Unification movement

The Unification Church, originally The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, also known as the Moon movement (colloquially Moonies), is a new religious movement founded in 1954 by the Korean Sun Myung Moon. The term "sect" ("Moon sect" or "Moon sect") is also commonly used for the movement. The Unification Church is known for its mass weddings held at a fixed time at a central location in South Korea. In 2015, after Sun Myung Moon's death, the official name of the movement in Germany was changed to Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

The most important teachings of this ostensibly religious community are in the book The Divine Principle, which was written under Moon's instruction. The organization had about 1200 members in German-speaking countries in 2007. In Japan, South Korea and the United States, their political and economic influence is greater due to higher membership numbers. The Unification Church is strictly hierarchical in structure. Its founder, Sun Myung Moon, is regarded as the Messiah and "Lord of the Second Coming". Critics accuse the movement of being "a cadre organization organized according to the leader principle with a claim to absoluteness, which propagates a theocratic state model with a 'holy elite'.

The movement's headquarters are in the South Korean capital of Seoul. After Moon's death in September 2012, his widow, Hak Ja Han, and her youngest son, Hyung Jin Moon, were the joint chairmen of the Unification Church International. Hyung Jin Moon had held the position since April 2008. Since 2005, fourth-born son Kook Jin Moon has been chairman of the Unification Church's business enterprise (Tongil Group). Thus, after Moon's death on September 3, 2012, Hak Ja Han, Hyung Jin Moon and Kook Jin Moon were supposed to be in charge of the Unification Church. However, Hyung Jin Moon has since founded his own movement, World Peace Sanctuary (also known as the Sanctuary Church of Newfoundland, PA), and has split off from the Unification Church with his followers.

Historical development

International

Sun Myung Moon (born 1920), according to his own account, had a vision of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday, April 17, 1935. Jesus had asked him to complete his mission and redeem the world. Moon was then a member of various churches and tried for several years to work with established Christian revival movements in Korea (such as the Inside Belly Church, Shining Sea).

When these efforts failed, Moon founded the Holy Spirit Society for the Unification of World Christianity (Segye Kidokkyo Tongil Sillyon) in 1954, which later became known as the Unification Church (Tongil Kyo-hae). By 1957, church congregations had formed in 30 cities in South Korea. The basic doctrine of the Unification Church was written down in 1950-52 by Hyo-Won Eu, the first chairman of the Holy Spirit Society, and first printed under the title Wôl Li Hae Sôl (Divine Principle Statements) in 1957. In the late 1950s, the first missionaries were sent to Japan and the United States (Sang-ik Choi, Young-oon Kim, Bo-hi Pak, David Kim).

1960s

On March 16, 1960, Moon married Hak Ja Han in her second marriage. This event is considered within the Unification Church to be "the marriage of the Lamb" (Rev. 19:7 EU) and thus receives the status of a salvation event on which essential principles and ideals of the community are based (especially the essential role attributed to marriage, partnership and family). The couple staged themselves genealogically within the Unification Church as the "true parents" of a new humanity. Both performed "perfect marriages" in aesthetically staged mass ceremonies that attracted large numbers of couples hoping to be freed from "original sin" in the ceremony. Beginning in July 1960, projects involving over 400 Christian churches were held annually in South Korea during the summer, spreading Bible knowledge and Moon's teachings, as well as conducting community service.

During his first world tour in 1965, Moon gave speeches in 40 nations and established so-called Holy Grounds in several places (including Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Essen). On his trip to the United States, Moon met former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1966, the second edition of the Unification Church teaching Wôl Li Kang Ron (Explanation of the Divine Principle) was published in Korean, which is the basic textbook of Sun Myung Moon's teaching.

In 1969, Moon traveled to Europe, Japan and the United States. In Germany at that time, international couples received the Holy Marriage Blessing for the first time.

