Who Digested the Scientists?
262 “and not be bothered by Satan”: Moon, visiting America in 1965, made that non-Satan observation. The Reverend relocated full-time in 1971.
Unification News for August-September 1999, “The Time of America’s Visitation, Part I,” TParents.org.
http://www.tparents.org/UNews/Unws0008-09/america_1.htm
Accessed 6-26-22.
Quoted in Mariah Blake, “The Fall of the House of Moon,” The New Republic, November 12, 2013.
262 Nine years later: The two met February 1, 1974. Richard Halloran, “73 Record Tells of Plan by Sun Myung Moon Aides for Drive Against Nixon Impeachment,” The New York Times, September 19, 1977. Stephen King fans will note the author’s name makes him the best friend of Danny Torrance in Doctor Sleep and The Shining.
“Mr. Nixon expressed his thanks for Mr. Moon’s backing. Mr. Moon reportedly told Mr. Nixon: ‘Don’t knuckle under to pressure. Stand up for your convictions.’”
Moon also passed along TV advice—and Moon had been an on-air charismatic for a long while. His advice is worth a listen. “On camera, medium strong prayer looks good. Very strong prayer doesn’t. It looks strange.”
Charles R. Babcock, “Moon Sect Support of Nixon Detailed,” Washington Post, November 10, 1977.
262 gathered two hundred thousand followers: Time re-ran a photo on the occasion of the Reverend’s 2012 death.
Accessed 6-25-22.
262 religious observance on the DC Mall: The church originally put attendance at two hundred thousand but now claims three.
Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “America And God’s Will: United States Bicentennial Speech given by Reverend Sun Myung Moon September 18, 1976 before an audience of 300,000 people at a rally in Washington DC at the Washington Monument,” The Words of Rev Sun Myung Moon, TParents.org.
http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon76/sm760918.htm
Accessed 6-20-22.
Mickler, 40 Years in America, 172.
262 in a vat beside the Washington Monument: Andrew Ferguson, “Can Buy Me Love: The Mooning of Conservative Washington,” The American Spectator, September 1987.
Maybe they had advance copies of Moon’s speech? Here’s the close: “If you are willing to give your sweat, your blood, and your very lives to the call of God, then in this sacred moment before heaven and earth and before all mankind, let us shout it out.”
262 the only figures to share: Timothy Miller, Ed., When Prophets Die: The Postcharismatic Fate of New Religious Movements (SUNY Series in Religious Studies), SUNY Press, 1991. 193.
“In the more than twenty years the Gallup poll has been asking Americans to rate various people, only Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro have received more negative ratings.”
262 the mass marriages: Eric Alterman, “In Moon’s Orbit: The Messiah With Money,” The New Republic, October 27, 1986.
262 Choice and personality: “I am your brain,” Reverend Moon told followers. “What I wish must be your wish.”
Eric Alterman, “In Moon’s Orbit: The Messiah with Money,” The New Republic, October 27, 1986.
262 “In a country whose young”: Berkeley Rice, “The Pull of Sun Moon,” The New York Times, May 30, 1976.
Two decades later, a Times writer would contribute a touch of wistful lyricism. The seventies were “a restless time. It was not so unusual to find people in a prolonged wandering, sea to shining sea, trying to get lost to find themselves.” Barry Bearak, “Eyes on Glory: Pied Pipers of Heaven’s Gate,” New York Times, April 28, 1997.
263 “minds of creative humans”: Barry Bearak, “Eyes on Glory: Pied Pipers of Heaven’s Gate,” New York Times, April 28, 1997.
263 a Red Sea vision: David Lancashire, “Target of Deprogrammers: the Main Sects,” The Globe and Mail, January 23, 1978.
263 “God is interested”: Family News, 1978, Vol. 4, No. 7, 7.
You can check out a PDF here; it’s the second and third page.
http://www.xfamily.org/images/0/06/Ff-report-docs.pdf
Accessed 6-27-22.
