The Moonies Cross Wits with Cult-Watching Critics

It was something like a summit meeting. At their World Mission Center in New York City last month, Unification Church seminarians met the “enemy”: evangelicals who have written extensive critiques of Sun Myung Moon and his 25-year-old movement.

No hostility was expressed. The writers and seminarians cordially discussed agreed-upon topics in the Skyline Room of what was formerly the New Yorker Hotel—far removed from the hectic streets of Manhattan 39 floors below.

What emerged from the weekend discussions, however, was some significant information for the writers about the Unification Church. Some of the material, they said, had never been published, or acknowledged by as authoritative a Unification leader as the American church president, Neil Salonen, who attended.

Conference dialogue reflected much on the future of the movement; its theology, said UC public affairs director Kathie Lowery, now is in a state of “germination.” While that theology increasingly uses “Christian” terminology, asserted one evangelical, it remains as “unchristian as ever.”

Unification seminarians (several said they don’t mind being called Moonies) have been inviting evangelicals to so-called dialogues for more than a year. The first was held at the Barrytown, New York, campus last summer (August 18, 1978, issue, p. 40), followed by another in October. Conferences have been conducted subsequently with British, Wesleyan-Arminian, and charismatic evangelicals.

But this conference was more “sensitive,” said Pat Zulkosky, student coordinator for evangelical conferences at the seminary, and negotiations for it lasted over an eight-month period.

James Bjornstad, professor at Northeastern Bible College and author of The Moon Is Not the Son, served as spokesman during the planning for the writers who attended: Brooks Alexander, director of Spiritual Counterfeits Project in Berkeley, California; Jerry Yamamoto, also of the Spiritual Counterfeits and author of The Puppet Master; and Ron Enroth, Westmont College sociologist and author of Youth, Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults. (Later additions were Irving Hexham, Regent College professor, and this reporter, who served primarily as an observer.)

“I came to New York to ask some questions and get some answers [about the cult],” explained Bjornstad. He said the evangelicals wanted those answers from someone with the authority “to speak for the church.” They requested that Moon, or at least international president Bo Hi Pak, attend. They also asked that the conference be held on “neutral” ground, rather than at the seminary.

Assisting Zulkosky during the negotiations was evangelical trend watcher Richard Quebedeaux. As convener for the last six dialogues, Quebedeaux has helped decide the format and which evangelicals to invite. Quebedeaux says evangelicals have criticized him for this role, which he says brings him a $600 monthly stipend from the seminary; but he feels that apologies from him aren’t necessary.

“I don’t agree with Unification theology at all,” said Quebedeaux in a telephone interview. (He recently finished a favorable book about Campus Crusade President Bill Bright.) But he said he likes Moonies as persons, and their openness to theological discussion. The dialogues encourage mutual understanding, says Quebedeaux. He believes the Moonies have been unfairly and inaccurately represented, to some extent, by the news media. (He plans to teach a course at the seminary later this year in the history of evangelical Christianity.)

Quebedeaux, like church historian and dialogue moderator Rodney Sawatsky, of Conrad Grebel (Mennonite) College in Waterloo, Ontario, anticipates one theological benefit from the Moonie-evangelical dialogues: that Unification doctrine, now in a state of flux, might be moved closer to orthodox Christianity.

Sawatsky, a church historian who prefers to be called “orthodox” rather than “evangelical,” commented, “I expect that few Moonies will be converted to my own position, but the movement as a whole may become slightly more orthodox.” He added, “I know that I’m being used by the Unification Church, so I ask myself to what extent is my involvement legitimate?”

Conference details still were being finalized just prior to its start. The evangelicals agreed to meet at Unification headquarters in New York as a compromise. And they accepted Salonen as the representative of Unification leadership, after being told that Moon and Pak weren’t available. (Moon was fishing in the Hudson River, next to the seminary, on the eve of the conference.)

Attending with Salonen, 36, Unification Church in America president since 1972, and public affairs director Lowery, were eight Moonie seminarians—representative of the “intellectual cream” of the church, said Salonen. Several have already graduated from the 100-student school’s two-year program and are engaged in doctoral work at such schools as Yale and Harvard. Also included was seminary professor Warren Lewis, a non-Unification member with a Church of Christ background; Lewis says he’s at Barrytown because “the Moonies provided me a place to teach Christian thought.”

The evangelical writers arrived on a Thursday, and spent the night at a Kingston, New York, hotel (in keeping with their neutral territory policy). The next morning, a driver, who said he had been Moon’s personal chauffeur for several years, took them to the seminary. After preliminary introductions, a brief tour and lunch in the school cafeteria, the entire group traveled three hours by car to New York, where serious discussions began that evening.

