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Moonstruck

A lengthy SF Weekly article on Rev. Sun Myung Moon and African-American preachers appeared in the February 22-28, 2006 issue. Please review the archives  for a more thoroughly researched analysis of this topic:

Moon founded the Unification Church in 1954 (its original name was Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity). His movement was largely unknown in the United States until the 1970s, when he declared that God had instructed him to turn his attention to America. He made headlines by presiding over mass weddings of his followers in the '70s and '80s, and on the political side by urging Americans to forgive President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. He later ascribed his IRS troubles, which landed him an 18-month sentence in a federal penitentiary for evading more than $160,000 in taxes, to political payback for befriending Nixon.

In 1982, the same year he got out of jail, Moon founded the Washington Times newspaper, which, along with Fox News and radio talk shows, has become a potent force among conservative media in the nation's capital. In 2001, through New World Communications, the same entity that controls the Washington Times, Moon also acquired United Press International. Another Moon entity, Professors World Peace Academy, controls the private University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. As Moon's support for the conservative political agenda has grown, and his movement has gained more mainstream acceptance, white evangelicals, who were once among his fiercest detractors, have become more tolerant toward the movement. Moon has even donated $3.5 million to the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

...

The most controversy surrounding Moon involves his teachings, especially his claim to be the Messiah. The Moon theology doesn't deny Jesus' role in Christian belief as the Messiah, or savior, sent to Earth to redeem mankind from sin. But, according to Moon, that mission could have only been successful had Jesus married and begot children through whom the human race could have been lifted up. He reserves that role for himself, thus the title of True Father and, for Mrs. Moon, True Mother.

Moon formally proclaimed himself the Messiah in 1992. At that time, he declared himself and his second wife, Hak Ja Han (whom he married when she was 17 and who bore him 14 children), to be "the Messiah and True Parents of all humanity." He has never retreated from the claim, making his proselytizing aimed at religiously orthodox -- not to mention traditionally liberal and Democratic -- black ministers seem all the more incongruous.

However, David Bromley, the sociologist, isn't fazed.

"Moon is a classic charismatic figure who sincerely believes in his Messianic mission," he says. "As such, he's shown an interest in reaching out to any group that will listen. Whether or not they accept him, in his mind he's fulfilled his obligation."

...

Perhaps the most notable such occasion was the Capitol Hill gathering in 2004, at which at least two U.S. senators and a half-dozen members of Congress later complained of being blindsided. After showing up for an Ambassadors for Peace event at which some of their constituents were to be honored, the elected officials were treated to a coronation ceremony for Moon and his wife, complete with long robes, jeweled crowns, and the triumphant blowing of a ram's horn to announce Moon's entry. (The event went unreported in mainstream media for several weeks until San Francisco freelance journalist John Gorenfeld, who has written frequently about Moon, broke the story.)

After seeing what was happening, elected officials and congressional staffers alike began heading for the exits. Those unable to get out in time heard Moon proclaim himself to be "God's ambassador" sent "to accomplish His command to save the world's six billion people." He then told of having spoken with many of the world's now-dead rulers in the spirit realm and disclosed that Hitler and Stalin, among others, had come around to his thinking.

"Would I like to take that one back? Oh, yes," says Congressman Danny Davis (D-Chicago), who came in for ridicule for holding Moon's crown that day. Davis, a deacon in his Chicago-area Methodist church, says he became involved with Moon through clergy friends in the ACLC. "In my mind, I saw the ceremony as merely a sign of respect, and no more significant than if I were asked to crown a homecoming queen," the congressman says. He has broken ties with the ACLC and all other Moon groups. "I wish them well, but quite frankly, I don't have time for the [political] headache it's caused me," he says.

Amos Brown, who also attended the "coronation" that day, isn't wavering.

"Rev. Moon is the victim of a double standard," he says. "Some folks deify the pope and others deify Billy Graham. But you don't see a lot of people shaking their heads over that."

(excerpts)

Ron Russell
San Francisco Weekly
Feb22-28.2006

Moonstruck: What are African-American preachers doing following Rev. Moon and his cultlike Unification Church ?

Rev. Moon and Triple Border ?

...[Neil] Bush has joined the "Lord of the Second Advent" [Rev. Moon] on his 100-day world tour...

Last Wednesday Team Moon touched down in Taiwan to launch a "global peace campaign" and promote the formation of "ideal families." Moon declared that "'spirits' have arrived on Earth to watch human beings' every move," and that "those who stray away from the heavenly way will be punished." Next stop was the Philippines - The Manila Bulletin generously described [Neil] Bush as a "peace leader" - where President Gloria Arroyo "praised Moon for his global peace efforts and God-centered, family-centered economic and social initiatives."

...
Moon owns 600,000 hectares in Paraguay's arid Chaco, below which sits the worlds largest aquifer. And as it's not just about oil, it's not just about water, either. It's about drugs and guns, as well.

...

As Paraguay's former "drug czar" said, "The fact that they came and bought in Chaco [Paraguay] and on both sides of the Brazilian border is very telling. It is an enormously strategic point in both the narcotics and arms trades and indeed the available intelligence clearly shows that the Moon sect is involved in both these enterprises." This should inform our reading of recent headlines such as US military presence in Paraguay irks neighbors.

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/12/brother-loves-travelling-salvation_05.html


Where in South America is Sun Myung Moon ?

