to have an honest discussion about your sincere concerns. Steve Dufour 04:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that only Christians will object to the fact that Moon says that Christ should marry and have children. Of course, non-Christians may wonder how Moon justifies his view on Christ, because it is a view that does not seem to be supported by the Bible. Personally I think that a person who claims to be the Messiah or condones that he is seen is as the Messiah but who does not practice what he preaces has something to explain. Andries 19:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Andries, My point was that he did marry and have children, as he preaches.Steve Dufour 01:20, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Steve. I'm sorry you feel disappointed. I was sincerely responding to your inquiry regarding the sexual improprieties section. Moon makes claims to authority based on other claims of sexual and parental infallibility. His actual personal history seems relevant to those claims.

It is of concern to me that on June 13, 2006 Moon opened a massive "palace" (including a police force) in Korea, crowned himself king and declared the beginning of a new nation, ("True Love King") all based on his literal, historical and political interpretation of the New Testament (and great deal of over confidence). How do you, Steve, think the South Korean government will respond to Moon's plans? I think it would be wise for every Unificationist to think carefully about this course of action. Do you think that literal political kingdoms is what religion is all about? Hasn't history taught us that when a religion gets involved in government, it ruins an otherwise perfectly good religion every time. I have many dear friends who are Unificationists and I, for one, am concerned. Please convince me I have nothing to be concerned about. Just out of compassion, any "reality check" (sexual improprieties) would be important to include in this article. Sincerely Marknw 23:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion a sincere person could be concerned about the possibility of a Unificationist based theocracy coming into existence in the future. However I don't think the South Korean government is very concerned. I have been to Korea a couple of times in the last few years and I would guess that they think our activities are good for the economy and the tourist trade. I certainly didn't encounter any hostility towards my being a Unificationist. Considering that Unificationists make up about 1 million or so of the world's 6 billion people and are spread among, almost, all countries I'd say we have a long way to go before there is any real danger of a Unificationist theocracy.Steve Dufour 01:20, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Steve. You do make a good point and it actually makes me feel a little better. I am still concerned about deleting information about Moon from this article. Again, it seemed you were asking for feedback about deleting the sexual improprieties section. Just a little research (even in the church literature) shows that Moon has had less than a perfect track record. In order to temper extreme views, both positive and negative, it would be important to keep the info here balanced between the idealism and the reality as much as possible. UC people have, from time to time softened, moved and deleted what they see as critical statements. I think the long term effect will be to make the article seem biased and useless for any serious research. If the church would want to be respected it should have no fear owning up to the unpleasant realities as well as the good things. Look what the Catholic church is going through with its sex scandals, yet I am sure they will survive by being honest and forth-coming about it. Trying to hide it and pretend it does not exist just causes more damage in the long run. Thank you for sharing your perspectives. Marknw 02:56, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The claim that Rev. Moon "has had less than a perfect track record" is not something the article should assert as fact. It is quite obviously a matter of dispute. I suggest you quote a church critic (like maybe Nan Sook Hong), using this format:

Joe Fingerpointer says, "Moon's track record is less than perfect. He's a bigamist and an adulterer. Look at all the kids he had out of wedlock." (ref: book or article)

This, of course, would be balanced with the UC point of view, which AFAIK goes something like this:

Church official Dan Fancypants said Moon's 'bigamy' is a mere artifact of legal delays in South Korea; his first wife had already left him. And the extra progeny wasn't about sex but only to guarantee the lineage.

Steve, check me on this, would you? --Uncle Ed 14:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable Ed. However there is really no way to *disprove* the accusation that you had sex with some un-named person 50 years ago.Steve Dufour 01:54, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Should the section on Rev. Moon's sexual life be put in the wiki on Rev. Moon himself, rather than in the UC Wiki? While Rev. Moon is the founder and leader of the Unification shurch, and all its members love him almost like a 2nd father, his actions in his personal sexual and family life are not nessaserily the actions of the UC, are they? Sincerely - Christopher (Fipher) D. Osborn, 2nd gen. member, HSA-UWC.

Christianity Logo

Question: Why it is "christianity" logo in this article? For example Jehovah's Witnesses cult is in it's theology nearer to christianity then Unification Church and it has its own logo. [14:36, 24 July 2006 217.172.148.1]

Unificationists, like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, consider themselves Christians even if other Christians do not.Steve Dufour 04:40, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Even before User:217.172.148.1 made his comment above, I was concerned that this very response would come. Conservative Christians would regard belief in the Trinity to be central in Christianity, and would consider those who don't believe in a traditional (Nicea/Chalcedon) interpretation of the Trintiny not to be Christian. I don't think you want to invite this fight for something as minor as which template goes first. [1] What "looks better" is a matter of opinion. [2] There is a main template that is just for this page; that one should have priority. (Other pages always have the main template for the page first.) [3] At present, a reader can't even see the main template without scrolling down, but a user may well click on an item in the table of contents, and never see the main template; if the templates are reversed, both will be visible.

The main template should definitely be on top. -Exucmember 13:54, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

The Unification Church is mentioned in the "Christian-Related Movements" section of the Christian demomination article. See also Christian movements.

The church's full name (as translated from the original Korean is "The Holy Spiritual Association for the Unification of World Christianity". It's not much of a leap from there to assume that an "association" trying to unify Christianity must either be "Christian" or "Christian-related". (Ah, but what do I know? My 29 years of UC membership may perhaps have given me a pro-UC bias ;-) --Uncle Ed 14:21, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ed! I would like to see the Christianity Logo box thing taken off the article because we Unificationists don't use the symbol of the cross because we don't think the crucifixion of Jesus was a good thing. As a Unificationist I certainly consider myself a Christian, that is a follower of Jesus.Steve Dufour 01:46, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

As an ex-member, I don't think I have a pro-UC bias (although I have been accused of it on Wikipedia; less surprisingly - especially given my username, which I chose to head off the first accusation - I've also been accused here of having an anti-UC bias), and I think an organization has the right to define itself in relation to the Christian tradition (as Andrew Wilson used to put it), but would anyone like to respond to my assertion that putting the Christianity logo above the main logo for the page invites this kind of criticism? -Exucmember 22:07, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The question to what extent the UC church is Christian depends, I think as a lay person, on the importance given to Jesus, the Bible relative to other scriptures and its own extra-biblical scriptures, the Divine Principle. It is not enough that the UC accepts Jesus as the messiah and the Bible as scripture because some Hindus do this too. Andries 23:01, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I do not agree that a group is Christian only because it claims to be so. Andries 23:14, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think a person is Christian because he or she claims to be either.Steve Dufour 01:41, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Dr. Wilson's statement is more nuanced than a group being Christian because they claim to be. No one has responded to the three points I made in relation to why the main template should be on top, though Steve's opinion that the Christianity template should be deleted would certainly seem to support my view. And I wouldn't disagree with his arguments, but I'm not going to be the one to remove it. -Exucmember 02:06, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

As a current member of the UC, I do not beleive that the Cross should be associated as a logo og the UC. The UC actively encourages the cross to be taken down at other Christian churches because we beleive it is a rather disgturbing symble, as if Jesus being naild to a crusafix was a GOOD thing. -Christopher (Fipher) D. Osborn

Lofland's book

I removed this paragraph:

An American sociologist, John Lofland, encountered one of the first UC missionary groups in America, associated himself with them, and observed them over many months. He wrote a book about his findings called Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith, although the Unification Church was not a "doomsday cult". Lofland does not identify the group explicitly, and disguises the identities of the individuals. He later indicated that he thought that the movement would soon fade away, and he wanted to spare any embarrassment to the individuals involved.

Every year there are thousands of sociological papers and books written about every group of people under the sun. The fact that someone wrote one about the UC is not in itself important. If you think it is find a copy of the book and write an article about what it says.Steve Dufour 05:11, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Steve, good call. Lofland's book is often mentioned. But if you actually read the book, it is not only the title that is misleading. His snide and dismissive attitude toward the Unification Church members shows an ironic contrast to the ideal of the objective social scientist, and seems to be what leads to the obvious errors. Perhaps one reason it is mentioned by critics is that it paints an unflattering portrait. -Exucmember 01:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Lofland's book should be mentioned because the theory of conversion that he proposed in the book became one of the most popular one ever and was generalized for other new religious movements.(The generalization is a flawed one, because my conversion story to a NRM almost completely contradicts his theory.) I have read several summaries of the book. Andries 00:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I made the redirect from doomsday cult to destructive cult, but this may have been incorrect. From what I understood, the early UC had clearly millenialist aspects that Lofland described. Is that correct? Andries 00:19, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I read somewhere that at one time some sociological researchers would pretend to join "doomsday cults" (In this sense these are groups which predict a date for the end of the world, the Seventh Day Adventists is perhaps the most famous.) for the purpose of seeing how the members would react when the predicted date came and nothing happened. What they often found, according to the article I read, was that the group would rally and become stronger after that happened. This could be what Lofland was trying to do. What might be done is to have a section about all the books and studies that have been done about the UC and include it there.Steve Dufour 04:36, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Steve, I think you are confusing Leon Festinger's research of an UFO cult with Lofland's research. Andries 09:59, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

You could be right. I did look over Lofland's book, but many years ago and I don't remember much about it. Then I read something somewhere about the "doomsday cult" research, but I might be wrong in thinking they are connected. Steve Dufour 13:38, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Liberation of souls from Hell

Why take this off? It is part of UC belief. It is also a difference between our beliefs and that of mainstream Christians. I also think people might be interested to learn that.Steve Dufour 04:19, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

NPOV tag with no explanation

User: 67.161.16.209, thank you for attempting to contribute to Wikipedia. Your addition of the NPOV tag to this article, however, may not be helpful if you don't discuss specific issues, as required by Wikipedia policy.

From Wikipedia:NPOV_dispute#Adding_a_page:

Please note: The above label is meant to indicate that a discussion is ongoing, and hence that the article contents are disputed and volatile. If you add the above code to an article which seems to be biased to you, but there is no prior discussion of the bias, you need to at least leave a note on the article's talk page describing what you consider unacceptable about the article. The note should address the problem with enough specificity to allow constructive discussion towards a resolution, such as identifying specific passages, elements, or phrasing that are problematic.

I honestly don't have the slightest idea whether you think the bias in the article is in favor of or against the Unification Church. If you don't raise specific issues here, anyone may remove the tag at any time. -Exucmember 07:00, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to give the person a day or two to come back and say more. I think the article is more neutral than most on religion which are mostly written from the members' POV. For instance see the articles on the Mormons and the Unity Church. I am not neutral since I am a member and a defender. I'm mostly just keeping an eye on things and trying to balence out some of the negative comments. Exucmember, I think, is doing a good job of trying to be neutral. Steve Dufour 05:22, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I see that the tag came back. Steve Dufour 05:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll remove it this time. If a person leaves the tag without so much as a comment in the edit summary (much less discussing it here), at least saying which direction he thinks the bias runs, I think we should just delete it immediately. I can't see how it serves a constructive purpose other than to personally vent. -Exucmember 18:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Mission of the Messiah

Cut:

The messiah is viewed as an incarnation of God in the sense of a person who has completed a natural growth process to perfect oneness with God, which all persons should achieve but cannot due to sin. To be the messiah is to be in a role of savior, which does not require ontological status as God the Son, one person of the Trinity (as understood in traditional Christianity).

I take issue with:

natural growth process - omits mention of Responsibility
should achieve but cannot - contradicts UC interpretation of Matt. 5:48

How can we revise this? --Uncle Ed 19:51, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the whole presentation of DP should be rewritten so that it makes sense to an ordinary reader, since you asked. :-) Steve Dufour 05:20, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

POV problems.

This article is incredibly POV, with a bias in favour of the Moonies. The problems are mainly with weasel words and attempts to justify supporters or denigrate detractors with highly inappropriate, nonencyclopedic language, like " Moon has made explicit statements about many racial, ethnic, and religious groupings, which some may choose to label "racist". " This article needs a huge amount of overhaul work. [unsigned comment by User:The Diplomat 13:51, 28 August 2006]

You are welcome to make any contributions you like. Steve Dufour 03:57, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

It is vague and hence unencyclopedic. Andries 17:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Both sides, members and critics, have let the other say things without demanding a high level of documentation. True, it is not very "encyclopedic". If there were people who had an intellectual interest in understanding the UC, not mainly to criticize or defend, and some of them wanted to take part in editing the article then maybe it would be different. Steve Dufour 02:03, 15 September 2006 (UTC) p.s. exucmember is mainly a critic and I am a member and it is a pleasure to work with him on the UC related articles.