The seminary students still were excited about the “matching” (engagement) ceremony conducted by Moon at the New Yorker over Mother’s Day weekend. Moon “matched” (paired off for future marriage) over 700 couples—many of whom had never met prior to the ceremony. Several seminarians proudly showed pictures of their future spouses, saying Moon had known just the right “match” for them.

After the engagement ceremony, Moon administered his “holy wine” to the couples, which signified their release from original sin. All persons, living or dead, must be matched to achieve full salvation, according to Unification doctrine. That would include Christ, said Salonen, who said Christ has already been matched with a young woman now living in Korea. Salonen said it is his personal belief that several drops of Moon’s blood were in the wine used at the first engagement rite in 1960: the original wine has been preserved for use at all future rites, being multiplied through dilution, said Salonen.

At the start of the conference, the Moonies and evangelicals agreed to discuss topics including: Christology, deprogramming, Moonie fund raising, and Moon’s role in the church. The dialogues are important to the Unificationists, Lowery said, since there “are many issues of misunderstanding” between Unificationists and evangelicals.

(The Unification Church goal, as stated at the conference, is “unification of world religions on the basis of the Judeo-Christian tradition.” The recent Moonie-evangelical dialogues and other Moonie interfaith efforts reflect that goal. The church already has tried to obtain, and been denied, membership in the New York City Council of Churches. Young Oon Kim, seminary professor and one of the church’s top theologians, wrote in her Unification Principle and Christian Thought that she hoped dialogue between the Unification Church and “various Christian denominations” will begin.)

The Moonies made it clear during the dialogue that they believe themselves “Christians.” They were unhappy when an evangelical once used the term Christian to refer only to the writers.

But the evangelicals frequently said that Unification theology falls outside their definition of Christianity. The seminarians indicated beliefs that: Christ is not fully God, that Christ did not fulfill his mission, being able to provide only spiritual salvation; that a Lord of the Second Advent (possibly Moon) will complete the salvation process and usher in God’s earthly kingdom; and that all persons eventually will obtain salvation—even Satan.

The Moonies said that they do on occasion pray to spirits, and that Moon and his wife (the True Parents) are prayer intercessors and frequently appear to Unificationists in dreams. When asked, Salonen acknowledged that Moon consulted with medium Arthur Ford some years ago; but Salonen asserted that spiritism is minor to Moonie theology.

Salonen, who said he “may be one of the Americans who knows Moon best,” also told the evangelicals:

• The controversial 120-day training manual was issued by Ken Sudo, now a New York Unification leader, and was not authorized by the church. “I wouldn’t stand behind it … not any of it,” he said; he detects doctrinal errors in this manual, which cult authorities often say embodies the concepts of “heavenly deception” and Moon as Messiah.

• The Unification Church had a $23 million income last year—90 percent from street fund raising and the rest from various business enterprises. (Lowery refuted statements by defected church member and deprogrammer Allen Tate Wood, who, in a recent New York Post interview, claimed that annual street solicitations exceed $219 million.)

• Over 400 Moonies have gone through deprogramming, and “a little more than half of them have come back [to Unification].”

Of particular interest to the evangelicals were comments about the changing Unification theology and proposed revisions of Divine Principle, Moon’s compiled teachings, which one seminarian stated are “essential” for understanding Scripture.

Salonen said the English version of Divine Principle is being revised. He said Moon wants to write “a definitive version of the Divine Principle” in Korean after he ends his 21-year public ministry in 1981. Salonen said Moon is thinking of extending that time period by two years, however. Divine Principle is not church canon or equal with Scripture “as it is currently written,” said Salonen.

Quebedeaux noted, in a telephone interview, that the Unification Church seminarians—as in any religious group—are about “five years ahead” of the rest of their church. He said the seminarians are more liberal and less dogmatic: “Whereas the seminary is interested in dialogue, the movement is interested in conversions and witnessing.” (The Unification Church invited over 70 theologians from various backgrounds to the Virgin Islands later this month, where they will present critiques of the Divine Principle.)

One seminarian disliked the stereotyped image of the “brainwashed Moonie” and said no one like that attends the seminary. “If anything, the seminary is a deprogramming center for brainwashed Moonies,” he told this writer.

Toward the end of the dialogue, Salonen wanted the groups to find points of agreement “… rather than trying to pretend that we are edging toward each other theologically, which I don’t think is the case.” A mutual fight against pornography would be a start, he said.

The evangelicals, however, were hesitant about cooperative efforts. Alexander of Spiritual Counterfeits said, “I don’t want to do anything that will help to promote what I believe is a wrong approach to understanding reality [Unification theology]; therefore, I have to be very careful about my participation.”

