88 - Dialogue with the Moonies

Dialogue with the Moonies
By Rodney Sawatsky

MOONIES are incurably optimistic, and believe it or not, professors are considered to be a major vehicle in the restoration, not only of America, but of God's entire creation-hence the science conferences sponsored by the Unification Church, and our invitation to the Unification Seminary near Barrytown, New York.

Our small group of theology and religion profs went to listen and learn, and it proved to be a most interesting experience. All the fundamental questions of Christian theology, of the sociology of religion, and of historical Christianity passed before us in a matter of two days, and again when we returned some months later. We watched a new religion in the making-a religion new in its synthesis, but old in its constituent parts, old in its internal problems, and old in its experience of hostility.

There we sat with a dozen bright young men and women, graduates of America's finest colleges, now advocates of the Divine Principle. Only a minority of their teachers are Unification devotees; a Jew teaches Old Testament, a Christian instructs in church history and a Presbyterian lectures in theology, and so on. Typical sectarian fears of the outsider are not found among Moonies; truth is one or at least must become one, and understanding can be delivered even by the uninitiated. They had been taught well; they had learned well.

We pressed the relevant questions-we thought. Answers came bubbling forth, for here was not the dryness of generations of déja vu known by every religion teacher. Here was the excitement and joy of new found faith. Naiveté and avoidance greeted some queries, but more typically well-formulated answers, re-formulated questions, or the admissions of "we don't know" followed.

If these young people are brainwashed, then the term means no more, no less than converted. They are reborn men and women, who in leaving behind their old selves may indeed be radically different according to some psychiatric definitions. Quite possibly father and mother will be set aside in seeking first the kingdom, but then revivalist America was at one time, if not today, flooded with such so-called brainwashing. True, intense community pressure, as it is undoubtedly known at this seminary and at other Unification centers, induces commitments and limits nonconformity. But how is this different from a Benedictine monastery, the Oneida community, the Hutterites, and a Youth for Christ weekend retreat? Robert Enroth, in Youth Brainwashing and the Extremist Cults (Zondervan, 1977), unfortunately

Rodney Sawatsky is a Mennonite who teaches North American religious history at Conrad Grebel College, University of Waterloo. He was a member of a group of professors of religion who recently visited the Unification Seminary near Barrytown, New York, and he reports here on his reaction to the latest American religion and its adherents.

89 - Dialogue with the Moonies

lumps most new religions together and needs to reread his church history to amend his tendency to define brainwashing and the pressure cooker atmosphere of intentional communities as coterminous. Or, if his reading is right, just possibly the question of our age is "what must I do to be brainwashed?"

The ancient question asked by the rich young ruler is answered in equally demanding terms by the Unification Church. Full-time commitment to the movement including readiness to do fund raising; striving for perfection, defined as the heart of God, is the mark of faithfulness. The burden is heavy but the payoff is sure.

Here we get back to Moonie optimism. Pre-World War I liberal postmillennial confidence that the Kingdom will come imminently on earth lives on in Unification despite all the Christian realists to the contrary. The millennium will arrive with the restoration of the perfection lost in Eden-the perfect relationship between God, mother and father, and children. Sexual intercourse between Eve and the serpent broke that four position foundation; Christ won the victory for spiritual rebirth but physical restoration awaits indemnity; a Third Adam with his Eve attain perfection and thus parent perfect progeny. A new people will thus be born and the Kingdom will be on the make.

Our Unification friends look to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his wife as eschatological vanguards. Are they prophets, messiahs, the Second Coming, the Third Adam? Possibly all of these, say the devotees. Moon sees himself as a kairos figure but the exact nature of his calling seems to depend on his disciples. Even as they say God needs humanity to restore all things and thus become fully God, so too Moon is what his disciples reveal him to be.