Paraguayans accuse Moon of carving out an empire of smack

Since 1999, Rev Moon has built his personal empire which begins on the marshy banks of the River Paraguay and stretches beyond the hazy, level horizon through 600,000 hectares of arid land - equivalent to more than two Luxembourgs - punctuated by solitary clusters of withered trees and sad bushes which struggle desperately for air.

The scorching sun beats relentlessly on one of Latin America's most desolate zones. It is here in the northern province of Chaco, directly above the GuaranI aquifer, the largest resource of fresh drinking water in the world, where Moon's associates claim he wishes to build an ecological paradise.

Nevertheless, national Senator Domingo Laino sees a different pattern in Moon's acquisitions. "There are two principal branches to Moon's interest in Paraguay," he said, "control of the largest fresh drinking water source in the world and control of the narcotics business", which is so prevalent in this area. "President Lula told me that Brazil took serious measures to curb Moon a few years back as it became evident that he was buying up the border between our two countries," said the senator.

Allegations from local law enforcement officials support this claim. The so-called Dr Montiel, Paraguay's drugs tsar from 1976-89, said: "The fact that they came and bought in Chaco and on both sides of the Brazilian border is very telling. It is an enormously strategic point in both the narcotics and arms trades and indeed the available intelligence clearly shows that the Moon sect is involved in both these enterprises."

Not content with expanses of potentially invaluable land, Rev Moon has also taken over entire towns, including factories and homes. In Puerto Casado, tensions between Moon disciples and locals led to violent confrontation over the last year following the closure of the only source of work, a lumber factory, and the dismissal of 19 workers who tried to form a union in order to demand an eight-hour day and the national minimum wage of GBP80 sterling per month.

According to Senator Emilio Camacho: "The Moon sect is a mafia. They seek to subvert government control and are effectively building a state within a state. I believe they are hoping the local population will leave so they have unquestioned authority in the zone and are free to do whatever they want."

Seamus Mirodan
Irish Times
Oct14.2004

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/11/5/13314/9719
[link no longer working ?--accessed via Google cache]

http://www.iapprovethismessiah.com/2004/10/paraguayans-accuse-moon-of-carving-out.html
[article is also available here]

Are Moon's holdings in Paraguay in any way related to the "activity" in the Triple Border Area? A map check reveals that the Chaco area is some distance from Ciudad del Este. Paraguay is a fairly small country, however.

Evidence of many different groups has been uncovered by the varied international intelligence agencies concerned with the development of the area. A list that contains amongst its members organisations such as Hizballah, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Gamaat, Al Islamiyya, to name a few. Without doubt the two most prominent of these are the Lebanese Shi'ite Islamist movement Hizballah, and the Sunni Islamist group that requires no introduction, Al-Qaeda.

[...]

A number of prominent Hizballah activists have been captured, although most manage to escape justice and hide in Brazil.

http://www.worldthreats.com/latin_america/Terrorism's%20Triple-Border%20Sanctuary.htm

There is an interesting thread from Cooperative Research here:

http://cooperativeresearch.org/phorum5/read.php?2,328,469

Similar information is also contained in Terrorism’s New Geography by Sebastian Junger; Vanity Fair; Dec2002:

...the development of the Triple Border area of Latin America as an operational epicenter for terrorist groups. In addition to Islamist groups such as Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, the region has become a base for neo-Nazi operatives, as well as groups from European countries. The area is formed by the junction of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay and the proximity of these three enormously corrupt countries has made the region a hotbed of criminal activity of all kinds. Among the most alarming aspects of this investigation is the  apparent operational liaison between Al Qaeda and neo-Nazi elements.

...

. . . Hezbollah and Hamas cells easily integrated themselves into this tightly knit Muslim community. Not only is it an ideal place to blend in, but a huge amount of money is funneled back to Lebanon to support the cause. Bank records show that a Lebanese businessman named Assad Ahmad Mohamad Barakat—who owns one of the largest shopping malls in Ciudad del Este—has transferred thousands of dollars to Hezbollah over the years. A month after the September 11 attacks, Paraguayan police, under intense pressure from the United States, swept Ciudad del Este and arrested a dozen or so suspected money-launderers. Barakat himself managed to escape the raid, but in his office the police found scores of copies of an al-Qaeda promotional video. He had been making them, apparently, to distribute to extremists in Triple Border. Carlos Calcena, the Paraguayan prosecutor in charge of the case, has tracked tens of thousands of dollars in money transfers from the port town of Iquique, Chile, to Ciudad del Este, to a Chase Manhattan bank account in the name of “Mr. Barakat’ in Long Island City, New York.

...

. . . And there were Americans at the camp as well. Risi learned about one of them and on January 12, 1996, he says, he took a polygraph test and made a statement to the Federal Court in Buenos Aires testifying to everything he knew about this American. The man—whose name also won’t be divulged—is an ex-Special Forces soldier who had been a communications expert in Vietnam and had seen combat there. He returned home to join the Michigan Militia, then converted to Islam, worked in Jordan, and became associated with another American, who had been investigated by the D.E.A. for activities in Central America. Now, according to Risi, the Vietnam vet, who speaks Spanish, is in Triple Border with two other American extremists, acting as an instructor at one of the terrorist training camps. He is also responsible for security operations and provided armed guards when top al-Qaeda and Hezbollah associates—in particular, Muganiyah—were in town.

http://www.spitfirelist.com/f457.html

Update Dec12.2005:

...