There’s an internet page full of old-time documents. This reader couldn’t quite bear to read them, but they are there.
https://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Flirty_Fishing
Accessed 6-27-22.
263 “This one just kind of got away”: Candice Choi, “Skittles joins Kool-Aid, other food brands at center of tragedies,” Associated Press, April 15, 2012.
263 “the thousand-mile stare”: For example, the University of Ohio at Kent State’s Kent Stater. (Universities put themselves on particular alert: students were the Moon target audience.) This is from John Sweeney, “ ‘Straight’ Looking Moonies Peddle Flowers ‘For God,’” Daily Kent Stater, January 6, 1977.
If Moonies look so “straight,” though, how do you tell them apart from other persons? “Look at their eyes. Moonies have what one expert calls ‘the thousand-mile stare.’ The pupils of the eyes are dilated and they have a smile that doesn’t give with the rest of the facial muscles,’ says [Dr. Jeanne] Fisher.
The look is also called “blissed out” and is similar to the expression that persons have under hypnosis.
You’d find “Spaced out” in The Times. Berkeley Rice, “The Pull of Sun Moon,” May 30, 1976. “Those who observe Moonies closely often notice a glassy, spaced-out look which, combined with their everlasting smiles, makes them resemble tripped out freaks and gives rise to rumors that the church drugs them. Although some of the glassiness is probably due to a lack of sleep, many Moonies really are on a high—they are tripping out on faith and devotion, not drugs.”
263 “starry-eyed”: The Updike novels are S. and In The Beauty of the Lilies. S. is a version of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh story made Netflix-famous as Wild Wild Country.
263 “the transfixed gaze”: Don DeLillo, Mao II, Viking 1991. 81.
263 all proceeds kicked up to the church: Cynthia Slaughter, “To Another Planet—And Back,” Time, June 14, 1976.
“The schedule was always the same: up at 6:30, prayer meeting, breakfast with more songs and prayers, then fund raising. We all went in a van together to the towns around Boulder, singing and praying,” Slaughter writes.
“Even if we could only wrangle a penny from someone, it was a victory for God. The more money we raised the more God-centered we were. We even had to go to bars at night to raise money, arriving home anywhere from 11 o’clock to 1:30 a.m. After two weeks of this I was so tired that, as I arose in the morning, I would fall against the wall. In five weeks of fund raising, I made $3,000 for the organization.”
263 you’d lose your soul forever: Berkeley Rice, “The Pull of Sun Moon,” The New York Times, May 30, 1976.
263 “I’ve seen kids”: Ferguson, “The Mooning of Conservative Washington.”
“When I was working for the church,” Randy Braindyberry [a counselor who left the church in 1979 after serving as Utah and Hawaii state leader] said, “I thought that everything I was doing was purely for God. But the whole thing is based on deception. I have no problem with honest propagandizing and honest self-promotion. But I’ve seen kids take years to recover from their involvement with the Moonies. I’ve seen the psychotic breakdowns. They want you to think of them as just another church, but that doesn’t happen with mainstream churches—that sort of massive residual psychological damage.”
264 excommunicated by the Presbyterian Church: Berkeley Rice, “The Pull of Sun Moon.”
264 a bucket of urine and feces: Laurence Stern and William R. MacKaye, “Rev. Moon Called Messiah By Some, Quack By Others,” Washington Post.
264 Denied membership: Time, “The Darker Side of Sun Moon,” June 14, 1976.
264 Blackballed by the National Council: Eric Alterman, “In Moon’s Orbit: The Messiah with Money,” The New Republic, October 27, 1986. “ . . . the Unification Church remains the only ‘Christian’ church ever to be rejected for membership in the National Council of Churches.”
264 “incompatible with Christian teaching”: Marc Fisher and Jeff Leen, “Stymied in U.S., Moon’s Church Sounds a Retreat,” Washington Post, November 24, 1997.
264 rejected by the World Council: Elaine Woo, “Sun Myung Moon Dies At 92; Led Controversial Unification Church,” Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2012.