1970s

With Sun Myung Moon's move to the United States in 1971, the focus of the work of the International Unification Church shifted from South Korea to the United States. A few months later, the Unification Church held the Day of Hope speaking tour, in which Moon spoke in 50 American states, including seven major cities, beginning on February 3, 1972, at Lincoln Center in New York City. Two more speaking tours of major American cities followed (Christianity in Crisis: New Hope). By 1972, the Unification Church had community centers in ten different states in the United States.

In 1973, the first translation of the Wôl Li Kang Ron into English was written under the title The Divine Principle, almost simultaneously with the German translation.

After the Watergate affair of US President Richard Nixon, the Unification Church called on the American people to give the president a second chance in a campaign called Forgive, Love and Unite. A meeting between Nixon and Moon was held in 1974 to mark the occasion. Moon's fourth American speaking tour of several major American cities then began. It began with a major event at Madison Square Garden in New York City on September 18, 1974, attended by an audience of 25,000. Moon then returned to South Korea to deliver more speeches there and later in Japan.

After building the Unification Church in Japan, South Korea, the U.S. and Western Europe, missionaries were sent to 120 nations in Asia, Africa, Oceania, South America and the Middle East in May 1975. After South Vietnam was taken by communist troops on April 30, 1975, the Korean Unification Church held the World Rally for Korean Freedom in Seoul on June 7, 1975, at which Moon gave the main speech to raise awareness of the danger of communism (especially North Korea), with over one million people attending.

On the occasion of the Bicentennial of the founding of the United States in 1976, Sun Myung Moon delivered two speeches. One on June 1 at Yankee Stadium in New York City and another on September 18 at the Bicentennial God Bless America Festival at the Washington Monument.

In 1978, at Moon's initiative, the Unification Church launched the Home Church project. This was to publicize the church by offering assistance to needy families in the immediate neighborhood.

That same year, the Subcommittee on International Organizations, a subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives, accused the Unification Church of, among other things, collaborating with the South Korean intelligence agency KCIA, in what became known as the Koreagate affair. In doing so, the committee cited, among other things, three unverified CIA reports from the 1960s claiming that the Unification Church was founded by the KCIA in 1961. Committee Chairman Donald M. Fraser sought clarification from Colonel Bo Hi Pak, a close confidant of Moon who was allegedly involved in the Koreagate scandal. The latter testified three times before Fraser's committee, denying any links between the Unification Church and the KCIA. Fraser was ultimately unable to sufficiently prove his allegations and Bo Hi Pak and the Unification Church were acquitted. The report was picked up by numerous mass media outlets and contributed to a negative public image of the Unification Church. The Unification Church issued a statement on Fraser's charges entitled Our Response.

Moon was sentenced to prison in 1984 for tax evasion. Civil rights movements, liberal and conservative (also right-wing) Christian movements and pastors such as Jerry Falwell, but also Joseph Lowery considered the charge unjustified and a violation of religious freedom. The Dutch Moon movement maintained numerous contacts with right-wing extremist groups in the 1980s.

The organization last attracted a great deal of public interest in October 2019. In Ruinerwold, the Netherlands, a small group (including teenagers) living in isolation in a confined space had been discovered awaiting the end of the world age.

Germany

The first missionary in Germany was Peter Koch, who had become acquainted with the teachings of Sun Myung Moon in America. One year after his arrival in Germany, the Society for the Unification of World Christianity (GVW) was founded in Frankfurt am Main on 11 December 1964.

In the course of a world tour, Moon visited Germany for the first time in 1965 and founded three Holy Grounds in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Essen. He instructed the members to send missionaries abroad. As a result, missionaries went abroad sporadically, for example to Spain and France.

With Moon's visit in 1969, there was a first change of leadership, Peter Koch became country leader in Austria, Paul Werner was responsible for the German Unification Church. Werner put a new emphasis on distributing invitations and other street actions, as well as opening new community centers. In 1971 there were 21 community centers and 100 members in Germany.