Limited investigations of Moon’s organization have revealed large sums of money flowing into the United States mostly from untraceable accounts in Japan, where Moon had close ties to yakuza gangster Ryoichi Sasakawa. Former Moon associates also have revealed major money flows from shadowy sources in South America, where Moon built relationships with right-wing elements associated with the cocaine trade, including the so-called Cocaine Coup government of Bolivia in the early 1980s.

...

Authors Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson wrote in their 1986 book, Inside the League, that Sun Myung Moon was one of five indispensable Asian leaders who made the World Anti-Communist League possible. The five were Taiwan’s dictator Chiang Kai-shek, South Korea’s dictator Park Chung Hee, yakuza gangsters Sasakawa and Kodama, and Moon, “an evangelist who planned to take over the world through the doctrine of ‘Heavenly Deception,’” the Andersons wrote.

WACL became a well-financed worldwide organization after a secret meeting between Sasakawa and Moon, along with two Kodama representatives, on a lake in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. The purpose of the meeting was to create an anti-communist organization that “would further Moon’s global crusade and lend the Japanese yakuza leaders a respectable new façade,” the Andersons wrote.

...

According to later Bolivian government and newspaper reports, a Moon representative invested about $4 million in preparations for the coup. Bolivia’s WACL  representatives also played key roles, and CAUSA, one of Moon’s anti-communist organizations, listed as members nearly all the leading Bolivian coup-makers.

Soon, Colonel Luis Arce-Gomez, a coup organizer and the cousin of cocaine kingpin Roberto Suarez, went into partnership with big narco-traffickers, including Trafficante’s Cuban-American smugglers. Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and his young neo-fascist followers found new work protecting Bolivia's major cocaine barons and transporting drugs to the border. “The paramilitary units – conceived by Barbie as a new type of SS – sold themselves to the cocaine barons,” German journalist Kai Hermann wrote. “The attraction of fast money in the cocaine trade was stronger than the idea of a national socialist revolution in Latin America.”

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/090704.html

Rev. Moon and George W. Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives

President Bush has some new troops in his crusade to promote "healthy marriage" and teen celibacy with federal funds -- followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial Korean evangelist and self-proclaimed new world messiah.

At least four longtime operatives of Moon's Unification Church are on the federal payroll or getting government grants in the administration's Healthy Marriage Initiative and other "faith-based" programs.

Two of those Moon associates were in Oakland last week leading dozens of local pastors and social workers enrolled in a "Certified Marriage Education Training Seminar" at the Holiday Inn next to the Coliseum.

In some ways, Moon is an unlikely ally for President Bush's crusade to promote traditional family values.

The 85-year-old Korean is perhaps best known for presiding over mass marriage ceremonies for devotees whose unions are arranged by Moon or other church leaders. After marriage, Unification Church couples are given detailed instructions for their honeymoon, right down to the sexual positions they are supposed to assume during their first three conjugal couplings.

According to Unification Church teachings, the children born from these marriages are "blessed children,'' who, unlike the rest of humanity, are born without original sin.

At the Oakland seminar, Josephine Hauer, a graduate of the Rev. Moon's Unification Theological Seminary in New York and a newly hired "marriage specialist" with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, worked the crowd of ministers and church workers packed into a stuffy room.

"Family is a good thing," said Hauer, holding a cordless microphone in one hand and her PowerPoint remote in the other. "I want to make this a marriage culture again -- a healthy marriage culture.''

As Hauer spoke, the Rev. Bento Leal, another graduate of the seminary and the associate minister at the Bay Area Family Church, a Unification Church congregation in San Leandro, checked a list of names at the door.

Before her new federal job, Hauer was the director of marriage education at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Conn. That school was taken over in 1992 by the Professors World Peace Academy, a Moon-affiliated group, and its current president, Neil Salonen, is a former president of the Unification Church in America.

After less than three days, attendees of the Sept. 23-25 seminar in Oakland were awarded a "Certified Marriage Education Professional Document of Completion," issued by Moon's University of Bridgeport.

"Sixteen hours of training won't make you the best marriage educator," Hauer told her students. "But it takes all kinds of work to save marriage -- people to run the sound system, write the press releases.''

During a seminar break, Hauer declined to answer any questions about her ties to the Unification Church.

"I'm a professional. I don't talk about my religion or my politics," she said. "My religion is not an issue.''

Bush administration officials agreed.

"We don't ask people's religious affiliation before we hire them,'' said Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services.

"But if someone uses federal funds to proselytize, that would be a violation,'' Horn said. "It doesn't matter whether they are Baptist, Presbyterian, Jewish, or even members of the Unification Church."

Last week's crash course on marriage education was sponsored by the California State Healthy Marriage Initiative, an organization founded two years ago by the Rev. Dion Evans, pastor of Chosen Vessels Christian Church in Oakland.

Last month, Evans and his partners won a $366,179 grant from the Bush administration's Compassion Capital Fund -- part of the latest $45 million in social service contracts given to churches and community groups from the program this year.

"For four years, I did this work with no government funds,'' said Evans, adding that he has not yet received his first check from the Compassion Capital Fund. Evans said he partnered with the University of Bridgeport because "acknowledgement from a university gives them (seminar participants) support.''

"We had to settle for the University of Bridgeport,'' he said. "This is the last time we will be using them."