Steve, you may have read my criticism above in relation to some member saying Hak Ja Han was the second wife:

I think this is an excellent example of something that is a little more typical than ideal in Korean culture (a pattern transported to a surprising extent into the culture of the Unification Church in America) of what outsiders call deception but which is really a person fooling themselves into thinking that they can say something that is technically correct from one point of view (or just slightly incorrect) but is actually misleading, and that it's somehow okay. In one sense we shouldn't be too harsh on the Koreans for this, as they lived in a society where honesty might be met with brutal repression in the first half of the 20th century and violation of rights and priveleges by the powerful during the second half. In other aspects, Korean culture has its strong points, but if American Unification Church members don't insist on honesty, fairness, transparency and other virtues which are relatively stronger in the West, the Unification Church in America can never succeed here. Outsiders might be surprised at the lack of awareness of within the American Unification Church of the need for correcting such obvious, basic problems.

You have usually been quite fair, but I have to say that you may have fallen into a similar trap to the one I described (or at least made sloppy edits, which is not characteristic of you) in an edit today on the Unification Church page [16] and on the Hak Ja Han page [17]. In both cases you deleted a lot more information (all of it critical) than your edit summary reason would justify. I think it would be better for the church and its efforts to improve its reputation for you and other supporters to rise above the standard of the critics and be more fair and objective than they are. I have seen you do this a number of times, and I think this makes a careful, neutral reader more likely to conclude that perhaps at least some of the criticism is exaggerated.

Btw, I am mostly a critic on some pages, but on others I am mostly (or entirely) supportive, disagreeing with the critics. But in all cases I try to be fair and accurate. I'm not trying to push an agenda other than reality as I see it, and I think I'm pretty free of any psychological/emotional need to criticize the church (which is very common among ex-members who would care to spend the time to contribute to a forum like this). -Exucmember 20:50, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Sect

This article describes in the summary the UC as a sect. The problem with the word sect is that there are several definitions for the word and the UC does not seem to fit the most popular one, (split off from a larger group because of doctrinal differences without being a novel religion). Which definition is meant? May be we should write that the UC is a separate organization in spite of its attempts to be euchumenicalAndries 17:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. I think "sect" was misused, or misunderstood, by the author of the original sentence. BTW a bigger problem with the article is: "WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT???" To me the "Unification Church" means "the group of people who believe in and follow Sun Myung Moon". In that case the group started in about 1945 when he began his religious work, not in 1954 when the "Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity" was founded. Steve Dufour 02:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. The "early ministry" was before 1954. The stuff about the cardboard and mud shack and other details of what he and follwers did then show a lot about who Sun Myung Moon was, and reveal much more about the man and his organization than most of what's in this article or in the Sun Myung Moon article. In fact, in the latter article, his biography before 1960 consists of little more than a description of multiple arrests! The UC article should have something about the early ministry in Pusan and the difficulties with Ihwa (correct spelling) and Yonsei, with perhaps a slightly more detailed version in the SMM article (especially of Pusan). And what about the trek south after being liberated from the forced-labor camp? -Exucmember 03:50, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge

I strongly oppose a merge. There was some limited discussion on the Talk:Moonies page in 2003 (and one comment in Feb. 2004) that suggested merging, but I think the evolution of the Moonies article in the years since has made it clear that Moonies is an article about the pejorative slur, and the Unification Church article is about the organization. Who would propose merging Nigger into Black people or African American? Even the proposal would be regarded by some as highly offensive. There are separate articles for African American, Black people, Negro, and Nigger, as there should be. I have no doubt that User:OwenBlacker added the tag in good faith based on the extant comments from several years ago; he seems to be a highly capable editor. The Unification Church article needs one sentence about the pejorative slur "Moonie," to counter ignorance by some and intolerance by others. But I really don't think many people who are familiar with the specific issues involved here would advocate a merge at this point, if they respect the situation of the offensiveness of the term "Moonie." -Exucmember 22:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree, if people go to the "Moonies" article they can link to the UC article. On the other hand I think Unification Movement should be merged into the Unification Church article since they are really the same thing. That is it is about the group of people who follow Rev. Moon, not just about an organization. Steve Dufour 02:47, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I was responding above to the idea of merging the Moonies article into the Unification Church article, which I think was based on ignorance of the issues. I can see the arguments for and against considering the Unification Church to mean followers of rev. Moon, to have started in the 40s instead of 1954, and to continue into the era of FFWPU, but I lean toward your view. Nothing changed radically when the UC was founded, and the same was true for the FFWPU (which Andrew Wilson called a "name change" in writing somewhere I read, but don't ask me to find a citation). The Unification Movement article does not really stand on its own anyway. Do you think a merge tag should be put back (single, not multiple merge) to get others' opinions? -Exucmember 16:42, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree with the merging proposal between Unification Movement and Unification Church. Can someone please do it already? (I myself am a devoted Unificationist.) 72.25.96.127 03:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Politics in the Unification Church

I reverted an addition that was ignorant of the scholarly literature and added a citation from Timothy Miller using footnote format, which up to now has not been used in this article. In the process, as I was looking over the article, I couldn't help being bothered again by the original research regarding User:Marknw's POV on politics in the Unification Church. The article I created for him to hash out that topic with others was named Politics in Divine Principle, following his implicit claim that Divine Principle is the basis for the Unification Church's political views (though he cites other sources). Anyway, I really think a whole article can easily be filled with the topic "politics in the Unification Church" (probably a better name), which could deal with anti-communism, political ideas in the teachings, conservatism and ties to conservatives, claims of "automatic theocracy," and perhaps even politics (or polity) within the Unification Church organization (if anyone is interested in that). What do people think about changing the name Politics in Divine Principle to Politics in the Unification Church and expanding that article? -Exucmember 18:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Support. If the name is not changed then the excerpts of Moon's speeches should be removed, because they are now off-topic. Andries 19:00, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that is a good idea. I will help you when I get the time. Steve Dufour 02:41, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello Exucmember and Steve,

The actual name of the section is "Divine Principle political ideology." The meaning is that The Divine Principle is not just a "theology" but also a political philosophy or ideology. The DP lays out a very definite political vision for the future world. That vision is well documented in the DP as well in Moon's speeches and actions. If you are going to have a large section on the theology of the DP in this article, it should also have a section on the political ideology as well. Otherwise you are not telling the whole story and leaving out a very important aspect of Unificationism as a philosophy. I disagree that the section should be moved to a seperate article as it is a very important component in fully understanding Unificationism academically. This section is not about "politics in the Unification Church." Respectfully Marknw

There are a number of problems with your arguments. There obviously should be only one section for theology/teachings. (Right now there are two.) The theology should be presented very briefly, with the main article being Unification theology. The fact that these two sections and the main article are woefully inadequate right now is one of the biggest problems in the Unification Church category of dozens of pages, and needs to be addressed by current members.

1. How can a sub-section on "Political statements in Moon's Speeches" be a part of a section on "Divine Principle political ideology"?

2. The assertion that the political ideology in Divine Principle deserves equal time with its theology is ridiculous. No one who reads the book would think that the political ideology comes close to the importance of the theology in terms of what this book is about. Even if it were equal in importance, political ideology should be a sub-section of the teachings, not a separate section.

3. It is not necessary, not even desireable, to "tell the whole story." That's why there is a main article on Unification theology, for example, and why the section on theological beliefs should be brief in the Unification Church article. This is obviously even more true for political ideology.

4. We can debate the name of the article. Some candidates might be "Unification Church political ideology" (a bit derogatory/POV), "Unification Church political philosophy" (better), "Unification political philosophy" (sounds too much like generic pro-unifying policy), or the broader "Politics in the Unification Church" (has the advantage of providing a place to put political topics that are not quite political philosophy). -Exucmember 05:45, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I've given the Politics in the Unification Church a start by quoting the Divine Principle sections on Cheon Il Guk and communism. I think that gives a basis for understanding the topic. Of course a lot more information should be added. Steve Dufour 13:10, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear Exucmember and Steve, Ex said:

"The assertion that the political ideology in Divine Principle deserves equal time with its theology is ridiculous. No one who reads the book would think that the political ideology comes close to the importance of the theology in terms of what this book is about. Even if it were equal in importance, political ideology should be a sub-section of the teachings, not a separate section."

I have read the DP and much of it is a political reinterpretation of selected Biblical naratives. It also contains a large amount of self-referential literalist religious reinterpretation of the last 2000 years of world political history. So, I'm at a loss to understand why you would say:

"No one who reads the book would think that the political ideology comes close to the importance of the theology"

The conclusion of the DP is a detailed call-to-action for political change in the world under the leadership of the "Messiah of the Second Advent." It is commonly understood that Moon is believed by UC members to be that leader.

The DP clearly reinterprets the narative of the life of Jesus in the NT as having the goal of an actual/literal political kingship rather than a kingship as a symbolic spiritual metaphor, parable or alegory.

The section "Divine Principle political ideology" is only a 535 word section in an article of around 6,700 words. I am also at a loss as to why you would want to move it on the grounds of size considering the size of the other content on the beliefs of the UC.

Again this section is not about politics in the UC or UC political involvements. Its about the political ideology clearly codified in the DP and in Moon's speeches and actions.

I strongly object to removing this section from this article.

Respectfully Marknw

You really need to write the article, publish it somewhere else, and then cite it. Steve Dufour 10:03, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I will go ahead and remove Marknw's section on the grounds that it is original research. I do agree with a lot of what he says however. Steve Dufour 23:22, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Steve, did you see my comments above in Talk:Unification_Church#POV_problems (posted today)? I think you may have gone a bit overboard again here. Let's give Marknw the benefit of the doubt on his borderline original research and provide a very brief summary of the gist of his view in this article and a substantial section on political philosophy in the Politics in the Unification Church article. The assertion he seems to be making that political philosophy is as prominent in the Divine Principle as theology may be patently absurd, but I agree with you that much of what he says is accurate; and it seems important, as well as fair, to include his perspective (except perhaps with some judicious editing of some aspects). It seems to me that's the way Wikipedia works. Remember also that there are quite a few important things to say about the Unification Church for which there simply is no extant citation. -Exucmember 04:12, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear Steve,
Please restore the section "Divine Principle political ideology" that you deleted. I will ask for arbitration otherwise. It seems to me that you are prejudiced by your own POV. I do not agree with your characterization of the section as "original research." I am happy to discuss any problems with the section point by point. Thank you. Respectfully Marknw

I happen to agree with your main points. But what you really should do is write a book about it and hit the TV and radio talk show circuit. Steve Dufour 15:23, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Marknw,
Why are you being so obstinate and utterly inflexible? Apart from the original research aspect, your contribution is out of place.

1. It does not deserve its own section in this article, because it is too peripheral to the topic, unless you take the utterly bizarre view that political philosophy is as important as theology in Divine Principle. Even then it probably doesn't deserve its own section. You have not budged an inch on this.

2. When an article gets too long, the first thing that should be done is to look to see whether some part of the article is peripheral, and has enough coherence and interest to stand as an independent article. Then a summary can be written for the existing article and the text moved to the new article. I did this for you (Politics in Divine Principle). You rejected it with no compromise and deleted my summary. Your only defense so far is to cite the number of words in the section you wrote, claiming that it's not that much compared to the whole article. You have not budged an inch on this one either.

3. What you wrote clearly has elements of original research. You should comb through what you've written to eliminate them. You have refused to do so. You have not budged an inch on this one either.

4. I attempted to get a discussion going of what the most appropriate name would be for a separate article. Steve and I seemed to lean toward the larger topic of Politics in the Unification Church, which you rejected, claiming that it is instead "Divine Principle political ideology." But when I asked you how political statements in Rev. Moon's speeches could fit under that narrow heading you had no response. You also had no response to alternative names for this topic. You also did not respond to my claim that the word "ideology" is somewhat pejorative. It seems like you don't want to discuss anything except to insist on having things exactly your own way with no modifications. You have not budged an inch on this one either.

5. I raised a number of other points, and you have not responded to any, except to repeat your borderline original research thesis.

If your position is that your POV is perfect and can tolerate no modifications of any kind, I'm afraid you will not get as far with it on Wikipedia.

