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Hundreds of World Peace and Unification Sanctuary church members get their guns blessed in Pennsylvania. Hundreds of couples packed a World Peace and Unification Sanctuary church in Pennsylvania to bless their weapons on Wednesday The church believes the gun is the "rod of iron" cited in the Book of Revelation A woman wears a crown of bullets in the ceremony in the rural Pocono Mountains Guns were blessed with holy water during the event, scheduled before 17 people were shot dead in a Florida school The church believes the Florida shooting could have been avoided had teachers been armed Guns...

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...

GAPYEONG, South Korea (AP) -- Officials say the religious leader who founded the Unification Church and built it into a multibillion-dollar business empire has died in South Korea at age 92.

Gov. Jerry Brown tangled with a reporter from the conservative Washington Times newspaper after his meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Sunday. At one point Brown, who was defending his earlier tenure as governor and his efforts to bridge the state’s budget gap, asked the reporter: “Are you a Moonie?” The Washington Times was founded in 1982 by Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, whose followers were often referred to informally as Moonies. The Washington Times is a conservative paper, and Brown, after recognizing his interrogator, gave no ground. Brown’s spokesman Gil Duran joined...

Rev. Moon Marries Off Thousands of Followers Unification Church leader, 89, presides over another mass wedding The Rev. Sun Myung Moon has presided over numerous mass weddings over the years, including this one, attended by some 40,000, at Seoul's Olympic Stadium in 1992. ASAN, South Korea - Brides in white gowns and Japanese kimonos joined grooms in black suits and red ties Wednesday for the Unification Church's biggest mass wedding in a decade — a spectacle church officials say involves 40,000 people around the world. The "blessing ceremony" is the church's largest since 1999, and may well be the last...

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the controversial Unification Church, has been hurt as a helicopter he was in attempted an emergency landing in South Korea. The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the controversial Unification Church, has been hurt as a helicopter he was in attempted an emergency landing in South Korea. Moon, 88, was among several people on the aircraft when it made an emergency landing at Gapyeong, 25 miles east of Seoul. News agencies quoted officials as saying Rev Moon's injuries were slight. The casualties were taken to Cheongshim Hospital, which is owned by the Church,...

The founder of the controversial Unification Church, better known as the Moonies, has been hurt in a helicopter crash in South Korea, reports say. Rev Sun Myung Moon, 88, was among several people on the aircraft when it made an emergency landing at Gapyeong, 40km (25 miles) east of Seoul. News agencies quoted officials as saying Rev Moon's injuries were slight. The casualties were taken to Cheongshim Hospital, which is owned by the Church, Yonhap news agency reported. A police spokesman said that the helicopter had been carrying Rev Moon, his wife Han Hak-Ja, 11 relatives and three crew members...

The Washington Times will publicly celebrate its 25th anniversary at a gala event Thursday, but today the newspaper held a “family” celebration for its employees, with presentations by editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden and others. Today’s event featured an excellent new short film history of the newspaper that emphasized the values of freedom, family, faith and service that are being commemorated this week on the Culture Etc. page with profiles of the recipients of the Founding Spirit Awards. At today’s event, Tom McDevitt, president of The Times, did the math and reported that “America’s Newspaper” has now been in business for 13...

A Roman Catholic Archbishop from Zambia with a colorful history of rousing the Vatican and ties to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, will once again annoy his bosses this Sunday when he ordains three married men as priests at a church in West New York.   Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo returned to the United States this July to kick-start his movement, known as Married Priests Now. This weekend he will host a conference at a Sheraton hotel in Parsippany, convening as many as 600 married priests from around the world. On Sunday, Milingo will perform the ordinations at Trinity Reformed Church in...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Some 2,500 traditionally dressed brides from all over the world stood next to their blue-suited grooms in a packed stadium Saturday morning, as the Rev. Sun Myung Moon blessed their marriages, many of which he arranged himself. But singer Whitney Houston, who was to be a headliner at Moon's "Blessing '97" event, was a no-show, ... Promoters of the event released a statement saying Houston was "unable to perform due to a sudden illness." [...] Many other well-known people also canceled appearances they were to make ... after it became widely known the events were tied to...

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...

Sen. John W. Warner's office acknowledged late Tuesday that the Virginia Republican arranged for religious activists to use a Senate office building last March for a ceremony in which the Rev. Sun Myung Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons." Developing...

Senator's Office Says It Arranged Meeting Space Used for Rev. Moon Meeting Tue Jul 20 2004 21:15:58 ET The WASHINGTON POST's Charles Babington is set to report in Wednesday runs: Sen. John W. Warner's office acknowledged late Tuesday that the Virginia Republican arranged for religious activists to use a Senate office building last March for a ceremony in which the Rev. Sun Myung Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons." Developing...

More than a decade ago, the World Media Association, a front group for Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, invited me to speak in Seoul, South Korea, at a conference on the press. At the time, I was the 36-year-old editor of the Sacramento Union, the oldest daily newspaper west of the Mississippi – and already creating fits for the establishment U.S. media. I was cautious about going, because I had heard stories about Moon having declared himself the messiah. I was told by people inside the church that was simply a misinterpretation of his remarks. In Seoul, participants in...

The picture says it all. As part of his "Tear down the Cross/Who is Rev. Moon?" tour...leading up to his Dirksen Senate Office Building coronation on Mar. 23, 2004...the Rev. Sun Myung Moon asked ministers to remove the symbol of Christianity from church walls and take it out with the trash. The theme of the event: Trade Your Cross for a Crown. And it was a crown, of course, that Congressmen gave Rev. Moon on March 23 on federal property, as I discussed on Joe Farah's WorldNetDaily radio.

When the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his wife were crowned the "King and Queen of Peace" on March 23\super \nosupersub -- inside the Dirksen Senate Office Building with Members of Congress looking on -- few news outlets took notice. But in the months since Moon's March 23\super rd\nosupersub "coronation" as Messiah, a growing number of people are questioning the appropriateness of allowing a "coronation" to take place inside a government building. At a press conference on Wednesday, Jewish, Muslim and Christian representatives from the organization that sponsored Moon's coronation unapologetically defended the ceremony, its location, and Moon's Messiah declaration....

More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in which Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons." At the March 23 ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon's head. The Korean-born businessman and religious leader then delivered a long speech saying he was "sent to Earth . . . to save the world's six billion people. . ....

Dressed in a floor-length cape, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was dubbed the king of peace at a coronation ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building attended by several members of Congress. Moon is the founder of the Unification Church – currently known as The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. According to columnist Bill Berkowitz, on March 23 Moon presided over the event during which he presented the "Crown of Peace" award to a number of honored guests. Several U.S. members of Congress – Democrats Sen. Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Rep. Danny K. Davis of Illinois, Rep. Sanford...

June 21, 2004 | 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....

Moon Over Washington Why are some of the capital’s most influential power players hanging out with a bizarre Korean billionaire who claims to be the Messiah? by John Gorenfeld, Contributor 6.09.04 Should Americans be concerned that on March 23rd a bipartisan group of Congressmen attended a coronation at which a billionaire, pro-theocracy newspaper owner was declared to be the Messiah – with royal robes, a crown, the works? Or that this imperial ceremony took place not in a makeshift basement church or a backwoods campsite, but in a Senate office building? The Washington Post didn't think so. For a moment...