Critics say the Oakland program shows how difficult it is to give money to religious organizations while maintaining separation of church and state.

"Moon has been a big backer of the faith-based initiative,'' said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "But it's beyond belief that you can have the University of Bridgeport issuing marriage education certificates and claim that is secular.''

Lynn said the Oakland program also shows how "there is virtually no monitoring of where this money is going.''

"Money goes out and nobody knows how it's used and nobody knows what it's for,'' he said.

Following the money from the federal government to the streets of Oakland is not easy.

The organization that actually received the federal grant is the Institute for Contemporary Studies, a conservative think tank in Oakland and one of Evans' key partners in the California Healthy Marriage Initiative. That partnership comes through another recently founded organization, the Bay Area Inner City Leadership Alliance.

It was founded by the Rev. Walter L. Humphrey, the pastor of Moriah Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in Oakland, and Robert Hawkins Jr., president of the Institute for Contemporary Studies. Board members include Evans and Leal, the Unification Church minister. Leal said the Institute for Contemporary Studies, not the Unification Church, applied for the federal funding for the marriage education training.

"Unificationism is my own faith," Leal said. "This just gives me a chance to work with clergy who are also interested in this issue.''

Hawkins, the director of the Institute for Contemporary Studies, said Moon's teachings were not part of the marriage education program.

"Bento (Leal) has never proselytized, and I didn't know Josie (Hauer) was a Moonie,'' he said. "I just looked at her curriculum and thought it was good. ''

Hawkins said the project is designed to give pastors of smaller inner city churches new skills for "marriage and family strengthening." He added, "It's an experiment. You have to start somewhere.''

Moon has also partnered with the Bush administration in support of the Korean evangelist's strong teachings against premarital sex.

Free Teens USA, an after-school program in New Jersey promoting abstinence until marriage, has been given $475,000 by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, another part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Free Teens is led by Richard Panzer, another alumnus of Unification Theological Seminary. Panzer was also a leader in the American Constitution Committee, one of many political organizations affiliated with Moon.

Panzer insists that his program is "devoid of any religious content.''

"I am a Unificationist, but I am also a professional,'' he said. "The purpose of Free Teens is not to bring young people to any one religious faith. ''

Another longtime political operative in Moon front groups, David Caprara, now directs the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for the federal government's Corporation for National and Community Service. That agency runs, among other things, AmeriCorps Vista, which works with community organizations in low-income neighborhoods, and has emerged as a key player in Bush's faith-based initiative, handing out $61 million to faith-based organizations in fiscal year 2003.

Caprara is the former president of the American Family Coalition, a "grassroots leadership alliance" funded by the Washington Times Foundation and founded by Moon in 1984. Caprara declined to comment on his Unification Church ties, referring questions to his press secretary, Sandy Scott.

"We don't inquire about employee's personal religious beliefs,'' Scott said. "What inspires David's work is a dedication to fighting poverty.''

During the 1970s, Moon's Unification Church was widely accused of deceptively recruiting and "brainwashing" idealistic converts on street corners and college campuses across the nation.

In 1982, Moon made headlines around the world when he presided over a mass marriage ceremony involving 2,075 couples in New York's Madison Square Garden.

Late that decade, Moon spent a year in federal prison after being convicted of income tax evasion.

For the past three decades, his controversial sect has struggled to make the leap from "cult" to "religion," to win credibility among political and religious leaders in the United States and around the world.

Through such publications as the Washington Times, a church-financed, conservative daily newspaper in the nation's capital, and through alliances with priests and pastors across the theological spectrum, Moon and company have spent a fortune courting the opinion-makers of church and state.

Moon showed an early interest in the Bush administration's faith-based initiative. In the spring of 2001, the American Leadership Conference, a project of the Caprara's American Family Coalition and Washington Times Foundation, sponsored a "Faith-Based Initiative Summit," a conference that was transmitted via satellite to 40 gatherings in churches and hotel meeting rooms across the country.

That summit came just months after one of President Bush's strongest supporters in the Christian Right, TV evangelist Pat Robertson, warned that religious cults would soon be eligible for federal funds.

In the Feb. 20, 2001, broadcast of his "700 Club" television show, Robertson said the president's faith-based initiative "could be a real Pandora's box."

"What seems to be such a great initiative can rise up to bite the organizations as well as the federal government," said Robertson, who expressed particular concern about federal money going to the Church of Scientology, the Hare Krishas and "the Moonies."

Robertson and Bush have since come to a meeting of minds on the president's faith-based initiative.

Another of the 145 recipients in the most recent outlay of the Compassion Capital Fund was Robertson's charity, Operation Blessing International, which got $500,000 from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Don Lattin
San Francisco Chronicle
Oct03.2004

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/10/03/MNG4M936HP1.DTL

The Rev. Moon - Tim LaHaye Connection

Dr. Timothy LaHaye- Founder of CNP [The Council For National Policy] 1981; CNP President 1981-82, Executive Committee 1984-85, Board of Governors 1982, 1996,1998 ; pastor,  president and founder of  Family Life Seminars, founded the largest protestant high school and Christian school systems in the country; Founder of Christian Heritage College; one of the original founders and  member of the Executive Board of Moral Majority; founder, American Coalition for Traditional Values; a member of the Editorial Board of Christian Inquirer 6 ; Member of Ed McAteer ' Religious Roundtable Council of 56. See: Religious Roundtable; 

Assisted CNP's Dr. Henry Morris in the founding of the Institute for Creation Research 6b; member of COR (Coalition on Revival); 

Dennis Peacocke's Coalition on Revival (COR) was co-founded and headed by Jay Grimstead. Jay Grimstead's COR Manifesto is the document which outlines COR's goals and objectives. The 135 Christian activists who signed the document in 1986 committed themselves to working for the realization of COR's goals "until the day we die." Those on the COR steering committee include other CNP members as well as recognized shepherding movement leaders such as Bob Mumford and Ern Baxter, as well as Jack Van Impe.