264 the entire nation of England: Associated Press, “Britain Bans Rev. Moon As Being Bad for the Public Good,” October 29, 1995. “The Home Office, which is in charge of immigration, announced that Moon, 75, was being excluded from Britain because his presence was ‘not conducive to the public good.’”
264 “If we can manipulate seven nations”: Elisabeth Bumiller, “The Nation’s Capital Gets A New Daily Newspaper,” Washington Post, May 17, 1982.
“If we can manipulate seven nations at least,” Moon was quoted as saying in a speech reported by the House subcommittee investigators, “then we can get hold of the whole world.”
264 “they didn’t see Moonies anymore”: Sun Myung Moon, “The Way of Tuna,” June 13, 1980.
https://history.familyfed.org/tf-sermons/the-way-of-tuna
Accessed 6-27-22.
264 where Nikola Tesla had aged: Charles Kaiser, “Moon Sect Steadily Adds Properties To Its Domain,” New York Times, September 19, 1976.
264 from the owners of the Maidenform bra company: Lindsay Miller, “The Rev. Moon and His Children,” The New York Post, August 30, 1974.
264 NBC’s America’s Got Talent: Blake, “The Fall of the House of Moon,” The New Republic.
265 “Sun Myong Moon is to cults”: Laurence Grafstein, “Messianic capitalism: The invisible hand that feeds the cults,” The New Republic, Feb 20, 1984.
265 Like Keep America Beautiful: John Sweeney, “ ‘Straight’ Looking Moonies Peddle Flowers ‘For God,’” Daily Kent Stater, January 6, 1977.
For example, in Ohio: “The local Moonies are currently calling themselves ‘The International Family Association of Ohio.’ In the past they have been known as ‘The Collegiate Association for Research Principles in Ohio.’”
CARP was the national name, too. In 1981, the Harvard Crimson was warning about CARP recruiters in that city outside Boston.
Michael F. P. Dorning and Naomi L. Pierce, “CARP Recruiting Members at College,” Harvard Crimson, November 19, 1981.
Cynthia Slaughter wrote in Time (“To Another Planet—And Back,” June 14, 1976) about her Moon world entry. Falling for an ad in the Denver Post while she was at the U. of Colorado. “ ‘Sincere, conscientious person interested in the betterment of mankind call this number . . .’ Out of curiosity I called, and the young woman who answered explained that she worked for an organization similar to the Peace Corps.”
265 “a dizzying array of front groups”: Michael Isikoff, “New Moon,” The New Republic, August 26, 1985.
Isikoff was apparently going great guns on the Moon beat, before becoming the Act I figure in Clinton-Lewinsky.
265 “We must besiege them”: Our Future Path of Advancement,” The Words of Sun Myung Moon From 1973, TParents.org.
http://www.tparents.org/moon-talks/sunmyungmoon73/SM730130.htm
Accessed 6-27-22.
265 the raw-seafood empire: Monica Eng and Delroy Alexander and David Jackson, “Sushi and Rev. Moon,” Chicago Tribune, April 11, 2006.
265 could take in thousands per day: Karen Rothmyer, “Mapping Out Moon’s Media Empire,” Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 1984.
Alterman in “In Moon’s Orbit” has each individual flower seller pulling down $75 to $100 per day. The head of the Church’s American branch estimated that as of 1975 the van crews were salting away $12 million per year. This is from William J. Whalen, “The Rev. Sun Myung Moon: Pied Piper of Tarrytown,” U.S. Catholic, October 1976. Whalen adds, “Some students of the cult put the actual income a two to three times this amount.” I was additionally surprised there was once a magazine called U.S. Catholic.
In “Church Spends Millions on its Image,” Washington Post, September 17, 1984, Isikoff says “fund-raisers are expected to bring in at least $100 per day, but can sometimes collect as much as $1,000 on weekends.” Now picture a nationwide van fleet, filled with sleep-deprived fund-raisers.
