Sun Myung Moon dies at 92; Washington Times owner led the Unification Church

Washington Post ^ | 09/02/2012 | By Emma Brown

[SeekAndFind]

Sun Myung Moon, a self-professed messiah who claimed millions of religious followers in his Unification Church and sought to become a powerful voice in the American conservative movement through business interests that included the Washington Times, has died. He was 92.

The Washington Times reported that Mr. Moon died in South Korea early Monday morning (Sunday afternoon in Washington). Unification Church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeul told the Associated Press that Mr. Moon died at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong, northeast of Seoul. He had been under treatment for pneumonia.

Mr. Moon, the son of Korean farmers, created a sprawling empire at the intersection of religion and business and became one of the world’s most enigmatic and polarizing public figures.

His stated ambition was to rule the world and replace Christianity with his own faith, which blended elements of Christianity, Confucianism and Korean folk religions. A leading symbol of the 1970s cult wars in America, he attracted a great deal of attention and ridicule for holding mass weddings for Unificationist couples whom he had paired, often without the prospective partners ever having met.

But his success in business and involvement in American politics “demanded that people who could care less about his peculiar doctrinal views pay attention to him,” said James Beverley, a professor at Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto who has studied Mr. Moon’s church since the late 1970s.

As a young man, Mr. Moon was twice jailed in the 1940s when his sermonizing attracted the attention of authorities in what is now North Korea. Emerging as a staunch anti-communist, he built the foundations of what became a global business network with labor provided by his devotees.

He made his most strident inroads into American culture in the 1970s.

[Larry Lucido]

They also owned the News World, its predecessor.

[BigCinBigD]

He's been ill ever since Neil Armstrong stepped on him.

[fella]

A false profit? or prophet? Kind of funny how the Bible choose those two words in English to describe these types of people so well.

[2111USMC]

The thing I’ll remember most about him is his follower Moonies asking for donations and handing out flowers in airports back in the 70s.

[mikrofon]

He’ll find himself in deep kimchi...

(w/o the apostrophe)

[2111USMC]

LOL!

(Of course, back in the 70s I was traveling primarily in dress uniform. The Moonies seemed to shy away from Marines.)

[katana]

I was in college at the student union and noticed a young Asian female sitting at a nearby table whose head was occasionally dropping to the table like when one is completely fatigued and haven't slept in days. I asked her if she was OK and she said she was and asked me "do you believe in God?". I answered in the affirmative and she then she said she really was very tired and asked me if I would mind seeing to her to her house near campus where she was living with some "friends". So I did and as soon as we walked in it was like was like stepping into a nest of (very sleepy and over tired) sad faced vampires. I left in rather a hurry after a couple minutes.

It was only later on that I read about sleep deprivation and slave conditions being one of the main ways the Moonies kept their people under total control. I can't really comprehend how anyone could become ensnared in a cult. The feeling in that house was palpably evil (I had the same sense and same reaction when I got dragged by a friend to a TM meeting) but it is frighteningly common and the methodology they all use very similar.

[katana]

Should have mentioned ... that happened around 1973, when the “Moonies” were just entering their heyday.

[Squantos]

Just glad you didn’t post a pic of “some young moon”.... I still have that poster btw.....

[Carriage Hill]

What’s going to happen to his 200 gold-plated Rolls-Royces?

[lightman]

What’s going to happen to his 200 gold-plated Rolls-Royces?

If he ties to take it with him it will be melted for scrap where he's headed.

[jobim]

Very interesting. My brush with the Moonies was February 1977
in San Francisco. I was headed to Taiwan to study Mandarin,
and had an afternoon to kill in SF before my plane left. I was
walking and a nice-looking couple came up to me and struck up a conversation.
They invited me to a meal at a big Victorian house nearby with "some friends."
We first gathered in a prayer circle. Then when folks began getting food,
a person came up to me and said someone wanted to see me in another room.
They already knew I was on my way to Taiwan to study Chinese from my
previous conversation.
In this room, obviously with the leader of this household, he asked pointed questions about
why I was going to Taiwan, and how I was financing my trip. He and the others emphatically asked me to join them
up in Northern California on a farm they owned. It was about at this point I realized it to be a cult,
although I didn't know it was the Moonies. But for me the jig was up,
and much amused, I thanked them all for their hospitality and left. It gave me a clear insight
into their methods of recruitment.

[Carriage Hill]

IIRC, the “golden calf idol” didn’t work out so well for those folks who were traveling with Moses, either. That con-man crook has a lot to answer for.

[polkajello]

He’s treading lava in the Lake of Fire now.

[mkjessup]

If they weren’t obviously Koreans, I might have confused those photos from the crowning ceremony with the GOP convention.

Go screw yourself troll.

[DanMiller]

He also did at least some good. He replaced the moribund Washington Star with the Washington Times, now the principal competitor with the Washington Toast Post. The Times is now one of the few major conservative newspapers in the United States.

[Carriage Hill]

Good catch, DM. I’d forgotten all about that. I guess one in the “Plus Column” is better than nothing at all.