For Dennis Peacocke, Mumford, Doner See: Sheperding; Jay Grimstead 

PropheZine, which hosted a three-day international Prophecy Conference in Alta Loma, CA, on Sept 19- 21, 2000 with Speakers : Tim LaHaye (CNP), Gary Kah, Berit Kjos... [See: More Ecumenical Comrades] 

Signer, Evangelical Celebration. See: Evangelical & Catholics Together 

Left Behind, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, is the first of six novels (with more to come) dealing with the end times (the other two in the original trilogy are Tribulation Force and Nicolae). LaHaye says that Left Behind is "the first fictional portrayal of events that are true to the literal interpretation of Bible prophecy." Peter Lalonde, CEO of Cloud Ten Pictures, the maker of Left Behind: The Movie 6c is being sued by Tim. He is suing Namesake Entertainment and Cloud Ten Pictures, charging breach of contract and demanding unspecified damages, Religion News Service reports.

From the Seek God article Putting it Together, from the series, Taking the Name, the Mark & the Number: 

"It should be very obvious that no Christian could take a mark, chip or tattoo or any other thing in their forehead, hand or arm.

However, that thinking is being usurped by the false doctrine found throughout CNP member Tim LaHaye's un-Biblical Left Behind fictional series.

People are being duped into thinking that if they have the Holy Spirit they can actually take the mark. Unbelievable, except far too many go by what they are told the Bible says, instead of reading it themselves...."

Moonie Connections: "LaHaye held the position of paid chairman with Sun Myung Moon's 7 now defunct Coalition for Religious Freedom (CRF). (Moon is the founder of the Unification Church, 8 and is the self-proclaimed Messiah to the world. He teaches the particularly vile heresy that not only did Jesus fail in His earthly ministry, but that He had sex with the women who followed Him.) (Reported in the November 1990 Omega-Letter and the 1Q96, Religion in Politics.) 

Coalition for Religious Freedom [CRF] 9 : Started by Rep. George Hansen in 1984. CRF Executive committee members have included Tim LaHaye , Jerry Falwell, James Robison; Rex Humbard, D. James Kennedy , and Jimmy Swaggart.  "...According to CRF president Dan Sills, [CRF] has received at least $500,000 from Moon sources. A prominent CRF  spokesperson and executive committee member is Joseph Paige...Paige received $60,000 from the Unification Church for his school, which in turn gave Moon a much publicized honorary doctorate. Paige is also active in CAUSA." [1986] "the Moon organization opened an international front in its 'religious freedom" campaign. According to Moon's New York City Tribune , the World Council on Religious Liberty (WCRL) was founded in December 1986...The Chairman of WCRL is Joseph Paige, and its " Chairman of the North American Caucus is Don Sills. They have recruited Dr. Robert G. Muller, assistant Secretary general of the United Nations as chairman of the Council's International Advisory Committee. The Council's headquarters are in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is also home to Paige's Shaw Divinity School." 10.

For Dr. Robert G. Muller See: World Vision: Global Education; Letter 

Biblical Discernment Ministries reported: "In June, 1985, CRF held several rallies, one of which was in Washington, D.C. There LaHaye urged the over 300 men and women present to support Moon by voluntarily going to jail with him for a week if allowed to do so by authorities. "Not that I agree with his doctrine," said LaHaye. "Not that I agree with what he teaches, because many of us don't know what he teaches. We have only read about it in the paper and you know how much we can trust the papers." (Evidently LaHaye is unaware of the many books and research papers made available by Christian cult investigators. Certainly the newspapers aren't the only source of information.) Other so-called evangelicals that served with LaHaye at CRF as executive committee and/or advisory board members were [CNP's] Don Wildmon (founder and president of the social activist American Family Association), [CNP's] Marlin Maddoux (Point Of View nationwide radio talk show host), Paul Crouch (TBN Network's infamous founder), Hal Lindsey, [CNP's] James Robison , Jimmy Swaggart, and  [CNP's] Dr. D. James Kennedy  (author and pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) -- an agenda of social activism certainly makes for strange ecumenical bedfellows. [In a personal letter dated 6/3/93, LaHaye claims to have never received any pay for his stint as CRF's "temporary chairman for a month and a half." LaHaye seems to be saying, "It's okay to serve on the Board of an apostate organization as long as you don't accept pay for it."] 