Why trust Rev. Moon's dreams and visions of the new age and his role in it, we ask? Most converts actually have had minimal contact with him. Frederick Sontag (Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church, Abingdon, 1977) in his interviews with Moon appears to have found a pleasant but not an overwhelming personality. Charisma, as traditionally understood, seems hardly applicable here. Rather, Moon provides a model. He suffered valiantly, he knows confidently, he prays assuredly, he lives lovingly, say his followers. The Divine Principle is not an unrealizable ideal; it is incarnate in a man, it lives, it is imitable. His truth is experienced to be their truth. His explanation of the universe becomes their understanding of themselves and the world in which they live.

The full name of this movement, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, captures the contours of the restored order. The spiritual and material, the physical and supernatural, the sciences and humanities, the subject and object, male and female, all religions and all denominations, all the dualities of the created universe must be restored to their essential unity under God. To achieve these ends Unification seeks to be a catalyst. It is not interested in becoming another sect but acts as a movement which can disappear organizationally as its goals are attained. It is a success

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oriented movement, not given to idealizing suffering or deaths on crosses, rather, it seeks a hearing through economic and political power. While the Vatican and national councils of churches may use their powers in quiet diplomacy, Moon frankly admits that only those with this world's power are heard by the worldly powerful. And the powerful must hear, for the sacred/secular dichotomy is false; all must be restored.

The detractors of Unification politics need to watch lest they criticize with a double standard. The issue seems ultimately not to be Moon's blatant triumphalism but the geography of his quest to win friends and influence nations. South Korea, the United States, indeed the entire "democratic" world is the modern day Abel force which is honorable to God and which must rout, preferably by moral suasion, the Cain forces of communism. Cold war prejudices, read as prophetic givens, prevail in Unification circles. Those chastized by Vietnam may smart under what seems to be a return to "the best and the brightest," but Moonies see inevitable vindication for a sorry defeat. To the former, his program spells reactionary politics cloaked in religion; to the latter he offers a religion untainted by the Satanic delusions of leftist secularism.

For the young devotee, questions about Moon's millennialism, messianism, and militant anticommunism are secondary to the personal meaning and belonging provided by the movement. Purpose comes above all else in the assurance of perfection, if the striving is right. In particular, perfect marriages are attainable by allowing Moon to select marriage partners and by deferring consummation until a certain perfection is attained several years after the marriage sacrament is performed by the Rev. and Mrs. Moon, the first parents. Sex outside of these perfecting relationships is sin, salvation comes through a perfected sexuality.

If any one common experience characterized our Moonie hosts prior to joining the group, it was some bad experience with romantic love, and its offspring, modern marriage. For the initiated Unification offers an alternative, a new purpose for marriage and the family. In anticipation of those marriages, belonging comes through disciplined communal living which moulds their lives in a way which is ultimately to bear the fruit of God-like children. The American passion to save the family has its greatest advocate in Unification.

The thought and practice of this movement are still evolving. It is still very new; the charisma has not been routinized, structures lack precision, strategies change regularly. It is a most creative new religion, as is evidenced especially in the Divine Principle, which stands out strongly as a conversation partner with most other theological variants. Change in Unification is inevitable, due to mistakes, because of sociological forces, and in response to new insights. Indications suggest that the Moonies anticipate change, and they welcome counsel to that end even from those who do not bow to its way.

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Indeed, we found that communication, dialogue if you wish, is something Unification members anticipate with great enthusiasm. Isn't this the better way to respond to a new religion, rather than bringing out all the old techniques of the Inquisition under modern guises like deprogramming? Or is the more orthodox Christian church too insecure to listen before reacting in hostility? The process of conversation may well reintroduce the category of heresy as functional in contemporary Christian theology, and it may well force greater clarity on critical issues in modern Christian thought. Conversation with Unification will possibly reconfirm traditional Christianity in its understandings of human nature and human destiny and reinvigorate the church in its proclamation of the Gospel. If so, Rev. Moon may indeed be a providential personage, maybe not exactly as he foresaw it, but at any rate, as God would have it!