Like Steve, I also happen to agree with many of your main points. Sometimes ex-members retain something of an "I'm right and the rest of the world is wrong" attitude that many church members seem to have inherited from Rev. Moon's pattern; I hope that's not what's going on here. I'm an ex-member too. And Steve is fair-minded, not at all a POV zealot. Why won't you work with us? -Exucmember 16:13, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear Ex,

I would be happy to discuss point by point the problems you see with the section I wrote. It does not deserve to be deleted however. Uncle Ed tried to deleted it in past and it was restored then. I made it much shorter at that time. It is true that we may not agree on the certain points and may never agree. I do however feel that it is very important to make the point, in this article, that Unificationism is as much a political ideology in its doctrines as it is a theological one. Any student trying to research Unificationism would not get a complete picture otherwise. For example, I could not explain Communism to you without talking about the political doctrines of Karl Marx. I feel You and Steve are dominating this article too much. Please allow others have a voice. Respectfully Marknw

Dear Ex,

You said:

"I think we should talk about the issues we raised before you put your section back wholesale with no modifications"

I prefer that we restore the section and then discuss it. If you do not restore it, I will ask for protection from the wiki staff. I do not understand why you feel it is a urgent matter to remove this section right away, if at all. Regards Marknw

Marknw, I just made a major edit to the structure of the whole article (and had an edit conflict twice). Your edit which includes:

Reverend Doctor Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, is portrayed in some church publications as a monarch of the nation Cheon Il Guk, "True Love King", "Family Federation for World Peace and Unification", "Declaration of the Establishment of Cheon Il Guk".
Moon was also portrayed as the leader of all religions in the online article "Cloud of Witnesses" and the church website "Messages From Spirit World."

needs some serious work. I will try to put back the gist. Also, I would really appreciate it if you would use the "Show preview" button and check your edits and correct them before posting them. also, you might consider making a few minor changes as part of a single edit. Otherwise you have so many edits just to make a small change and it's very hard to work with. -Exucmember 19:34, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I mentioned the problems in detail with this entry in June. You chose to completely ignore the issues I raised and just reverted my proposals to fix the misleading and factually inaccurate aspects of what you had said. -Exucmember 19:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear Ex

I was trying to shorten it. I will to be more user friendly. Somehow, I feel, you are under, what I would consider, the mistaken impression that you own this article. I do not think that is correct. Please refrain from deleting my work. I do not agree with what you have done with the section. It changes the meaning completely. Regards Marknw

I do not own the article. You will see that I am rather cooperative here even though I may disagree with people. You, however, have seemed to make virtually zero effort to cooperate. It is because of this that you leave us no option but to "delete your work." For one, you have to integrate your work into an existing Wikipedia structure, in this article and others, as appropriate. You can't just create a section that doesn't logically belong, ignore objections raised since June, and repeatedly revert to the exact wording and structure you want. Are you completely incapable of cooperating? -Exucmember 19:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear Ex,
I'm sorry Ex, I just do not agree with your characterization at all. I feel that this is a very important section that needs to be in this article. Again, I ask you respectfully and politely, please stop deleting it.
Here is what I said to you in June:

"Hello Exucmember. Welcome to the discussion. I guess I'm a little at a loss understanding your protest. The article has 6,512 words, the section I added has 601 words, of which 89 words are of my creation. Here are the words I wrote:

"Divine Principle political ideology

The Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, is portrayed in some church publications as a monarch of the nation Cheon Il Guk.

Rev. Moon was also portrayed as the leader of all religions in a nationwide USA Today advertisement "Cloud of Witnesses" and the church website "Messages From Spirit World."

Political statements in the Divine Principle

The Divine Principle asserts that existing modern democracies have been a necessary, but temporary, stage in history and politics:

Political statements in Rev. Moon's Speeches"

Out of those, which do you object to? The majority of this article is dedicated to discussing the theology in the DP (much of which from the UC worldview) and UC idealism. I am curious why you're focusing your objections on just what I wrote. There is a political ideology clearly codified in the DP. I feel this needs to be illustrated (also) to add balance to the article itself. Do you have a suggestion as to how the DP & UC political ideology can be discussed in the context of this article? Thank you for your collaboration. Respectfully Marknw"

Again, please explain why you feel that is is so urgent to delete this entire section right away? Thank you Marknw

more on policital ideology

I shortened the sections on political philosophy and took away the section title to help it blend in with the rest of the article. It is now down to just 379 words. Very few are my own words. Regards Marknw 00:33, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

It is much improved. Steve Dufour 01:29, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Steve for your kind words and all your feedback. Regards Marknw 16:09, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I had exactly the same thought as I read the new version, that it is very much improved. You've done a good job, and I appreciate the fact that you integrated it into the article and responded to feedback. I have a few suggestions, but they are minor. Thanks. -Exucmember 17:51, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I've made a lot of edits to Unification Church category pages in the last week (especially Talk pages), but I haven't made any edits to the politics section during this period; I thought it was better to leave it alone for awhile, especially in light of the great improvement. I would like to propose some minor changes. It will be much quicker and more efficient if I just make my proposals by making the edits with brief comments in the edit summaries. Marknw, please don't take them as meddling with "your" work; I'm just trying to make a better presentation for readers, and sometimes multiple perspectives can be helpful. I'm sure the reasoning for some of my ideas will be immediately apparent, and we can talk about the others. -Exucmember 19:09, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Numbers

I guess the article really should say something about the total number of members. You might check out this site [18] the part on the UC starts a little down the page. Steve Dufour 15:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I will go ahead and say 1-3 million. [19] Steve Dufour 16:26, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I looked at the page you cited, and it doesn't have nearly enough information even to contribute to a guess. No number is better than a number that may be more than double or less than half the real number; it seems like leaving it out would be better than junk information. I read somewhere an assertion by a sociologist of religion that church members and critics alike tend to inflate the number because it seems to confer more significance. (This is true of other churches too.) Steve, what do you think of really being honest, and calculating a number of those (members only) who've participated in the blessing? This would not include yet-to-be-blessed members, or children, but that could be stated. The calculated number would still inflate the real number, as many people have left the church. Another possibility would be just to make a guess based on inside knowledge for the major countries, and see what you come up with. -Exucmember 16:41, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

It is also hard to define what is a "member". To me there seem to be about 100,000 members in Korea, 10,000 in the USA, more in Japan than the USA, thousands in some other countries for instance Russia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and some South American and African countries. Hundreds each in most of Europe. And as I said, some in almost every country. I would guess the total to be between 500,000 and 1 million. I was avoiding the question of the number until someone else put one in the article. But it does seem like it would be an important piece of information to someone wanting to know about the church. Steve Dufour 17:00, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Steve, I looked at the page you cited again more carefully, because the first time I didn't see the pertinent info you were referring to. And I came across the fact that you had already done exactly what I had proposed:

Email correspondence from: Steve Dufour [[email protected]], received 4 March 2005.

"I have some information for you on the numbers of Unification Church members. I have been a member since 1974 and it has always been hard to get a good estimate of the total number of members. One thing that did happen is that in February 2003 Rev. Moon asked one person from each church family in the USA to go to Korea for a two week outreach program. A bit over 2,400 went, which was the goal. Not every family was able to send someone and a few families sent more. Also a few Europeans went too and were counted with the Americans. "Americans" also includes people born in other countries and living in the USA, some joined the church here and some joined in their home countries. I would consider a family that would do this on short notice [if I remember correctly we were given about two weeks notice] and at some expense to be dedicated church members. So about 2,400 families, maybe 10,000 members in the USA. "

So, including children, there are about 10,000 dedicated members in the U.S., and presumably some significant number of other people who might consider themselves members. I'm pretty familiar with the Korean church, and I don't think there could be more than double the number of U.S. members. (I think the number you cited is even more inflated than the indefesible church claim of 50,000 U.S. members.) On the other hand you may have underestimated the number of Japanese members; I think it's double the Koreans. Would you say the European total, including Russia, is about the same as in the U.S.? So, very roughly, if we double the 10,000 U.S. number (to include everyone who might consider themselves members), double that for Korea (40,000), double that for Japan (80,000), add 20,000 for Europe including Russia and former Soviet block countries, and add a wild guess of 40,000 for the rest of world, that totals 200,000. Do you think any of my guesses are off by orders of magnitude? -Exucmember 17:23, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you are not orders of magnitude off. I think 500,000 would be closer to the real number than 200,000. BTW thanks for noticing my contribution to adherents.com Steve Dufour 20:16, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Steve, can you do a breakdown of world numbers similar to the one I've done? If you do, you might find that you have to revise your total estimate downward. In any case, I'd like to know what you think. -Exucmember 01:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm off to work now. Let me get back on that. There are about 200 countries in the world and some members in almost all of them. Steve Dufour 12:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I concur with exuc's estimates. In 2004, Tyler Hendricks gave me a database with all adult ("first generation") U.S. members names. It contained 5,860 people. That would be around 2,930 familes.

I also have the second generation database, but I want to double-check with the 2G department before quoting exact numbers. But it's between 2,000 and 5,000 children (including college-age and older).

I would therefore estimate the U.S. membership at 8,000 people. Around 1:50,000 Americans is a member, a very tiny minority. --Uncle Ed 14:44, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ed. I think most Blessed families have 2 or more children. Of course some are childless, one is very unusual. So 2,930 families would have at least 6000 children, I would guess. As I mentioned above I was in Korea in 2002. I stayed with a local church center in Daegu which is the second or third largest city in South Korea, and about one tenth (my bad, really one fourth the size 2.5 million vs. 10 million) the size of Seoul. Our center had a couple of hundred members and it was only one of five in the city. The feeling I got from my experience over there and talking with other members was that there are about 10 times the number of members in Korea as in the USA. That is where I got the number 100,000 from. I have not been to Japan since the 1970s when I was on the IOWC team. At that time there were less members in Japan than Korea, clearly. Of course many Korean members were not as hard-core dedicated as most American and Japanese members at that time. All the best. Steve Dufour 01:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

What do you think of saying "by informed opinions" the number is 200,000 to 500,000? Steve Dufour 03:29, 17 October 2006 (UTC) Well yes, original research. But maybe better than a untrue number, or no number at all.

I went ahead and and changed it to: "Estimates of the number of its members range from 250,000 to 3,000,000." hoping to get the something from both sides. Steve Dufour 09:29, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

We shouldn't put information in the article that we know to be incorrect. Membership numbers like 2 or 3 million are not "estimates"; they are wildly inflated figures put forward by some church members and by some detractors to advance their respective POV agendas. One source in the cited reference (Adherents.com) estimates 250,000 and another 500,000. These are reasonable numbers, and we can cite the source. All the others (2 million, 3 million, 1 million "dedicated" members) orginated from some church spokesman or detractor. I remember when the HQ people decided to start saying "3 million, with 1 million 'dedicated' members" (replacing "2 million"). Apparently the membership rose from 2 million to 3 million in one jump at a time when the American church was not growing. Just like 30,000 adult members in the U.S., it was a fabrication. The trouble with this kind of lie (by some church members and by some detractors) is that one has to keep it up to support one's agenda, or even increase the numbers, regardless of whether the actual numbers are increasing. Let's use reasonable numbers for which we have citations. Why not say "250,000 to 500,000 members"?

250,000 to 500,000 members would seem to correspond roughly with 10,000 to 20,000 members in the U.S. That's in the neighborhood of Steve's 2003 numbers. Does anyone else remember when Gordon Melton was travelling around to centers in the early 80s, talking to members, observing activities, asking about local associate members, etc.? He must have done the same thing earlier also, but I was not aware of it. His number, "less than 5000," probably doesn't include children, and as such fits reasonably well with the Steve's 2003 estimate. Other scholars cite similar numbers, and we can add those citations as we find them.

Btw, Steve, you didn't finish telling me what you thought was the numbers breakdown for the rest of the world. I think your guess for Korea is too high. In the early 90s the number of Korean members in metropolitan Seoul (half the population of South Korea according to Wikipedia) who actually participated in activities (corresponding to "A" members or to your 2,400 families in 2003) was not more than the number of correspondingly dedicated members in the U.S. Of course they have a lot more "associate" members (and some of them may have been "mobilized" while you were there), but some haven't participated in any activities for many years, and some of these probably don't consider themselves members anymore. I know a number of ex-members in the U.S. who are still on church mailing lists many years later. But even with 100,000 Korean members, how in the world do you get 500,000 total? -Exucmember 21:50, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

You estimated that Japan had more members than Korea and there are at least some members in almost every country, not just more than 50 as the article says. I would like to say 200,000 to 500,000 but that would be original research. The statement that "estimates run from 250,000 to 3,000,000" is true anyway and supported by the adherents.com website. Otherwise the article could not mention a number at all. Steve Dufour 14:46, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

MedCab Mediation Case

A case has been filed with the Mediation Cabal regarding this article. If you are a neutral party and interested in mediating, please review Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal and Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Suggestions for mediators before starting mediation, then feel free to dive in! If you have any questions, please contact me on my talk page. Thanks! ~Kylu (u|t) 20:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem has been resolved. See above. Steve Dufour 22:07, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll leave the case page open, in case anyone would like to drop references in there and close it. Thanks! ~Kylu (u|t) 22:18, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

It would be really cool if we had one or more neutral people here. :-) Steve Dufour 23:48, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Kylu. Marknw 21:15, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm the mediator who has taken this case. From the conversation above, I gather that the problem has been sorted out, and mediation in no longer needed? If this is so, that's great, as I feel it is sometimes better for the involved parties to get on the same page and sort stuff out together without mediation. However, if any mediation is needed, please leave a note in this thread (I'm watching the page), and we can begin to sort out anything that needs doing. Warm regards, Th ε Halo ^Θ 09:12, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Steve Dufour 14:47, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Dae-Mo-Nim

Dae-Mo-Nim in fact means Godmother, not Great Mother.