"In 1985, Carolyn Weaver, writing for Mother Jones Magazine, exposed the fact that LaHaye had received substantial funds from Moon's aid Bo Hi Park. This was discovered in a tape of a dictated thank you letter from LaHaye, thanking Park for a contribution in excess of $500,000. LaHaye would not admit or deny the receipt of the contribution, instead he attacked the source of the information. (Reported in the 1Q96, Religion in Politics.)" ....Moon held a Washington Family Federation for World Peace conference in late-1996 that attracted a gaggle of famous "evangelical" speakers, including Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed (now a political consultant), Family Research Council president Gary Bauer, and Concerned Women for America president Beverly LaHaye. Moon and his fourth wife also addressed the conference, which attracted 1,500 participants from around the globe."11

Tim LaHaye formed the Pre-Trib Research Center (PTRC)1994, (originally headquartered in Family Life Seminar's Washington, D.C. offices, but moved to Arlington, Texas in the late-1990s), made up of a "large group of prophetic Bible scholars given a sacred task of joining with others in proclaiming, teaching, defending, and applying the doctrine of the Pretribulational Rapture of the Church." 

http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.l.htm

Rev. Moon Coronation in US Senate Office Bldg 2004

Hail to the Moon king

The deeply weird coronation of Rev. Sun Myung Moon in a Senate office building -- crown, robes, the works -- is no longer one of Washington's best-kept secrets.

You probably imagine your congressman hard at work in the Capitol debating legislation, making laws -- you know, governing. But your newspaper probably didn't tell you that one night in March, members of Congress hosted a crowning ritual for an ex-convict and multibillionaire who dressed up in maroon robes and declared himself the Second Coming.

On March 23, the Dirksen Senate Office Building was the scene of a coronation ceremony for Rev. Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative Washington Times newspaper and UPI wire service, who was given a bejeweled crown by Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill. Afterward, Moon told his bipartisan audience of Washington power players he would save everyone on Earth as he had saved the souls of Hitler and Stalin -- the murderous dictators had been born again through him, he said. In a vision, Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vouched for him, calling him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

To many observers, this bizarre scene would have looked like the apocalypse as depicted in "Left Behind" novels. Moon, 84, the benefactor of conservative foundations like the American Family Coalition -- who served time in the 1980s for tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice -- has views somewhere to the right of the Taliban's Mullah Omar. Moon preaches that gays are "dung-eating dogs," Jews brought on the Holocaust by betraying Jesus, and the U.S. Constitution should be scrapped in favor of a system he calls "Godism" -- with him in charge. The man crowned "King of Peace" by congressmen once said, according to sermons reprinted in his church's Unification News: "Suppose I were to hit you with the baseball bat to stop you, bloodying your ear and breaking a bone or two, yet still you insisted on doing more work for Father."

What, exactly, drew at least a dozen members of Congress to Moon's coronation? (By the Unification Church's estimate, 81 congressmen attended, although that number is probably high.) The event was the grand finale of Moon's coast-to-coast "tear down the cross" Moonification tour, intended to remove Christian crosses from almost 300 churches in poor neighborhoods -- the idea being that the cross was an obstacle to uniting religions under Moon. Yet the Dirksen ceremony was sold as a celebration of world peace. According to a cheery promotional video released by Moon's International and Interreligious Federation for World Peace, the ceremony marked the dawn of "the era of the Eternal Peace Kingdom, one global family under God." Moon's coronation also cured God's pain, the announcer explains.

By all accounts, most of the congressmen in attendance didn't expect a coronation. Instead, they thought they were heading to an awards dinner honoring activists from their home states as "Ambassadors for Peace." A flier for the event claimed an impressive who's-who of organizers, including Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland and Charlie Black, a top Republican strategist. Democrats were named, too, like Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee, who, incidentally, claims to have not even heard of the event.

And then there was Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., the only congressman who has publicly expressed pride in the crowning ceremony, who praised Moon for bringing religious leaders together in his Ambassadors for Peace tours to Jerusalem and beyond. Davis, it was revealed this week in the Chicago Reader, took money from Moon-organized fundraisers, who also gave to a charity of his choice. Davis told an Anglican magazine that Moon's remarks were "similar to a baseball team owner telling team members that 'we are the greatest team on earth'" to get them fired up.

At the time, the surreal event went uncovered by the Washington press corps, save for Moon's own Washington Times, which ran a brief description of the festivities. The story is getting some traction only now, after it was recently reported in the online magazine The Gadflyer. But what transpired at Dirksen two months ago remains a mystery to most Americans -- and those constituents of congressmen who attended Moon's crowning.

The crowning ritual indeed began as a somewhat normal awards ceremony. Ribbons that looked like Olympic gold medals were given to Rep. Bartlett and others. But then it took an odd turn. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., whose office maintained he did not attend the event until I provided photographs of him there -- spoke beside a photograph of himself pinning an American flag on Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy, back when President Bush was praising him for abandoning WMD programs and before he was suspected of trying to kill the leader of Saudi Arabia.

Then, after Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., gave a speech praising one of Moon's Ambassadors for Peace, the civil rights veteran Rev. Walter Fauntroy, an unnamed Lubovitch rabbi took the stage declaring: "I have never seen this miracle where Jews, Christians and Muslims come together for peace!" Then Moon's cleric Chung Kwak took the mic. Before his days as the commander of the UPI wire service, Kwak, Moon said in a 1997 speech, was authorized to whomp on Unification Church members who slacked off. "Particularly those who are sleeping and hiding, Reverend Kwak's baseball bat will fall upon you at any time," Moon said. Now Kwak was standing in a Senate office building declaring Moon the king of the "second and third Israel."

Moon has also made inroads in the Bush administration, as Salon reported last September, with plum appointments for former or present Moon VIPs, and almost half a million dollars in abstinence-only grants supporting Moon's anti-sex crusade. To teach teens that "free sex" is revolting, they're asked by Moon's followers to drink other people's spit out of a cup, and then consider how much more vigilant you must be when sharing other body fluids.