In September 1971, two mission teams of 12 members each traveled through various cities in Germany to find new church members. In 1972, Moon gave three public speeches for the first time in Germany, specifically in Essen, as part of the "Day-of-Hope" speaking tour. Shortly thereafter, as part of the One World Crusade, new mission teams were formed in Munich.

According to the decision of the Federal Supreme Court of February 1, 1983, "it is allowed to claim about the Moon sect in the Federal Republic of Germany":

• the Unification Church is a criminal organization,
• proclaiming a fascist system,
• several young people have been driven to suicide by the Unification Church and
• the Unification Church subjects people to psychological terror.

Accordingly, the Spiegel of December 14, 1987, after the "Fourth Carp World Student Congress" of "the international student organization of the Moon sect" in Berlin in August 1987, said: Moon's "religious doctrine is a strange hodgepodge of 'principles' characterized by its radical anti-communist tendency, racist-fascist approaches and a grotesque claim to world domination."

From 1995 to 2006, because of the dangerousness of the Unification Church as a psycho and youth sect, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior banned Moon and his wife from entering Germany, which was lifted by the 2006 Federal Constitutional Court.

There are ten official community centres in Germany: Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover, Düsseldorf, Bonn, Giessen, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart and Nuremberg.

Austria

The first pioneer of the Unification Church in Austria was Paul Werner, who arrived in Vienna on May 19, 1965. In May 1966, the "Society for the Unification of World Christianity" was registered as an association with the Security Directorate (Chairman: Paul Werner). Within five years Werner built up a community of over 30 members. In January 1974 the association status of the rapidly growing religious community was withdrawn again for "formal reasons" by the Vienna Security Directorate. Until the founding of the Austrian Family Federation for World Peace in 1997, the Unification Church therefore existed only as a society under civil law. Early on, the Austrian Unification Church advanced to become one of the leading national groups in Europe and sent missionaries to Switzerland (1968), to Czechoslovakia (1968), to the USA (from 1972), to Germany (1975) and to various countries of the communist Eastern Bloc (1980s).

On June 15, 2015, the Unification Church was recognized by the Austrian Office of Religious Affairs as a "state-registered religious denomination." (For Austrian religious law, see Recognized Religious Communities in Austria). Currently, the Austrian Unification Church runs six official community centers in the federal capital Vienna (national headquarters) and the provincial capitals Linz, Graz, Klagenfurt, Salzburg, and Innsbruck. According to its own information, the Unification Church in Austria has about 700 members.

Doctrine

The teachings of the Unification Church come from the founder Sun Myung Moon. Moon's revelation is understood as the key to understanding the Christian Bible and as a guide to the restoration of the world. The main works on Unification Church doctrine are The Divine Principle and Cheon Seong Gyeong (Holy Scripture of Heaven).

Image of God

There is one God who is absolute, unchanging, almighty and eternal. He is invisible, transcends space and time, and is creator of the universe. As a creature of God, the world is the physical expression of His being. The qualities that are united in God are thus reflected in creation, which include polar traits (yin and yang), such as masculinity and femininity.

God is the source of truth, beauty, goodness and love. God does not stand in the position of a judge, but in the position of the parent of humankind. As a parent, He has both the fatherly aspect of righteousness and the motherly aspect of forgiveness and care.

Original ideal of creation

God created the universe in order to be able to experience love and joy in relationships with object partners. Human beings are the most important beings in creation because they are God's children who have the ability to be creators themselves. Furthermore, based on their God-given freedom, human beings can determine their own character development, which is related to the extent to which they can receive and reciprocate God's love.

God, as the parent of mankind, gave man the purpose of life to experience joy, which is expressed in the 'Three Great Blessings' (Gen 1:28 EU): Be fruitful and multiply, populate the earth, [...] and have dominion over the fish and the sea, over the birds of the air and over all the animals that move on the land.

1. "Be fruitful" stands for attaining spiritual and physical maturity, that is, harmony between mind and body, aligned with God.
2. "Multiply" means the establishment of an ideal family centered on God.
3. "Ruling" over all living things on earth requires man to assume responsible leadership over the entire universe and, as mediator between God and the physical world, to use all things in harmony with God's ideal so that they in turn may fulfill their purpose of creation.