Do you mean that the English word "godmother" is 대모 (daemo) in Korean? If so, perhaps we need the article to say that the meaning of "Great Mother" is a usage peculiar to the Unification Church. There's another lady called Little Mother, I think.

Readers may also be interested in the literal meaning of the term, in addition to the way Western UC members translate it. --Uncle Ed 17:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Present

(Varying ideas of what's most important in the UC)

Cut from redemption section:

Since its early days there have been subgroups within the Unification movement because of cultural differences and differences of points of view among members. There are now several subgroups. However, they do not regard themselves as different groups, and there is considerable overlap between them. There are those who identify more closely with the early followers of Moon, and those who identify more closely with the children or grandchildren of Moon. There are those who regard the principles of Unificationism to be more fundamental than allegiances to particular people. And there are two spiritualists, the more popular who claims to channel Heung Jin Moon (Unificationists frequently add the Korean honorific suffix "nim," e.g., "Heung Jin Nim") and Mrs. Moon's mother Soon Ae Hong (called "Dae Mo Nim," meaning "Great Mother"); and one that claims to channel Lee. All these subgroups have the official sanction of Moon and the Unification Church. There are also a number of small, splinter groups that have no official sanction, but claim to be inspired by Moon. There are also many individuals who consider themselves Unificationists but are not part of any subgroup.

I'd like to know more about these "subgroups", but the account above is so vague as to be useless. It amounts to a claim that the Unification Church is "not unified" but divided into a number of disparate factions. Now, this may be so, but it needs some documentation and a lot more specifics before being placed in the article.

As a member since 1977, I can tell you that the biggest visible division in the movement is between those who are "full-time members" (like missionaries and church leaders) and "associate" or "home" members, who live in their own apartments or houses, have "outside jobs", etc.

The other chief division among members is between (A) those who have a "church mission" and (B) those with a "business mission" or are part of a "church-related organization" (like CARP).

As for "two spiritualists", this is a bit silly. There are dozens of "spiritually open" members. Currently, there is only one "official" spiritualist, Mrs. Hyo Nam Kim - and I'm a bit disappointed that no one (including me) has gotten around to writing an article about her: she channels for Dae Mo Nim, who is Mrs. Moon's deceased mother Soon Ae Hong. The lady who receievs spiritual messages from Dr. Lee isn't considered a spiritualist by church members. Tens of thousands of members have reported receiving "messages" from the spiritual world - that's not the same as being spiritually open: seeing and discerning spirits, having out-of-the-body experiences, etc.

But if there is information about factions, by all means include it. Just remember to add sources. I myself could be a source for the old "Jean-Jacques" group in New York City. It was a faction of members who felt that Rev. Moon had "failed" and that Jean-Jacques Triffault was the "true Abel". They had somewhere between several dozen and 200 adherents in the early 1990s, but their influence dwindled after Wayne Miller and Zin Moon Kim confronted Jean-Jacques. Kim rather cleverly required Jean-Jacques to secure the permission of his spouse and the member's spouse before counseling any church member; and failing that, he could apply directly to Kim himself. When this guideline was publicized, Jean-Jacques's influence rapidly waned. --Uncle Ed 18:16, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I cut out the section because it seemed to amount to just original research. It was orginally titled "the present and future" or something like that and the point seemed to be to predict that the church would split into different factions in the near future. Steve Dufour 02:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. I had a completely different response to this section. Perhaps it's true that the person who wrote "and future" had the idea of schism in mind. But the main conclusion I saw being drawn from this passage was that Unification Church members were not in fact mindless automatons marching in lockstep as the media caricature (especially in the 70s) suggested. Rather, the members were being portrayed as thinking people with varying opinions who valued different things at different levels, but were nevertheless united in purpose and saw themselves primarily as members of the church rather than members of a faction. Given the absurd and false stereotype of Moon's nameless brainwashed minions perpetrated by the media, some information along these lines seems a very valuable addition to the article, even though information as "inside" as this is by definition harder to source. On the other hand, there is a lot of information that is relatively hard to source that we've allowed, because we know that it is accurate, and sourcing in regard to a controversial topic (e.g., London's Daily Mail says Moon's church breaks up families) doesn't necessarily guarantee accuracy. The best way to refute that members don't think for themselves is to relay that they have differences of opinion (in addition to what unites them). -Exucmember 05:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

For these reasons I think the deleted passage made, on the whole, an extremely valuable contribution to the article. I think we should find a way to put the essence of it back in. -Exucmember 00:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

However it is still original research. What might work is to mention some of the different things going on without making a general conclusion. Steve Dufour 16:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Would you like to take a stab at it? -Exucmember 06:13, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll see what I can come up with. Maybe something about Cheong Pyeong might be a good start. Steve Dufour 07:21, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

New editor

I hope this works, sorry I'm new at this. Anyways I'm not sure about any of you but I AM A UNIFICATIONIST. There are not a lot of us so I may be able to provide a lot more insight than one who just goes through websites. I have also attended a speech by Mr. Moon, or True Father as we call him. I have the 'Divine Principle' which is like our bible. If this is any importance email me: [email protected] -Newyorker588 00:04, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Welcome! Feel free to contribute. You may want to start by reading recent sections on Talk pages like this one. You'll find that there is a surprisingly cooperative spirit for such a highly controversial topic. You'll find that there are several current and former Unificationists who are active here, all long-term members, including seminary graduates, those who have studied Divine Principle in the original Korean, and - don't take this the wrong way - those who have been teaching Divine Principle since before you were born. I mention this because it might be more productive for you to think of yourself as part of a team; there are also others here with knowledge of the subject. But most of all, welcome to Wikipedia! -Exucmember 02:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes! Welcome Newyorker! If you want to work on something, we have discussed before that the articles need more information on Father's early life and the early history of the church. Of course whatever you write has to be documented. Have fun. Steve Dufour 17:28, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Wise Use

I don't think the church is too important in the "wise use" movement. For one thing I have been a church member for 30 years and this is the first time I've ever heard the expression. Steve Dufour 03:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

We better write about the Third Blessing before referencing the Wise use movement. Is UC pro- or anti-environmentalist? What is the UC stand on conservation vs. "sustainable development"?

How about animal welfare vs. PETA-style animal rights advocacy? Inquiring minds want to know, Steve. --Uncle Ed 19:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Check out my articles on plants and animals on the encyclopedia project. I guess one here on the third blessing might be a good thing. Steve Dufour 14:39, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Here, sown by the Creator's hand, 
In serried ranks, the Redwoods stand; 
No other clime is honored so, 
No other lands their glory know.

The greatest of Earth's living forms...
God stands before you in these trees.

Nice poem, Steve. --Uncle Ed 21:12, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

It was written by the man who designed the Golden Gate Bridge. Steve Dufour 18:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

improvements to article

Thanks exucmember for your work. However I took off "It spread to Japan, the United States and then world-wide." For one thing the church didn't just "spread", missionaries were sent out by deliberate plan. To say "it spread" gives the wrong picture of what happened. Anyway all the information is given later on so nothing is lost to the reader. Steve Dufour 08:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Church/State quotes ... Where to put them?

I was researching one of my many eclectic interests (ie: the separation of church and state) and ran across these two quotes which show an explicit intent to abolish the wall of separation and create an automatic theocracy...

My dream is to organize a Christian political party including the Protestant denominations, Catholics and all the religious sects. Then, the communist power will be helpless before ours. We are going to do this because the communists are coming to the political scene. Before the pulpit, all the ministers of the established churches must give their sermon on how to smash or absorb communism -- but they are not doing that. We are going to do this. Unless we lay the foundation for this, we cannot carry it out. In the Medieval Ages, they had to separate from the cities -- statesmanship from the religious field -- because people were corrupted at that time. 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.
- Master Speaks: The Significance of the Training Session 1973-05-17

The time is coming that we have to abolish the concept of separation between church and state. We need a political party centered upon religious ideology. The world of democracy is based upon the ideology of brotherhood. That is why Cain and Abel struggle exists there. Changes of power always head towards the satanic side. This democratic period in human history is passing away. Soon the heavenly sovereignty will be established to lead the world.
- True God's Day Midnight Address, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, World Mission Center 1996-01-01

There appear to be quite a few related pages and some level of controversy around Reverend Moon so I felt it would be wise to ask what is the best place to incorporate these into? I have already added them to WikiQuote but I am looking for guidance for an applicable subject page and section. I would prefer to put it under separation of church and state but I cannot see how to add it there. Other possibilities include Sun Myung Moon, Unification Church, or possibly dominionism. Any suggestions? Low Sea 18:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the issue should be mentioned. One thing to be noted is that the expression "automatic theocracy" was only mentioned this one time by Rev. Moon and it was the words of the translator. You can do some research on this by just Googling "automatic theocracy". Steve Dufour 02:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Easter Day

I took out mention of Easter Day since April 17 was not Easter Day but the day which Rev. Moon believes is the anniversary of Jesus’ resurrection. (Unlike Easter Day, it is the same day each year.) Steve Dufour 07:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Source for Wash Times ownership?

The article states that the Washington Times is owned by members of the church, but there is no source. I tagged it. BTW, Helen Thomas works for UPI. Does that make her a right-wing Moonie? Just asking. - Crockspot 16:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the whole section on related organizations should be redone citing sources. As a church member I am probably not the one to do it. Steve Dufour 05:32, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I made a few changes. People can click over to the article on the Washington Times, for instance, and read about its connection to the church. Steve Dufour 18:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Theology should be split off into new article

Something really needs to be done to make this article shorter and more readable. How about making a new article on theology, or else just include it in the one on Divine Principle? IMO this one should be about the church itself, that is the group of people. Steve Dufour 08:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and made this change. Steve Dufour 17:32, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I took off survey results

In 1993, Rev. Dr. Richard L. Dowhower conducted a survey of clergy and seminarians to assess their opinions of cults, entitled "Clergy and Cults: A Survey". The 53 respondents were from the Washington, DC area and included 43 Lutheran clergy and seminarians, one Roman Catholic and one Jewish clergyman, and an Evangelical minister. Eighteen percent of those questioned about "The cults I am most concerned about are", gave the answer of "Unification Church, Hare Krishna"; while 28 percent answered "Scientology, est/Forum, Lifespring"; 28 percent answered "Satanism and other ritual abuse"; 24 percent answered "LaRouche, political cults"; 15 percent answered "Shepherding/discipling (Christian-sounding)"; 18 percent answered "New Age"; 24 percent answered "Jehovah's Witnesses"; 3 percent answered "Mormons"; 3 percent answered "Amway"; and 2 percent answered "other groups". ^[1].

This was done 14 years ago and is a survey of only 53 people. The survey taker's conclusion was that main-stream Christian ministers were not as upset about "cults" as he was himself. I don't think it was worth taking up space in the article. Steve Dufour 01:27, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I took out section on other people's feelings

Rev. Moon's supposed encounter with Jesus is rejected by most Christian theologians. Some of these challengers interpret the UC view as a claim that Jesus "failed" and take great umbrage at this claim. The UC calls this interpretation a misunderstanding and insists that Jesus did not "fail," pointing out that Jesus did everything he could in the face of an insufficient amount of faith and support. It was humanity who failed Jesus, not the other way around. Even so, Moon himself said he has come on the behalf of Jesus to finish the job left undone.

Some critics of the Unification Church have complained about Moon declaring himself to be the Messiah, which they consider self-aggrandizement on his part, as well suggesting that Moon's intentions for his church are to place himself above all other religious figures, including Jesus.

"In early July I spoke in five cities around Korea at rallies held by the Women's Federation for World Peace. There, I declared that my wife, WFWP President Hak Ja Han Moon, and I are the True Parents of all humanity. I declared that we are the Savior, the Lord of the Second Advent, the Messiah." -- Reverend Moon, Unification News, August 24, 1992

This section is not really about Rev. Moon or the church. It is about the feelings of unnamed and uncited "Christian theologians", "challengers", and "critics of the UC". They seem to be "rejecting", "interpreting", "taking great umbrage", "complaining", and "suggesting". Steve Dufour 14:18, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we need a section (or article on) Criticism of the Unification Church or "Opposition to the Unification Church".