While Moon once focused his energies on anti-Communism, making him popular among Republicans in the Reagan era -- his organization gave the first $100,000 to Oliver North's Nicaraguan Freedom Fund -- he has now shifted gears, aiming left. He's planning a "Peace United Nations" entwining religions instead of countries and is trying to make friends in the Congressional Black Caucus, like Rep. Davis. No congressman, on the right or left, has publicly denounced Moon for his momentous speeches describing his "peace kingdom" as a place where "gays will be eliminated" in a "purge on God's orders" he says will be like Stalin's. And many are surprisingly comfortable around a guy known for over-the-top speeches about the holy "love organ of life" and its various fluids. In a 1994 speech, he asked: "Do you like the smell of your husband's semen? Answer to Father. Does it smell good or bad? You may not like the smell of your wife's stool, but do you smell your own? Why don't you smell your own but you smell your wife's? Because you are not totally one."

But if Moon pulled off his greatest trick on Mar. 23, fooling some unsuspecting congressmen into attending his coronation, it's not as if his stunt was new -- for more than 25 years, Moon has sought to surround himself with powerful people to gain credibility and legitimacy, including presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. If the congressmen had simply run "Ambassadors for Peace" through the Google search engine, they would have discovered the group was tied to Moon and his grand plans for the future of Christianity -- plans to "reconcile" religions by tearing the Christian cross off church walls and persuading Jews to sign apologies for giving Jesus over to the Romans.

Weldon, for one, had a long time to do that Google search. As far back as June 19, 2003, he's listed in a speech by Rep. Danny K. Davis on the floor of the House of Representatives honoring Moon: "Many of my colleagues will join me and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), co-chair, in giving tribute to some of the outstanding Americans from our districts," said Davis. "We are grateful to the founders of Ambassadors for Peace, the Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung [Moon], for promoting the vision of world peace, and we commend them for their work."

As for Moon's vision of world peace, there are widespread reports, even acknowledged within Moon's church, of allegations that in 1989 he allowed brutal inquisitions to take place. The inquisitor, a man Moon apparently believed was the reincarnation of his son, was allegedly encouraged to tie people to radiators and beat them. As a result, Moon's trusted lieutenant, Bo Hi Pak, was said to have suffered minor brain damage. Wrote his daughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, in her tell-all book: "Sun Myung Moon seemed to take pleasure in the reports that filtered back to East Garden of the beatings being administered by the Black Heung Jin. He would laugh raucously if someone out of favor had been dealt an especially hard blow." Members of Congress may want to do their homework before they crown their next King of Peace.

John Gorenfeld
Salon.com
Jun21.2004

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/moon-salon.html

The Relationship Between The Bush Family and Rev. Sun Myung Moon

(1) Frederick Clarkson (Eternal Hostility, Common Courage Press, 1997) reports that Moon has stated his goal is the "subjugation of the American government and population." (Clarkson's source: John Judis, "Rev. Moon's Rising Political Influence: His Empire Is Spending Big Money To Try To Win Favor With Conservatives," U. S. News and World Report, March 27, 1989.)

(2) According to the same U. S. News article, Moon also said, "History will make the position of Rev. Moon clear," and that "his enemies, the American people and government will bow down before him."

(3) Clarkson reports that Moon has also said, "The entire world is our goal . . . Absolute obedience to the Father [Moon]-that one thing will bring certain victory . . . People herein America have to recognize the ability and power of Reverend Moon." (Excerpt from New Hope News, November 25, 1974, Reprinted in Frederick Miller's "Confusion at the Fronts, Part three," True Light Educational Ministry, 1996.)

(4) On May 1, 1997, Moon told a group of followers that "the country that represents Satan's harvest is America." (Unification News, June 1997.)

(5) In the 1970s, Moon was investigated by a congressional committee headed by then-U. S. Representative Donald Fraser (D-MN). Robert Boettcher was staff director of the Fraser committee. Boettcher's interviews with former Moonies revealed that Moon was "appalled" by American individualism and considered moving to Germany"where people were trained in totalism." (Robert Boettcher, "Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park and the Korean Scandal," Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980)

(6) Boettcher writes that according to former Unification church members, Moon's program to "instill discipline" included showing "Nazi films on organizing Hitler Youth."

George H. W. Bush is one of the most politically powerful defenders of Moon and the WashingtonTimes.

According to a Reuters report, ("Bush Praises Moon as 'Man of Vision,'" November 25, 1996) when Moon held a banquet in Buenos Aires celebrating his new "Spanish-language newspaper for the whole of Latin America," his guest at the event, George H. W. Bush, praised Moon's "respect for editorial independence."

Bush's speech "was full of praise" for Moon's Washington Times, according to Reuters. The report also says Bush described Moon as "the man with the vision." Reuters said Bush later traveled with Moon to neighboring Uruguay"to help him inaugurate a seminary in the capital, Montevideo. to train 4,200 young Japanese women to spread the word of his Church of Unification across Latin America."

"I want to salute Reverend Moon who is the founder of the WashingtonTimes and of the new paper here," Bush said. According to Reuters, the Washington Postreported that Bush was paid $100,000 for his Buenos Aires appearance.

