The New Right Disagrees over Taking Donations from Sun Moon

Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church has contributed $500,000 to a New Right lobbying effort in Washington, D.C., headed by John “Terry” Dolan, chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee. His lobbying group, known as the Conservative Alliance (CALL), used the money for a computer system, direct mail expenses, and to conduct an international survey on communism.

After accepting the donation, CALL lost some of its popularity with other conservative political groups. Several right-wing groups severed their ties with the organization when they learned of the Moon connection.

Paul Weyrich, widely acknowledged for energizing conservative Christian political involvement, has spoken out against Moon’s blandishments. A devout Catholic, Weyrich refuses to affiliate his Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress with groups that accept money from any of Moon’s organizations.

“We have very serious problems with who they [the Moonies] are and what they represent,” said a spokesman for Weyrich. While coalitions necessarily involve people who are not completely like-minded, the spokesman said, the Unification Church is “very different and unique” because of claims that Moon is the messiah.

Those claims do not concern Rhonda Stahlman, a graduate of Bob Jones University and chairman of CALL. “I don’t want to split the conservative movement,” she said, “but other groups are taking money from Joseph Coors, a brewer. We can’t start picking apart each other’s contributors.”

She said CALL confines its activities to matters of defense and economics, opposing the importation of “slave labor” items from Communist countries and the transfer of high technology to the Soviet Union. The Unification Church has established an international organization, Causa, to promote “Godism” as an alternative philosophy to communism. The money donated to CALL came from Causa.

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