Considering that Rev. Moon has called himself the "most persecuted man in history", our readers would likely be interested in the details. Some of them might even want to decide for themselves whether some of this documented opposition is well founded or merele "Religious persecution". --Uncle Ed 14:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea to me. There are legitimate criticisms that can be made against the church. There are also differences of opinion between it and other religions and beliefs. And there is also unjust persecution. Steve Dufour 14:34, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Rev. Moon himself has made some of the same criticisms of the U.S. church that opponents have made. I wonder if it has been a wise public relations strategy for the church to class all criticism as "negativity". For example, fundraising has been criticized for its indirection: members not identifying the cause or its leader. I recall an interview with Fred Sontag in which Father said:

A member must say that he is a member of the Unification church and that he is the follower of Sun Myung Moon. If he doesn’t have the courage to say it, he is not worthy of me. I tell them it’s wrong not to speak out for fear of bringing greater persecution... [Persecution] will bring equally greater blessing. If they try to shy away from persecution, actually they are missing the whole blessing. Some local leaders may have tried to be expedient, but they didn’t have any bad motivation. I can understand why such things may have happened in the face of persecution, but I do not condone such action. [20]

Even within the church, this approach is controversial! ;-) --Uncle Ed 15:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Issues for expansion

Perhaps the Unification Church article could address issues of recruitment:

as well as issues of retention:

people staying in because of "fear of going to hell"
peer pressure

and departure:

Note that "witnessing" and "fear of going to hell" are the only empty pages here. --Uncle Ed 15:22, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

There is an article on Hell. I added a paragraph on UC beliefs to it the other day. Oddly enough the article does not address the question of why people believe in Hell, or why religions teach about it. Steve Dufour 05:23, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Intentional communities?

Does anyone know what is meant by "intentional communities" in "most church members lived in intentional communities"? Tanaats 22:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

It is something like a religious order. Maybe it should be removed if it is not clear to the average reader. Steve Dufour 07:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a whole Wikipedia article on it! I will link it. That should solve the issue. -Exucmember 19:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I checked out the article on intentional communities. I don't think what was described there is exactly what the UC was like back in the 70s, although UC centers maybe could fit into their concept of ic's. Steve Dufour 17:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

"An intentional community is a planned residential community designed to promote a much higher degree of social interaction than other communities. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political or spiritual vision."

I think that describes the centers which UC had in the 1970s and 1980s. --Uncle Ed 12:57, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

It could be. However I don't think UC centers were, or are, mainly residential communities. Steve Dufour 17:03, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

UC Political Ideology

Hey Steve Dufour, Exucmember and Uncle Ed

What happen to this section on UC political ideology?

Divine Principle political ideology

The Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, is portrayed in some church publications as a monarch of the nation Cheon Il Guk.

"True Love King"
"Family Federation for World Peace and Unification"
"Declaration of the Establishment of Cheon Il Guk"

Rev. Moon was also portrayed as the leader of all religions in the online article "Cloud of Witnesses" and the church website "Messages From Spirit World."

Political statements in the Divine Principle

The Divine Principle asserts that existing modern democracies have been a necessary, but temporary, stage in history and politics.

"How can democracy accomplish its purpose?...We need to understand that democracy was born to undermine satanic monopolies of power for the purpose of God's final providence to restore, by the will of the people, a heavenly sovereignty under the leadership of the returning Christ."
- Divine Principle Section 7.2.6 Democracy and Socialism

"...Thus, in the ideal world, people of God led by Christ will form organizations analogous to today's political parties..."
- Divine Principle, Section 3.2 The Significance of the Separation of Powers

"If we are to realize the ideal world of one global family which can honor Christ at the Second Advent as our True Parent, surely our languages must be unified...then he will certainly use the Korean language, which will then become the mother tongue for all humanity."
- Divine Principle, Section 5

Political statements in Rev. Moon's Speeches

"The democratic world has come to a dead end..."
- Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Creation Of The Fatherland, January 1, 1984

"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

"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

"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

Definitions of Theocracy

"...theocracy is commonly used to describe a form of government in which a religion or faith plays the dominant role. Properly speaking, it refers to a form of government in which the organs of the religious sphere replace or dominate the organs of the political sphere." -- Wikipedia

Historical examples of Christian theocracies are the Byzantine Empire and the Carolingian Empire.

See Also

rule of law, religious freedom, Western world values, secular democracy, separation of church and state, religious pluralism, fundamentalism, Kingdom of Heaven

Oh wait, I found an edited version of it: Unification Church political views

Sincerely Marknw 04:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Sentence removed

Jewish non-members work for the Washington Times, the Unification Theological Seminary in Barrytown, NY, and other Unification Church related organizations.

I put this in because I think it is important evidence that the UC is not anti-Jewish. Steve Dufour 16:19, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Views on homosexuality

Why is there nothing in this article about Sun Myung Moon's views on homosexuality? Joie de Vivre 00:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

That is mentioned in his own article. Something could be said here about the church's policies if you like. Steve Dufour 01:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Where are those? Joie de Vivre 17:08, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Bona fide religion vs. cult

I'm not sure what should be done with this paragraph. It seems to me that a group could be a "bona fide" religion according to the law and still be considered a "cult" by some people. There are people who say the the Catholic Church and the Latter Day Saints are cults, but they are certainly considered bona fide religious organizations by the government. Steve Dufour 03:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

p.s. It might even be that the law looks at the sincerity of members' beliefs to judge if a group is a bona fide religion, and a cult could be a group where members are too sincere. Steve Dufour 01:36, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Mass Wedding

I notice that there is no mention of the mass wedding held in Madison Square Garden on July 1st, 1982. 4,150 people marrying complete strangers at Sun Myung Moon's behest seems notable to me. Should there not be a mention of the event in the article? Malbolge (talk) 23:17, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

You could add the information. It is mentioned in the articles: Sun Myung Moon, Blessing Ceremony, and Madison Square Garden. BTW we were not all complete strangers. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 17:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Are people still saying that the mass weddings take place between complete strangers? I thought people knew about the 3-year engagement period. Only a brainwashed fool would marry a complete stranger without taking time to get to know them first ... Oh, I guess that's the point of this criticism: some church critics are trying to paint church members as brainwashed fools.

Okay, then if some named church critic thinks the church members would agree to marry someone without even meeting them first, let's dig up a quote then. --Uncle Ed (talk) 01:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Uh Ed, lots of my friends did just that. Steve Dufour (talk) 05:04, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

You guys are talking like this Wikipedia article is only for UC members. Get with it, it should be written as an unbiased work for people who have know idea about the UC. It is not a vehicle to explain doctrine or a place to re-write history. If you feel a mass wedding of stranger is brainwashing by a cult, then what do you think the other 6 billion people in the world think? Also you both are viewing the UC with rose colored glasses in positions that blind you to the greater world issues, especially in Japan. The clearly raped funds from Japan allow UC members in the US to be comfortable and feel they are philosophers and caring people etc. Cut this baby apart or Wikipedia will need to take action for you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.66.71.134 (talk) 03:40, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Homosexuals and church membership

Six times in my 31 years in the church, I've encountered homosexuals who (if Ontario Consultants were right) should have been expelled. The first was in Boston, an active homosexual whom the local church wanted to join first, repent later. The second was Richard Cohen, who publicly announced his homosexuality but was not expelled; rather, he sought therapy to deal with this issue. I met four other church men who had gay relationships; one even had to tell his wife that he gave her AIDS. None were expelled; rather, they were encouraged to find a way to come to repentance.

We need a section on other sins, or better yet an outline of the church's general attitude toward sin. --Uncle Ed (talk) 23:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

You are right Ed. That's a good idea Steve Dufour (talk) 02:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a vehicle for the Unification Church. Your comments reinforce the fact that many major transgresion occur regularly from Moon down the line. People are not expelled when they are weak or have problems since they are the easiest to exploit, usually for monetary gain. The concept of "True Family" does not work any better than a Christian Right family values statement. Transgressions are probably often tolerated since later on they will be used to gain favor with these people. Just like Bush using lots of cocaine and then repenting after having a 20 year party. Once we get older we get tired of the party and then many people find Jesus. Just be aware that there is easily 10% of any population that is Gay. So your Church easily has that if not more. Often homosexuals trying to fight their desires turn towards extreme religion for help. Some times they can learn to control the desire just as heterosexual people learn to control their desire for others after marriage. But this is not always the case. If you think there are only a few in your Church you are being much more blind to that than any issue related to Moon and his problems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.66.71.134 (talk) 03:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Evolution

I trimmed some of the info on evolution. Sorry Ed, but way too much was taken up by a discussion of one magazine article. I also don't think that every member has the same opinion on evolution. I personally don't feel that it required any "supernatural intervention" by God, as the article says. The entire Universe is God's supernatural creation and He is never absent, therefore no need to "intervene". Steve Dufour (talk) 17:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I went to Chung Pyeung, and at the workshop we had a speaker, Dr. Carlson, who spoke on evolution. He said that Adam and Eve were the first humans with spirits. They were the most evolved. User:CholtaeShinang (talk) 17:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Article not neutral

The article is only informative in terms of what the Unification Church wants it to be. I find an enormous breach of neutrality in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.66.71.134 (talk) 18:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

You should:

1. sign your posts with four tildes (~)

2. be specific about points that lack neutrality

3. add statements backed up by reliable sources

4. add appropriate templates to sections that are biased

5. avoid flamboyant rhetoric - this is an encyclopedia

6. read up a little bit and learn more about Wikipedia

-Exucmember (talk) 04:16, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Just learning it now and plan to get better. I will get a name etc. Just met a prominent UC member today to discuss the problems in Japan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.107.167.87 (talk) 22:34, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Enough is enough WNDL42 (talk) 23:08, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Article is a WP:COAT for Unification Church propaganda and is riddled with COI edits and moon-church POV

I have tagged this article accordingly. Impossible to keep up with the tendentious edits, this article presents the Unification Church as no respectable encyclopedia would. WNDL42 (talk) 23:09, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

{{COI|date=March 2008}} {{Multiple issues|disputed=March 2008|POV=March 2008|date=August 2010}} {{Coat rack|date=March 2009}}

Stats show this article and it's talk page are dominated to an utterly ridiculous degree by five Unification Church members = more than 75% of all edits. http://wikidashboard.parc.com/wiki/Talk:Unification_Church

COI tag indeed. WNDL42 (talk) 01:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Marknw and I are ex-members whose edits in Unification-related articles are overwhelmingly from a critical perspective (but we try to be encyclopedic and accurate). -Exucmember (talk) 02:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

There is no possibility of a helpful resolution of your neutrality concerns, WNDL42, if you do not provide examples and context on the talk page. Wikipedians who happen across the article will follow your tag to to talk page, looking for further information. They cannot consider, discuss, or resolve the situation if no information is provided. What is being tendentiously edited? Are there specific factual errors that are being continually re-introduced, or well-sourced information that is being continually being deleted?

Exucmember and Marknw, if you have a good sense of what his concerns are, and feel you can characterize them in a good faith manner, then that would be equally helpful.

If the editorial pool of this article - the wikipedians who frequently commit edits or improve the article - is dominated by friends or former members of the church, I would recommend reaching out to wikipedians who are likely to be suspicious or distrustful of the church (try the Cult talkpage, perhaps; that's not intended as a dig) to assist you in providing oversight to the article, and ensuring that it is encyclopedic in quality, intention, and tone.

My only immediate suggestion is that citations of media owned by the Unification Church (i.e. News World Communications) should be disallowed or highly depreciated, given Reverend Moon's comments regarding propaganda warfare. Not that they would inherently constitute such warfare, or contain non-factual information, just that ensuring that they are shaped by a good-faith NPOV is too difficult. — 69.49.44.11 (talk) 14:46, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Sixtyninefourtyninefourtyfoureleven, I appreciate your trying to help, as well as your good suggestions. This and related articles haven't attracted very many completely neutral editors with no personal interest in the subject matter. An additional problem is that a large amount - perhaps most - of the published material on the Unification Church is likewise at least somewhat polarized. Fortunately, there is some balance, and the most active editors are reasonable and follow Wikipedia policies. I've found Steve Dufour in particular to be fair, and I would like to think that I am also, on the opposite (church critic) side. WNDL42 is correct that there are still portions of this (and related) articles that lean too far in the direction of the POV of the Unification Church, but he identified very few. Since people may have different opinions about what is neutral or fair, they might vary in what they think is unbalanced or biased. Weeks and weeks have passed without him clarifying this. His editing style has been very lacking in the cooperation department. Most recently on the Sun Myung Moon page he seems to have become irrational. (I'm sorry to characterize it that way, but if anyone wants to take the time to review everything, I'm sure thay would agree.) If WNDL42wants to be helpful, toning down the rhetoric, lowering the pitch, and assuming good faith would help.