Journalist Robert Parry reported in Consortium News ("Dark Side of Rev. Moon: Buying the Right") that part of Moon's strategy for gaining political influence is to approach conservative leaders when they need money. "Moon quietly infuses money and gains the leader's gratitude," writes Parry.

In order to gain power, Moon has also aligned himself with organizations further to the right than the New Right Republicans, among them the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). The WACL, according to Frederick Clarkson, is "an international alliance of conservative, fascist and Nazi groups, governments and individuals."

The head of the Unification Church in Japan was a member of the WACL board of directors. Clarkson says "the Japanese section of WACL, Shokyo Rengo, was founded in 1968 as an alliance between top Unification Church officials and leaders of the Yakuza (Japanese organized crime), notably Yoshio Kodama."

Clarkson writes that "under the leadership of retired U. S. Army General John K. Singlaub," WACL helped provide money and weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras "particularly after Congress cut off CIA-channeled funding to the Contras in 1984." Moon's front group CAUSA was one of the first groups to give the Contras "humanitarian aid." (Clarkson's source: Jon Lee Anderson and Scott Anderson, "Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis and Latin American Death Squads have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League," Dodd, Mead and Company, 1986.)

Moon's decades of courting influential American leaders in order to gain political power in this country have been fruitful. Reporter Joe Conason said that at a Washington gathering celebrating the George W. Bush inauguration, at a "prayer luncheon" held in the Hyatt hotel ballroom on Capitol Hill on 1/19/01, Moon received an award for his "work in support of traditional family values." The featured speaker was John Ashcroft. (Conason, The New York Observer, February 12, 2001.)Tuesday ( 2/20/01), a C-Span moderator said Rev. Moon plans to promote his abstinence program in schools with the help of George W. Bush's Faith-Based Initiative program. How might that work? Frederick Clarkson points out that Moon has been trying to get his tentacles into U. S.schools to promote his rightwing views for many years.

The World Medical Health Foundation (WMHF) is Moon Front group. WMHF chief, Dr. William Bergman, once-director of Moon's Unification church, produced a slide program for schools called "The Private Plague: AIDS, Sexually Transmitted Diseases & a Strategy for our Youth at Risk." Bergman's program teaches that these diseases have roots in the "civil rights movement" which allegedly led to "moral relativism." (Clarkson's source: The Private Plague slide program manual, p. 23.)

Will Bush's Faith-Based Initiative program assist Moon in his efforts to teach your children that the civil rights movement led to moral relativism, which then led to sexually transmitted diseases?

Some Republicans have accepted Moon as part of their "family values" movement. For the Religious Right, the family values issue means support for the traditional nuclear family. However, Moon teaches recruits to abandon their biological families and to accept Moon and his wife as their "True Parents" and the UnificationChurch as their "True Family."

Clarkson says Moon has often used George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush as a "warm-up act" at his "family values" rallies. When Bush gave a series of speeches at events sponsored by Moon's wife's organization, the World Federation for World Peace (WFWP), he claimed he did not know Moon was involved. Instead, Bush praised the WFWP for its "great emphasis on family."

Bush also said, "Until I see something about the Women's Federation that troubles me, I will continue to encourage them." (Clarkson's sources: Peter McGill et al, "Ed Schreyer and the Moonies, Maclean's, October 23, 1995; Andrew Pollock, "Bush Host in Japan Tied to Rev. Moon," The New York Times, September 4, 1995.)
Here are a few items that might discourage Bush from supporting Moon's kind of family values. Robert Boettcher's investigation for the Fraser committee revealed that Moon teaches recruits that Satan works through their biological parents, and that they must accept their True Parents, Rev. Moon and his wife, and reject their "flesh" parents.

A central tenet taught to Moon recruits is "Heavenly Deception." Recruits, says Botettcher, are told the "non-Moon world is evil. It must be lied to so it can help Moon take over. Then it can become good under Moon's control." According to Boettcher, "Moon teaches that lying is necessary when one is doing God's work, whether selling flowers in the street or testifying under oath."

Boettcher reports that an aspect of another Moon tenet, the Divine Principle, is the idea that Jesus' love was weak and that he failed as a leader, because he was unable to motivate his disciples to kill for him or to die in his place. Moon claims he is taking up where Jesus left off, and, says Boettcher, Moon "sees Christian churches as furthering Satan's cause by rejecting him [Moon]."

The Moon story is about more than a megalomaniacal tyrant and his isolated followers. It is also about the fact that since George W. Bush took power, Moon benefits from Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives program. Moon also gains prestige and political influence when he is honored by Bush supporters, such as John Ashcroft and others who attended the January 19 "prayer luncheon."

Thanks to the Bush family and their imposed "dynasty," today Moon has more power to undermine American democracy and individualism. He has more power to work to "subjugate the American government and population." He has more power to try to make "his enemies, the American people and government bow down before him."

Thanks to his association with Bush, Moon now has more power to encourage "people here in America recognize the ability and power of Reverend Moon." He has more power to convince people that "the country that represents Satan's harvest is America." He has more power to lure recruits and have them "trained in totalism" and to "instill discipline" by showing his trainers "Nazi films on organizing Hitler Youth."

Moon has been able to infiltrate and gain a power base in the U. S.primarily because of one thing: secrecy. His history includes hiding his real intentions behind front groups and deceptive "advertising," whether hawking for donations, luring unsuspecting recruits or currying favor with politicians.

(Excerpts)

Carla Binion
Online Journal
Feb22.2001