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(This article originally appeared in the April 19, 1985, issue of Christianity Today.)

The imprisoned Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church continue to crusade for a place of honor in America. The organization's latest public relations effort consists of a package that was mailed to some 300,000 pastors and other Christian leaders across the country. The package contains three videotapes, two books, a booklet, a pamphlet, and two letters from Mose Durst, president of the Unification Church of America.

"It is not the intent of the Unification movement to make you change your beliefs or to proselytize your members," Durst writes in one of the letters. "We hope this material will be helpful in sermon preparation, and in other areas of your ministry."

Joy Garratt, the organization's public affairs director, said the mass mailing is an attempt to answer the "thousands of requests for information about our faith" received since Moon's imprisonment last summer. He is serving an 18-month sentence for income tax evasion. Said Garratt: "[The mailing is] far less expensive than buying national television time and doing a series of shows."

It is estimated that the Unification Church spent from $4.5 million to $10 million on the mailing, but that expense won't "break the bank," said David Bromley, chairman of the sociology department at Virginia Commonwealth University. Bromley estimates that Moon's organization has withstood $100-million-a-year losses during the 1980s. His study of the group's business ventures will be published this fall in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Included in the recent mass mailing are two books, God's Warning to the World and Divine Principle. (In some packages, Divine Principle was replaced by Outline of the Principle Level 4.) Divine Principle is Moon's key "theological" work asserting that Christ, in his imminent second coming, will be a Korean.

Tyler Hendricks, adjunct professor of church history at Moon's Unification Theological Seminary in Barrytown, New York, edited God's Warning to the World. He said the book "summarizes his [Moon's] basic teachings about Christianity, Jesus, the church—things that would be relevant to Christian ministers."

Despite his emphasis on Christian unity, Moon insists in the book that "a new, universal religion" must be established. "Jesus' will and God's will have been very much misrepresented for 2,000 years. The churches have fallen short of the will of God. Therefore, in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, a new Christianity must emerge." Moon speaks of various "revelations to me from God," and at one point says, "I spoke with Jesus in the spirit world."

Hendricks acknowledged that some of Moon's teachings, such as an account of Eve having sexual relations with Satan, "are not easily deducible from the Bible." However, he said, "Rev. Moon does claim and we believe that he is a bearer of new revelations … [that are] consistent with the Bible."

The mailing also contains six hours of videotaped leaching based on Moon's Divine Principle. The speaker on the tapes is Tom McDevitt, leader of the Unification Church's five-state region based in Washington, D.C. One minister who screened the tapes described McDevitt as "a very unimaginative speaker."

In addition to the mailing, McDevitt said, the Unification Church is asking its members to visit pastors of all denominations. In a New Year's Day message, Moon exhorted each of his followers to try to befriend 120 ministers during 1985.

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