Personally, I think the best thing to do is just follow Wikipedia policies and let the system work. -Exucmember (talk) 04:57, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

B. A. Robinson

In the Unification_Church#Controversy section, B. A. Robinson of Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance is quoted at length. However, as far as I know, he is no expert or recognized authority on the subject. AndroidCat (talk) 05:38, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

There are no "recognized authorities" on the Unification Church as far as I know. I guess his opinions are as good as anyone else's. Redddogg (talk) 22:26, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

There are a number of recognized authorities on the Unification Church. You should familiarize yourself with the half-dozen or so sociologists of religion who have done empirical studies (and other sociologists of religion who have discussed them) and their extensive writings, and, to a lesser extent, scholars in religion departments who have done studies. -Exucmember (talk) 19:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

"New religious movements" (NRMs) is standard sociology of religion term

I recently made very significant improvements to the introduction, changing some of the wording from a poorly written, ill-informed style that was obviously completely ignorant of the way groups like the Unification Church are handled by scholars such as sociologists. I made it more factual rather than based on uncited opinions and characterizations, adding many references and fixing some of the references that were present. I made the wording more encyclopedic and straightforward rather than convoluted and amateurish. If there are any specific issues with anything I've done, they need to be raised here. It is wholly inappropriate simply to revert to the amateurish, unreferenced version. -Exucmember (talk) 19:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Ex, you need to show reliable sources that support your statements of opinion above. WNDL42 (talk) 12:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

"Cult" is the overwhelmingly applied term for Unificationism

Outside the tiny minority of current and (those exceedingly rare) ex UC members who do not think the "church" is a cult, the overwhelming majority of rest of the world sees the UC as a cult - the previous link is from Google Scholar, which is NOT a general web search, it is an index of academic and scholarly published works.

Britannica says Cult

The first 75 words of Britannica's entry for example:

Members of the Unification church are often called “Moonies” because the organization was founded by the Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon. The name, which is considered derisive and insulting by the group, has been used because many people consider the church to be a cult. The official name of the organization is the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of…Unification Church... (75 of 556 words)

I am sorry, but Wikipedia does not exist to present tiny minority viewpoints. I have returned the lead to it's former state. WNDL42 (talk) 12:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Journal "Sociological Analysis" says -- Cult

"The operation of highly cohesive and authoritarian "cults" in a pluralistic and normatively ambiguous cultural environment raises serious social and legal issues. The problems posed by cults must be understood in terms of the social conditions which facilitate the growth of these movements, and in particular, the decline of traditional "mediating structures" in American society. Cults meet genuine needs, but in doing so they may perpetrate abuses. Many cults are diversified and multifunctional collectivities which provide a range of services to participants; thus they elicit from devotees a diffuse obligation and a strong dependency, which may encourage exploitation. Actively proselytizing multifunctional communal sects inevitably come into conflict with a number of groups and institutions including families, churches and licensed psychotherapists. Conceptualizing cult issues in terms of "brainwashing" obscures the underlying sources of conflict and has implications for an inquisition over consciousness, although such medicalized conceptualization is functional in terms of building a coalition against targeted groups. Primary emphasis on "mind control" in cultist indoctrination processes also obscures the relationship between issues concerning cults and a more general crisis of church and state relations. As the state increasingly regulates "secular" organizations, the exemptions of "churches" take on heightened controversiality."

from: (see introduction on page 209)

Church, State and Cult Thomas Robbins; Sociological Analysis, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 209-225; doi:10.2307/3711033

Opening sentence

I changed the opening sentence to: "The Unification Church is the group of people who follow Korea self-proclaimed "messiah" Sun Myung Moon."

That is what the Unification Church is, as far as I can tell. The issue of it being a cult has its own section later in the article. Redddogg (talk) 10:39, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Number of members

The article now says:

Church membership is widely disputed, estimated by scholars to be around 250,000, but claimed by the church to be 3,000,000.^[2]

This seems like a fair enough statement. However, the existance of a dispute, let alone a wide dispute, is not really sourced and there is no link to any claim made by the church, or report of a claim. The "UC fact sheet" cited [inside the footnote] is a page on a website about atheism. Steve Dufour (talk) 16:34, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

COI and fact tags removed

I removed the conflict of interest and fact tags from the article. There didn't seem to be any real problem other than one editor didn't think members of a religion should edit articles about that religion. Redddogg (talk) 16:58, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Section on future?

What do you think about a section on the future of the church? Different opinions could be presented. Steve Dufour (talk) 14:22, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

True World Foods article

If True World Foods run a major portion of the sushi trade, why is there no Wikipedia article on it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.163.168.216 (talk) 04:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Go ahead and write one if you can find sources. Small to medium businesses often have problems getting WP articles since the main source of information on them is what they say themselves. Steve Dufour (talk) 17:24, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Theory of education

Theory of education (Unification Church) was prodded, so I've merged it here and made the other title a redirect. I know virtually nothing about the Unification Church, so I don't know if this is the right place to put it. Someone please put it where it belongs if there's a better place. Nyttend (talk) 12:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Sentence removed

I took out: "Governments of most countries, however, have recognized it as a bona fide religion for legal purposes, entitled to tax exempt status.^{[citation needed]} " Besides being uncited, I don't think it is true. I don't think most governments have made a judgement on the UC status as a religion, much less a "bona fide religion for legal puposes, entitled to tax exempt status." Besides that the article starts out by saying the UC is a group of people. Different UC sponsored organizations can be tax exempt or not depending on the laws of the various countries they are in, but the entire group of people is not tax exempt -- nor has anyone said this is a defining issue. I am a UC member and I pay lots of taxes. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 02:03, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

If Ed (who I think wrote this) or anyone else can find a reference that talks about the government rulings that have been made, and if many or most of those regard the Unification Church as a bona fide religion (a legal status), this would be helpful information, as it expresses a reality at variance with the uniformed belief that anyone who knows about the church would have to conclude that its not a real religion (a bias fueled by sensational media reports, especially in the late 70s and early 80s, but which set the tone in defining the movement).

BTW it was the Church of Scientology and its critics that made tax-exempt status a big issue in their controversy. I have never heard of it being a major issue in the history of the UC. Besides government rulings don't make something a religion or not, more likely they reflect the number of voters in the group in question. Steve Dufour (talk) 03:58, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

"The group of people"

I think it's time to revisit the unencyclopedic opening sentence "The Unification Church is the group of people who follow Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon." This sentence was put in place in response to perhaps the most difficult editor to work with I've encountered in more than two years (and preferred edit warring to cooperation), who refused to accept the fact that the Unification Church is called a new religious movement by most sociologists of religion. "New religious movement" also has the advantage of not being as narrowly defined as "only" a church. Those who know the issues know that "The Unification Church" means the church itself (and is an informal abbreviation for HSA-UWC), but sometimes refers to the larger movement of Unificationism. "New religious movement" captures this very well, but perhaps more importantly, this is what it is called by neutral scholars who study it, and is thus the appropriate description for an encyclopedia. -Exucmember (talk) 03:01, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

That would be fine with me. I find the present opening sentence kind of awkward. Steve Dufour (talk) 03:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed it. Steve Dufour (talk) 04:22, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

South America

The section on South America needs sources. Thanks. Borock (talk) 18:58, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I took out the section. Besides having no sources it also didn't explain why the incident was a "controversy." Borock (talk) 14:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Nan Sook Nim's opinion

I took out:

Moon's former daughter-in-law implied that he had no successor. Nansook Hong wrote, “The failure to designate and groom a successor all but guarantees a familial bloodletting after Reverend Moon’s death.” ^[3]

This is really just one person's opinion. If we were to take what she says literally it would be a gross violation of BLP, beside crystal ball. Steve Dufour (talk) 13:26, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

This may be the wrong place, but I finally decided to check out the claim that Hyo Jin Moon's honeymoon with Nansook Hong constituted "statutory rape, as claimed by Eugene Curtin. He is cited somewhere as a "journalist" ex-member.

I'm not sure how good a source he would be, if he didn't know that the minimum age for marriage in New York is 14 (with both parents' consent). [21] Perhaps he was thinking of unmarried sex. --Uncle Ed (talk) 21:38, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Unification Movement

What do you think is the meaning of this? Certainly the church and its members. Also projects like the Washington Times? Also people who believe in Rev. Moon and are Blessed but not technically UC members? Ambassadors for Peace, employees of the WT, etc? Steve Dufour (talk) 14:48, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

In my 46 years in the church, I always felt that there was an overall "movement" with the "church proper" as a subset. Rev. Moon was always starting new organizations, at least a dozen every decade. Some lasted longer than others, but the Unification Church is 69 year old. (God, I love these {{age}} templates!)

That's why we could say that CARP was the student branch of the Unification Movement, and yet claim that it was "not affiliated" with the Unification Church. The two organizations were incorporated separately, for the very good reason that CARP got involved in political activities (mainly anti-Communism) that the church could not legally do. The laws for non-profits in the US restrict a church's involvement in politics, so Rev. Moon (or, technically, his US followers) started a parallel organization with fewer restrictions. It was just a paperwork drill.

But that leads to a crucial issue. Sometimes CARP members were less than open about the relationship between CARP and the church. While not affiliates, there were and are certainly part of the same movement. It would be dishonest to call them utterly unrelated. I recall Father applying the terms Abel and Cain to them, which is a "filial" relationship in the providential sense, even if they were organizationally distinct in a legal sense. We still catch a lot of flak due to members who try to downplay the connection.

The Washington Times is certainly a Unification Movement project. By definition, anything that Rev. Moon does or initiates is part of the Unification Movement. It is due to the (perhaps over scrupulous) sensitivities of many fellow travelers that a distinction must be made between membership in the UC itself and cooperation with the Rev. Moon's overall aims. But a business operates under different rules than a church. One is for profit, the other is non-profit, which is a big distinction in financially conscious America.

"Believing in" Rev. Moon is not even as well defined as belief in evolution. I tried several times to define just what aspects of evolution you'd have to accept to be considered as believing in evolution, but the community here objected vehemently. My attempt to clarify the matter was called a "POV fork", which is strange to me because I wasn't promoting any one point of view but just trying to define the differences between several different ones; but that's another matter.

Perhaps we can say that there are certain aspects of Rev. Moon's teachings or mission which are more palatable than others to some people. He has a big tent, much more immense than a 3-ring circus. There's something for everyone inside. Scientists can join ICUS (hey, is that still active?) and theologians can come to all sorts of annual or quadrennial conferences. Anyone interested in world peace can join any number of one-day events (GPF, for the masses) or seminars or associations.

I wouldn't call Washington Times employees members of the "movement" unless they self-identify that way. Is the janitor of a Catholic school necessarily a Catholic?

The Ambassadors for Peace is probably the biggest organized group of fellow travelers. I think there is a statement you have to sign when you join. If so, that should be in the article on it. --Uncle Ed (talk) 22:03, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Ed. Ambassadors for Peace doesn't seem notable enough for an article yet. Steve Dufour (talk) 23:43, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Related organizations section

I'm going to move most of this section to List of Unification Church affiliated organizations, since that is what it is. I don't think most articles on any other church would have a list of related organizations.Redddogg (talk) 19:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Schengen Ban

Was the ban not effective from 1995 to 2006?