God's ideal of creation is fulfilled when God and humankind are in a relationship of love and human beings have fulfilled the 'Three Great Blessings'.

Spirit World

Man is seen as a mediator of the spiritual and physical worlds, having both a physical self and a spiritual self. The spiritual self lives on eternally in the spiritual world after the death of the physical self. Deceased people and angels can interact with or influence the spiritual self of living people. Angels were created to help humans fulfill the 'Three Great Blessings'. The perfect man is above the ministering angels.

The Fall of Man

The Fall of the first human ancestors Adam and Eve from the Bible is, according to Divine Principles, an actual historical event. However, elements of the story, such as the tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the forbidden fruit, and the serpent, are interpreted as symbolic metaphors for an ideal man, an ideal woman, sexual love, and the archangel Lucifer.

The Fall is composed of the spiritual Fall and the physical Fall. The spiritual fall refers to the forbidden sexual relationship between the archangel Lucifer and the immature Eve. This relationship was contrary to the originally intended relationship between man and angel.

The physical fall describes the subsequent sexual union of Eve with Adam, who at that time was not yet blessed by God. In the process, Eve transmitted elements from her relationship with Lucifer to Adam, and through her children they were passed on to all of humanity. For this reason, it is not God who is at the center of human society, but Lucifer, which is contrary to the ideal of God.

Restoration of the original ideal

The doctrine of the Unification Church is that all of human history since the Fall has been an ongoing struggle between the forces of God and Satan to purge the original sin and restore the original love. This process is the driving force of human history, which is a history of restoration and indemnity. The restoration of the satanic lineage to the divine lineage is the central task of the Messiah. The change of lineage is achieved through participation in the "holy matrimony Blessing".

The history of religions is the history of divine and human effort to realize the ideal expressed in the realization of the "Three Great Blessings. Throughout history, various important personalities have appeared who were on the side of God or Satan, either serving or working against the process of restoration.

The Messiah can only free people from original sin and guide them through His teachings. The responsibility to cleanse personal and inherited sins is borne by each person himself.

The Mission of the Messiah and the Role of Sun Myung Moon

According to the doctrine of the Unification Church, the Messiah is a human being born without original sin and from the divine nature of God. He is connected to God, but not God Himself. The Messiah stands in the position of the first man Adam. His mission is to make amends for the Fall and fulfill the ideal of creation. In order to do so, he must lead a woman (in the position of Eve) to spiritual maturity and establish a family with her. The Unification Church thus understands the marriage of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7 EU) as a literal wedding between the Messiah and a restored woman.

Jesus was the Messiah. However, because of the unbelief of the people, Jesus was crucified before he could complete the messianic task on earth. According to the Divine Principle, Jesus' death on the cross was neither necessary nor the will of God. Jesus should have actually become a father, raised a family, and established the Kingdom of God during His lifetime (Isa 9:5-6 EU, Lk 1:31-32 EU). Nevertheless, the sacrificial death on the cross was not in vain. On the victorious foundation of the cross Jesus could rise again and bring spiritual redemption to mankind.

The Messiah must come again to redeem humankind physically as well. Sun Myung Moon is considered to be this second Messiah (Lord of the Second Coming). Accordingly, he has the task to complete the mission of Jesus. Together with his wife Hak Ja Han he takes the role of True Parents. Through them, God's ideal of a perfect parent is fulfilled for the first time. Accordingly, Unification Church members refer to Sun Myung Moon as True Father, Hak Ja Han as True Mother, and their entire family as True Family, which is conducive to the hierarchical structuring of the community and its uncritical obedience to authority. Moon proclaimed new world historical epochs several times and calculated exact times of a supposed end time several times. Through the True Parents, all humankind is to be engrafted to God's lineage. The True Parents are to show the way for all people to become True Parents themselves and establish true families.

Prayer at the blessing of marriage