The group did agree that deprogramming, in most instances, is wrong. And when challenged by the evangelicals about Moonie fund raising tactics, Salonen acknowledged that Moonie fund raisers have been guilty of working under “front names.” Moon and the church do not condone such practices, but the autonomous nature of mobile fund raising teams makes it difficult for the church to halt such practices, he said. Salonen partly blamed the problem on Japanese teachers in the movement: “In the Orient, loyalty is more honorable than honesty.” The evangelicals conceded that some evangelical groups have on occasion acted under “front names,” also.

Unification membership in the United States stands at 7,000 full-time “missionaries” and about 37,000 members overall, said Lowery. Moon moved his headquarters to the United States in 1973, but Lowery said that the Unification Church in America, like church units in other nations, functions more or less autonomous of any “parent” body.

The U.S. church is encouraging Moonies to move out of the communal church centers, said Lowery. Now, she said, Moonies are encouraged to “actualize their faith in the larger community.” They are encouraged to visit nonmembers and have “more traditional living arrangements.”

Along this line, the evangelicals asked why Unification seminarians attend churches in the Barrytown area. Salonen said the seminarians aren’t trying to “bring people out of the churches.” But, he said, “we don’t have to prove that it [church visitation] doesn’t promote the goal of evangelization, because it does.”

The conference ended with evangelicals and Unificationists thanking each other for their warmth and candor. Salonen thanked moderator Sawatsky for “riding herd on a potentially explosive situation.”

Seminary graduate and Yale student Jonathan Wells said his participation in evangelical dialogues has opened his “theological perspective.” His impression has been that the Unification Church, although perhaps in a heterodox sense, “is in the Christian tradition.”

On this point, the groups did not agree. Although they were invited, none of the evangelicals attended the Unification Sunday worship service in the New Yorker Grand Ballroom later that morning.

North American Scene

Underground Evangelism and Jesus to the Communist World have called off their legal duel. In an agreement reached on June 29, but still to be finalized in the courts, L. Joe Bass and Stephan Bankov of UE and Michael Wurmbrand of JTTCW withdrew all charges in their multi-million-dollar defamation suits, and waived any right to raise the charges again. The settlement (see March 2, 1979 issue, page 50) brings years of bitter public recriminations to an end while leaving a number of questions unresolved.

A study commission of the Episcopal Church has recommended the ordination of homosexuals whose behavior is “wholesome.” Its report, which did not define wholesome, will be considered at the denomination’s triennial convention in September. The controversial report also loosened the ban on premarital sex between engaged persons. Regarding the biblical treatment of homosexuality, the report said, “We do not take the Bible literally, we take it seriously.”

Ordination of women was officially approved for the Reformed Church in America by action of its General Synod last month. During the past several decades, over 40 women reportedly have received training at the 351-year-old denomination’s two seminaries. Some of these graduates were ordained, and their ordinations have not been challenged. The synod vote resolves an issue that has surfaced in nearly every annual meeting since 1958.

Lobbying for the Equal Rights Amendment occupied delegates attending the biennial meeting last month of the 1.3-million-member American Baptist Churches. Outgoing president Cora Sparrowk addressed a pro-ERA rally in a telephone speech to the convention. Perhaps not convinced, the delegates voted down (784–427) a resolution urging that all future nationally-sponsored ABC meetings be held only in states that have ratified the ERA. William F. Keucher, a Bloomfield, Michigan, pastor, was elected president of the denomination.

The six-year-old Presbyterian Church in America has reached maturity and is “moving forward,” said newly elected moderator William Joseph of Montgomery, Alabama, at the denomination’s annual meeting. Delegates authorized continued expansion of foreign and domestic work, and approved a record 1980 budget of $4.5 million for its national agencies—17 percent more than in 1979. A statistical summary of the PCA, which was formed as an act of separation from the Presbyterian Church in the United States (Southern), shows increases between 1974 and 1979 in the number of PCA churches, from 260 to 444; ministers, from 196 to 584; and communicant members, from 41,000 to 74,000.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada voted its commitment to double church membership in the next ten years. Kenneth G. McMillan, church moderator and general secretary of the Canadian Bible Society, selected a committee to lead the project. The committee chairman will be Dennis Oliver, formerly of the Church Growth Society of Canada, who has been doing church growth work for the Presbytery of West Toronto. The Presbyterian body has declined in membership from 203,000 in 1964 to about 167,000 this year.

Church-related colleges have a unique function in American life and should resist government interference, said speakers at the first National Congress on Church-related Colleges and Universities. Over 700 delegates—representing 23 denominations and 800 colleges—gathered last month at the University of Notre Dame for the weekend conference, which kicked off a major two-year effort to strengthen the role of church colleges.

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