--Sulfis (talk) 19:36, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposed work group

There is currently discussion regarding the creation of a work group specifically to deal with articles dealing with this subject, among others, here. Any parties interested in working in such a group are welcome to indicate their interest there. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 17:41, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Pikareun

Would mentioning pikareun being relevant? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.116.225.41 (talk) 22:16, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

External links

Trimmed down links, added {{No more links}}. There are still way too many links in the External links section, it could be trimmed down some more. Cirt (talk) 14:26, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I took off one. I think for the sake of fairness that critics' sites should be allowed, even if they would not be considered "reliable sources" normally. People expect that and may have come to the article specifically looking for them. I also removed some of the unsourced and original research material from the article. In some cases the information should be put back with proper sources. Steve Dufour (talk) 17:26, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Teachings about sex outside of marriage and homosexuality

What do people think about removing this section from the criticism department and merging it with the related section on the Blessing ceremony (which could be retitled)? The section is not mainly about criticism but is a plain, undisputed statement of facts (which of course have led to criticism). i.e. What it is saying is: "The UC says homosexuality is wrong.", not "The UC has been criticized for saying that homosexuality is wrong." Criticism should be mentioned as it is now after the section is moved. Steve Dufour (talk) 17:32, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Agree. The entire 'Controversy' section should be spun out into a series of sections that explain (preferably from 3rd party sources) UC's views, practices and activities, which would give context & WP:DUE weight to the various criticisms. E.g. 'Accusations of antisemitism' properly belongs in a section on 'Relations with Judaism'. (See WP:CSECTION for more details.) Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 22:40, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I will make the move I suggested then. If the article is going to have a section on relations with Judaism it should also, at least, have one on relations with mainstream Christianity.Steve Dufour (talk) 23:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Agree with everything said above (under this topic). There is certainly no shortage of third-party sources for criticism of the Unification Church! -Exucmember (talk) 12:47, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

PD’s new message

I want to ask a question on a position of the Unification Church. Do any Wikipedian’s here know if the “teachings” of the UC’s leader Sun Myung Moon that made Hitler and Stalin “reborn as new persons”, has changed these dictators’ views of their Nazi or Communist ideology so that they would now oppose those Nazi or Communist political parties that exist globally today? Please answer this question here or on my talk page, thank you.

Political Dweeb talk —Preceding undated comment added 11:50, 2 June 2009 (UTC).

I would certainly expect so. However a deceased person in the Spirit world does not necessarily have much influence on what people on earth do. As witness the recent problems caused by those still holding onto Marxist and Nazi ideologies. Steve Dufour (talk) 16:11, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Article needs improvement

This article has become pretty bad. The beliefs section is not representative of Unification beliefs. There is no requirement that coverage be proportional to citations easily found, but rather it has to summarize the teachings well. There are plenty of citations out there. Members complain that outsiders misunderstand their beliefs. Doesn't some member want to improve the presentation in this article and at Divine Principle? Both are a mess. I don't feel it's my job.

Ed, you continue to add completely uncited material that's right out of the UC PR playbook. How about coming up with some citations? I did a few searches for one that you should have provided but couldn't find anything. I was tempted to revert your entire addition, but only did the last one, which consisted of points that were far too detailed (apart from their being completely uncited and straight UC PR). For quite a while I took cues from you about the level of citation needed (since you are an old-timer), but recently I realized that that level is really inadequate. And now you've added a lot of material to the central UC article and don't provide a single citation. -Exucmember (talk) 05:34, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Will you support a reversion of your deletion if I provide adequate citation of each deleted fact? --Uncle Ed (talk) 12:37, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I would do more except that it's not fun. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 16:17, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Japanese fundraising controversy

The dispute is between:

Accusers - those who say that the church and/or its members
1. Made false claims, such as, "Bad fortune will come to you or your ancestors if you don't donate"
  - Note: this is actually two assertions: (1) that the claims were made and (2) that the claims were false
  - It's easy to document the making of claims. It's hard or probably impossible to say whether or not the claims are true - unless we bias the article by making the assumption that the spiritual world does not exist.
2. Defrauded people - this assumes the truth of the accusation above, i.e. that false claims were used to influence people into making a donation. Obviously this depends on whether donating money to the Unification Church does or does not have any effect on the fate of one's dead ancestors.
Defenders - those who say that the accusations are false
1. Because no such claims were made? (hardly likely, but let's research this)
2. Because the claims were made, but are either true, or incapable of being proved true or false
  - This depends on the assumption (found in Unification Church theology) that one's ancestors continue to exist after dying (see life after death, spirit world)

I would hate for the article to be biased either in favor of the church or against it. I will not lift a finger (or click a mouse ;-) to slant the article toward the viewpoint that the church's ideas about donations and ancestors are correct. I trust that other contributors will be equally careful not to slant the article in the opposite direction. --Uncle Ed (talk) 16:58, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I, on the other hand, would hate for any of this to get into the article without a WP:RS (without which all of the above would appear moot). Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 17:11, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Another position that could be taken is that the claims were true but still a bad idea to say. As Rev. Moon himself said in The Way of God's Will: "If you convey God's words to someone only with the intention to utilize him in some way, you will never be able to establish the standard of the "Way." Give what you have to others with your sincere heart." - The Way of God's Will Chapter 3-3 Witnessing Steve Dufour (talk) 12:52, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

This controversy is related to another "fundraising" practice related to Dae Mo Nim's ancestor liberation ceremonies and workshops. I put fundraising in scare quotes because the donations relating to ancestor liberation are not primarily intended to finance church operations.

We ask for donations on a sliding scale, where people from industrially advanced countries pay a lot, and those from poorer countries pay much less. The difference is a factor of 10 or more.

Anyway, the part that's similar is that we say money must be donate, or the ancestors don't get to progress as far (they can stay in limbo or ever regress). We need an RS for this. That is, we need a reliable source that says this is a church teaching. --Uncle Ed (talk) 01:13, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Well. One of the most fundamental church teachings is that all people in the spirit world must be saved and perfected. This is one of the reasons I joined. I don't like that eternal damnation stuff. Steve Dufour (talk) 02:34, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

BTW I have sometimes considered an article on "Unification Church fundraising." Just haven't gotten inspired enough about it yet. Steve Dufour (talk) 02:36, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion

Please see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Unification Church and antisemitism Borock (talk) 04:44, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Sontag's 'conclusion'

The article states:

In response to doubt regarding the organization's religious origins, Frederick Sontag, a professor of philosophy, concluded that "one thing is sure: the church has a genuine spiritual basis" after an 11-month study of the worldwide Unification Church.

Does this very short and context-free quote fully reflect Sontag's conclusions? It seems unlikely that 11 months of work can be summarised in 11 words. I would like to request (bare minimum) the paragraph containing this quote, and preferably some sort of outline of Sontag's conclusionary section of chapter. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:29, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the quote was intended to show his conclusion to the one issue. Steve Dufour (talk) 22:16, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Without context, we cannot know with certainty what "his conclusion to the one issue" was. Also, we should be giving WP:DUE weight to Sontag's conclusions generally, not simply cherry picking them for "the one issue". Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 04:23, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Just a quick comment: I've read many news articles over the years (some of which sounded like they were trying to encapsulate the book) quoting this passage. In other words, many writers have taken it as a kind of summary of his 11 months' study. -Exucmember (talk) 07:28, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that since the article starts out saying the UC is a new religious movement it doesn't really need a section saying that it is, indeed, religious. I don't think anyone, except for Robert Parry and some other tinfoil hat types, is saying that it isn't. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 17:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

So you seem to be pitting your unsourced opinion against that of one of the world's authorities on the Unification Church, quoted here from his published book, presenting a kind of summary conclusion about the church, saying that "many doubt" the organization is genuinely religious. Have you not read even 5% of the media articles about the church written throughout the last 35 years? -Exucmember (talk) 08:16, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I still don't think that "many" sincerely doubt that church members' motives are religious. On the other hand I completely agree that Dr. Sontag's work should get more attention in these articles. Steve Dufour (talk) 05:33, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

What's the issue? Whether more people doubt UC's sincerity than doubt the sincerity of mainstream churches? Or whether Sontag's 30-year-old opinion should carry any weight?

Or is this about a contributor who is prejudiced against the church, and therefore challenges the inclusion of any supportive information about it, hoping to present a purely one-sided and hostile view of the church?

I'm content to see both negative and supportive views. I've always been about writing neutrally here, despite having always been on the record as a UC booster. I think it is possible for an advocate to write and edit neutrally. --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:56, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The issue is about sourcing and context. I've seen too many fragmentary quotes taken out of context to be entirely happy about accepting this one without seeing some more context. This is particularly as (i) I would expect many "cults", even notoriously pathological ones, to have "a genuine spiritual basis" (all it requires is for them to be 'genuinely', if perhaps homicidally, delusional) & (ii) I would not be in the least bit surprised if Sontag said something in his conclusion that was more relevant to UC's "Cult status" than this tangential remark. I would also point out that Ed's lack of adherence to WP:NOR is notorious, and highly problematical to his contributions on the subject of UC. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 04:44, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

You've accused me baselessly many times. Please stop with the personal remarks. Either address the issues, or be elsewhere. --Uncle Ed (talk) 11:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

In case you hadn't noticed, I did "address the issues" ("The issue is about … than this tangential remark.")
Those who live in glass houses should neither throw stones ("Or is this about a contributor who is prejudiced against the church…") nor preen ("I've always been about writing neutrally here…"). Having yourself made editors' conduct (your own and others) on UC articles an issue here, you can hardly complain when others address it.
Your history of OR is hardly baseless -- or had you forgotten In Jin Moon (the latest example, I'm sure I could dig up more if I tried).
And I would further point out that I am not "prejudiced against" the UC (AFAIK, I've never even met a Unificationist), but rather against the shear volume of unsourced information that WP had been awash with on UC -- hence my particular focus on WP:NOR.

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 16:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

The issue is about sourcing and context, as you said above. Let's focus on these editorial issues: principles rather than personalities. I'll start a new section below on problem of separating source material from contributor bias. --Uncle Ed (talk) 16:56, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Opposition to the church

I've found opposition to the church to be based on a number of things. Some of these overlap, and some (in my mind) even contradict each other.

Oops, my bad: I meant, "According to everything I've heard or read over the last 32 years ..." (Please excuse my hasty and informal I've found phrase: my shorthand seems to have wasted everyone's time.) --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:04, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The number one basis of opposition is the official church teaching. Communists have always objected to the church's explicit denunciation of atheism and communism. Traditional Christians have frequently objected to the church's views on Jesus: (1) that he's not God Himself; (2) that he "didn't come to die".

Jewish opposition is harder to characterize. Some of it is on the basis that the church like other Christian churches exalts Jesus and/or his teachings too much. Some is on the basis that that unlike other Christian churches the UC has refused to modify its ideas about the Jewish people and the crucifixion.

Other objections are on mental health or human rights grounds, based on the premise that mind control is a valid scientific theory and that the UC has applied mind control techniques to gain and/or retain members.

Then there are political objections: the church has made too many allies amongst conservative politicians, so anti-conservative forces object to this.

Some objections seem to be based on misunderstanding or distortion of the church's teachings. The three main cases are:

the idea that "Jesus failed", imputed to the church
the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven as a sort of theocracy
the idea that the church harbors antisemitic ideas and/or attitudes

I could use some editorial help writing about all of this. I don't have all the information, particularly quotable sources. Also, sometimes I forget the distinction between common sense and WP:SYNTH. (For example, if before 2000 astronomers had called Pluto a planet. After it was designate a dwarf planet, would I be correct in writing, "For many years pluto was considered a planet but then astronomers reclassified it"?) It's hard because I'm not sure when and where I'm allowed to say that definitions of term have been changed, and so on.

A lot of the controversy swirling around the church (though I doubt it's the majority) has to do with definitions of words: these definitions can change over time, or the words can be defined differently by various sources, or (as I guess) definitions can be applied haphazardly.

I think UC members are sensitive to double standards, but I need some help on how to describe this in accord with NPOV, OR and SYNTH. --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:44, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi Ed. Concerning the latest broo-ha-ha. I will continue to like Jewish people, although I must admit I seem to relate better with them in person than online. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 13:59, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I really should take a trip to Israel. Steve Dufour (talk) 03:09, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Ed, if you don't source it then it's worthless

Ed, your first sentence appears to be ground your claims solidly in WP:OR ("I've found"), and you provide no sources thereafter. If you want material added, then you should find sources to back it up. You claim "principles rather than personalities". The principle is no original research. If you don't want your personality to be an issue again, then I'd suggest you demonstrate some personality traits congruent with wikipedia policy on this (i.e. diligence in researching sources to back up material that you want to introduce into the article). Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 19:18, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Is that about the section on the United States? If so I think it should be removed as undue weight since less than 5% of UC members live in the US. A link to its own article should be enough. Yes, articles on UC's in other countries should be written too. Steve Dufour (talk) 03:15, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

It is quite clearly about Ed's claims about 'Opposition to the church'. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:33, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I think OR is allowed on talk pages. Steve Dufour (talk) 13:45, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I didn't make it clear that my main point was that I need help finding the sources. I know a lot about the church, but I don't always remember where I learned this or that tidbit of information. Perhaps other contributors can help with research. I can tell you what's what, and you can find out who said so, eh? --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:07, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Unification Church and antisemitism

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hrafn, thanks for restoring the material about Moon's Holocaust=indemnity statement. There is no doubt - on either side of the dispute that Rev. Mono has mentioned the Holocaust and Indemnity in the same breath on multiple occasions.

The only dispute is over the implications of this linkage. The church is well aware that church opponents think Moon's statement is antisemitic, on the grounds that it says something like "They deserved it." However, the church also feels that opponents are missing the point, which is that (in UC theology) God does not punish. It was rather Satan who inspired Hitler.

Rather than squabble over this, we need to consider NPOV. And we also should expand the indemnity article (or section, if it's been merged) because for most people and even some members the term indemnity is synonymous with "payback", which (I am told) is not what tangam (the original Korean word in Divine Principle means. --Uncle Ed (talk) 21:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I suspect many people would consider any attempt (be it through "payback", or any other interpretation of "indemnity") to make a linkage between the Holocaust and the crucifixion of Jesus to be repugnant. This is particularly true as any link made between the two would have considerable difficulty in avoiding Martin Luther's rabid antisemitism -- alluded to prominently and with approval by Hitler himself. In any case, a non-WP:SELFPUBlished (and preferably third-party WP:SECONDARY) source would absolutely be required for this, as this defence could very easily be seen as "unduly self-serving". Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 04:22, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I can explain it like this (and find the sources later?):

It's like a politician with an aide who gets into legal trouble. Say, the president of the United States has a chief of staff or cabinet member who breaks the law. If it were something small, he could pull some strings and have the incident smoothed over and hushed up. But if it's really big, he has no choice but to let the media and the law get involved. No matter how much he loves that person, he simply has to allow him to vilified by the media and even thrown into prison.

It doesn't mean the president wants that person to be punished; but for some reason he just doesn't feel he can afford to issue a pardon either. Can you imagine such circumstances occurring? --Uncle Ed (talk) 04:43, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I fail to see the relevance of the analogy (even apart from the OR aspect). (i) God seems to be both the "president" and the 'legal system', (ii) the Jewish people that endured the Holocaust are only the remote (direct and/or collateral) descendants of the small number of Jews alleged to have been involved in the crucifixion & (iii) a genocide of 6 million is grossly disproportionate 'punishment' for a single death. A better analogy would be a despot (i.e. somebody who is both supreme leader and supreme legal authority, let's say Stalin, for example) decides to have a whole people (let's say the Ukrainians, the Crimean Tartars or the Chechens) massacred because two millenia previously one (or a small number) of that people killed a relative of his. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:43, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I would also point out that my point (ii) above makes the 'indemnity' argument assume Jewish deicide, an argument that is explicitly considered to be antisemitic. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 07:54, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for engaging me on this; perhaps the result of this discussion will be that we can find the relevant source quotes.

There are two views here:

The traditional Christian view is that God is the "ruler of all"; in our analogy, of course, this would include being the president and the legal system. Traditional Christianity frequently sees God as "judging" and "punishing".
The Unification view is that God does not punish, and by the way, that God is not the absolute ruler - not in the sense that he can AND does force everyone to do his bidding. There is free will, and the UC concept has a distinct concept of free will. This leads us (astray?) into why the fall of man occurred, and why God didn't intervene when a thunderclap or a loud shot of "Don't touch that!" would have stopped Eve from eating the fruit.

I see what you mean about the grossly disproportionate punishment for "one death", but consider the consequences of "eating one apple" - in Unification Theology (and some Christian POVs) everyone "died" as a result. And everyone has been suffering from various evils. In UT, Jesus was no ordinary man, and killing him was much more serious than assassinating an emperor.

There is also the concept of "greater indemnity", whereby in the Old Testament Age several times when a person or group "failed", they had to go through a period of suffering to indemnify this failure. It's intricate. --Uncle Ed (talk) 16:44, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and the Jewish deicide thing makes perfect sense to me. I'm a completely objective and neutral reporter here. I realize that for those who see Moon as blaming "all Jews" or "the Jewish nation" for the crucifixion, this would be seen as antisemitic. And yet I also know that the church denies this.

So let's report the charge and the denial, eh? Plus reasons on both sides, if we can find them. --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:04, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Is there going to be any hope of anyone presenting independent reliable secondary sources in this thread? Because otherwise this appears to be turning into inappropriate usage of talk page space as a personal message board and forum about the topic, rather than improving the article and suggesting secondary sources from which to do so.. Cirt (talk) 17:26, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

I don't see how you can link the Holocaust to the Crucifixion without it being considered a use of the Jewish deicide argument, and thus antisemitism. Unless you are blaming "Jewish people as a whole", how can you explain the deaths of such a large proportion of the Jewish people in terms of the Crucifixion that they had no direct hand in (and may not even be directly descended from those who did)? The only possible link between the two events is some form of this argument.
The purported 'punishment' would have been so horrifically disproportionate and misdirected as to make a sick joke of the claim of omnibenevolence for God.
Original sin has always struck me as an archaic (and I would even go so far as to say primitive) notion. It might have made sense in a heavily familially-based tribal environment -- but seems irrational by modern standards.
In any case, we have no sources -- so we have nothing to "report".

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 17:29, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sources on deicide

(edit conflict)I've found two sources via Google Books that state that Moon is making use of a 'deicide' argument:

Horowitz, Irving (1978). Science, Sin, and Scholarship. Cambridge: MIT Press. p. 78. ISBN 0262081008. "Reverend Moon goes even beyond the infamous deicide 'Christ killer' charge against the Jewish people. In two separate instances in Divine Principle (pp. …"
Kelly, Aidan (1990). Cults and the Jewish Community. New York: Garland. p. 70. ISBN 0824044878. "Moon blames the Jews for deicide and views the Holocaust as legitimate … 1978 The subcommittee charged that the Unification Church was intent on forming a …"

Unfortunately both are available through Google only in 'snippet view', so I can't provide more complete quotes, let alone context. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 17:45, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for suggesting some independent reliable secondary sources! This is an appropriate use of the talk page. :) Cirt (talk) 17:49, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I can sympathise with your frustration over lengthy source-free discussions. Most of the time they are wastes of talkpage space, but (very occasionally) they turn up new lines of enquiry (particularly new search-terms) that turn up new sources. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 17:57, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

On closer examination, the former appears to have been a direct quote from the Rudin report, rather than Horowitz's own words. I'm therefore self-reverting my addition to the article, until further sources can be found. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 18:08, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand we do not believe that Jesus was literally God himself, and have often been criticized for this by other Christians. Steve Dufour (talk) 08:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Global reach / Membership / Areas of Operation

Currently, the article has this: "Members are found throughout the world, with the largest number living in South Korea or Japan.[4][5] Church membership is estimated to be several hundred thousand to a few million.[6][7]" I came here looking for real data on the extent of the UC and was disappointed to find it sorely lacking. Are there really no reliable sources out there chronicling the membership - or at least the presence - of the UC around the globe? Not even data on South Korean membership as a portion of total population? 61.189.63.208 (talk) 04:49, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Estimates of UC membership tend to vary wildly (which tends to render individual estimates unreliable). A listing can be found at http://www.adherents.com/Na/Na_637.html & subsequent pages. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I was going to recommend the same source. Notice that I contributed to it. :-) (The numbers of any church are going to be hard to get. For one thing people may say they are members, or be on the rolls, and never really attend any meetings. Or else members could respond to a poll or survey by saying merely that they are Christians without mentioning the specific church.) Steve Dufour (talk) 08:17, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I got it off Religions by population, so failed to notice your contribution. Sorry. :) The site is linked to from over 1000 articles, incidentally. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 18:08, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Arafat's funeral?

The New York Times reported that church president Michael Jenkins attended the funeral of Yassar Arafat. Does anyone think this is important enough to include in the article? THE DEATH OF ARAFAT: THE PALESTINIANS; An Emotion-Driven Flock Storms the Burial Ceremony,New York Times,Nov. 13, 2004 Kitfoxxe (talk) 16:10, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Not really -- being part of a "flock" doesn't seem to be particularly noteworthy -- particularly in an article on the church, not its ex-president (and not even, in my opinion, if it was on the ex-pres). Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 16:28, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree. You can not put every action by every person in a general article like this. Although I wouldn't have removed it if you thought it was important enough to include. Steve Dufour (talk) 17:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Another ref

Hyung-Jin Kim (2009-10-13). "Rev. Sun Myung Moon empire to revolve around sons". Associated Press. Toronto Star. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |accessed= ignored (help)

On re-reading, it's a bit vague and it doesn't really name sources or attribute anything. AndroidCat (talk) 04:03, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Jesus failed

I recently merged Jesus failed (a stub lacking third-party sourcing created by Ed) into Divine Principle. However a literature search (Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL) resulting from a recent dispute over it (Ed didn't like the title, Cirt & I didn't like the contents) turned up the fact that apparently the ultimate basis for these accusations were statements that Moon made, not in DP, but in 1971 & 1974 (Enroth, Ronald (2005). A Guide to New Religious Movements. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press. p. 68. ISBN 0830823816.), so discussion of this controversy (which the aforementioned search found numerous substantial third party sources for) should probably go here rather than in Divine Principle. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:57, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for researching this. The dispute is twofold: (1) a quibble over the wording, and (2) a major theological dispute over whether anyone in Israel was obliged to provide Jesus with public support.

Point #2 should be covered in Foundation for the Messiah (which currently redirects back to "Jesus failed"). If there are no objections, I'll change that redirect to Divine Principle#Foundation for the Messiah. --Uncle Ed (talk) 14:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

The first point is given significant coverage in multiple third-party sources, so can hardly be described as a "quibble" and appears to go deeper than "wording". The second point AFAIK does not receive any coverage at all -- so should not be covered (anywhere) until third-party sources can be found. Divine Principle#Foundation for the Messiah no longer exists, so is an inappropriate redirect target. It's non-existence was the reason that it got redirected to Divine Principle#Jesus failed in the first place. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 16:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Unification Church related AfD

The UC is mentioned in this article which is now up for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Misuse of antisemitic accusations. Kitfoxxe (talk) 07:07, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Unification Church

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Unification Church's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "bbc":

From Richard Nixon: "1972: President Nixon arrives in Moscow". BBC. May 22, 1972. Retrieved 2009-01-08.
From North Korea: "Meagre media for North Korea", BBC, October 10, 2006.
From Clube Atlético Sorocaba: "Reverendo Moon retorna à Grã-Bretanha" (in Portuguese). BBC Brasil. 2005-11-05. Retrieved 2004-11-16.
From Million Family March: "Nation Of Islam - who are they?". BBC. July 21, 2001. Retrieved 2009-11-10.
From Peace Cup: "Sundowns in Peace Cup". BBC. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
From Moonie (Unification Church): BBC News staff (July 19, 2008). "'Moonies' founder hurt in crash". BBC News. news.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2009-09-28.

Reference named "shupe":

From Hak Ja Han: Shupe, Anson D. (1998). Religion, mobilization, and social action. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 211, 213. ISBN 0275956253. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
From Moonie (Unification Church): Shupe, Anson D. (1998). Religion, Mobilization, and Social Action. Praeger. pp. 197, 213, 215. ISBN 978-0275956257. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 05:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The Daily Maverick

The Moonie church loses its grip on doctrine, money and leadership in slo-mo. Cirt (talk) 01:33, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd have questions as to the reliability of this source (lack of neutral tone, bringing up decades-old issues & lack of WP article on the Daily Maverick). However this Washington Post article that it links to, and appears based upon, gives a RS for new issues: Church disunity, recession worry Moon followers and operations. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 02:53, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Biased Article

There is a strongly positive POV of this article toward the Unification Church. It should be flagged as such. Horseopera (talk) 10:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

There is an entire "controversy and criticism" section. Steve Dufour (talk) 19:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Replace Cross with Crown section

I changed "ultraconservative" to just "conservative" for a description of one critical group. No real need to give them such an extreme label. They do have a right to their opinion. This whole issue is a bit trivial. The much more important topic, that mainstream Christians reject the teachings of the UC, is hardly even mentioned, in this article or Sun Myung Moon. Really it is almost the most important issue, both in the history of the UC and in criticism of it. (I am a member BTW, for people who don't already know.) Steve Dufour (talk) 19:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

^ Clergy and Cults: A Survey, The Rev. Richard L. Dowhower, D. D., Cult Observer, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1994).
^ Membership estimates from UC fact sheet -- Unification Church claims 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."
^ http://www.factnet.org/?p=186

[1] Clergy and Cults: A Survey, The Rev. Richard L. Dowhower, D. D., Cult Observer, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1994).

[2] Membership estimates from UC fact sheet -- Unification Church claims 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] ttp://www.factnet.org/?p=186

[1]

[2]

[3]