The economics here are kind of fascinating. Kenneth R. Clark, “Power For Sale From Greenpeace To the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, How PACs and Lobbies Influence America,” Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1986: “Steve Hassan, a former member of the Unification Church who served as Moon’s top American recruiter and fundraiser, says that at one point church members selling flowers on street corners brought in from $30 to $50 million a year.”
265 publish tell-alls: Janice Harayada, “I Was A Robot for Sun Myung Moon,” Glamour, July 1976.
265 “The instrument to be used”: Michael Isikoff, “Church Spends Millions on Its Image,” Washington Post, September 17, 1984.
265 reliably vicious: I’ll footnote the immortal one. S. Fred Singer, “Climate Claims Wither Under Luminous Lights of Science,” Washington Times, November 29, 1994. The others: S. Fred Singer, “Chilling Out on Warming,” Washington Times, October 11, 1994; S. Fred Singer, “No Proof Man Causes Global Warming,” Washington Times, December 29, 2010.
266 “I’ve worked for a lot of publishers”: Elisabeth Bumiller, “The Nation’s Capital Gets A New Daily Newspaper,” Washington Post, May 17, 1982.
266 fifty million dollars a year: Kenneth R. Clark, “Power For Sale From Greenpeace To the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, How PACs and Lobbies Influence America,” Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1986.
From the vantage of 1992, Frontline put the number higher: $800 million over the whole splurgy decade.
PBS Frontline, “The Resurrection of Reverend Moon,” January 21, 1992.
266 President Reagan’s favorite paper: PBS Frontline, “The Resurrection of Reverend Moon,” January 21, 1992.
Robert Parry, “The GOP’s Own Asian Connection: Rev. Moon,” Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1997.
“But President Ronald Reagan embraced the Washington Times as his ‘favorite’ newspaper and Moon’s newspaper returned the favor by defending the Reagan-Bush administrations at nearly every turn. In 1991, President Bush invited the paper’s new editor-in-chief, Wesley Pruden, to lunch ‘just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day.’”
266 being guided by Father: UPI, “Moon said to be funding conservatives,” December 20, 1987.
266 Former President Nixon: Gregory A. Fossedal, “Washington’s Clean Little Secret,” Copley News Service, June 15, 1986.
266 “sanity to Washington”: Editorial, “A Capital Coronation,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2004.
266 “cuts the legs from under”: Philip Morris, “Project Down Under — Group Presentation to Senior Management” June 26, 1987. U.S Exhibit 22,950, Bates No. 2021502671.
266 Two hundred million: John Judis, “Rev. Moon’s Rising Political Influence: His Empire is Spending Big Money Trying to Win Favor with Conservatives,” U.S. News & World Report, March 27, 1989.
Three years later, PBS Frontline would put the organization’s U.S. spending at “more than a billion dollars”—an “astonishing amount of money.”
266 “The Unification Church is trying”: Michael Isikoff, “Church Spends Millions On Its Image,” Washington Post, September 17, 1984.
The lobbyist added, “Moon says he’s the son of God and the savior of the world. . . . Seldom have we had a group come into this country before and have this much money to spend.” The lobbyist was called Neal B. Blair, and his lobbying group was actually called Free the Eagle.
266 “Almost all conservative organizations”: John Judis, “Rev. Moon’s Rising Political Influence: His Empire is Spending Big Money Trying to Win Favor with Conservatives,” U.S. News & World Report, March 27, 1989.
266 “creeping reluctance”: Ferguson, “The Mooning of Conservative Washington,” The American Spectator, September 1987.
266 money, not the Moonies: The American Spectator writer poses the wonderfully necessary question. “Is a methodically deceptive, anti-family, socialistic, utopian, theocratic one-worlder who thinks he’s God a plausible ally, a reliable ally, in the conservative cause?” A sort of prose pause. “And if he’s acceptable to Washington conservatives, then who isn’t?”
It’s been stuck in this reader’s head since late 2015, and especially since November of the following sad year.
267 at Danbury Federal: Chicago Tribune, “Moon Moving to Halfway House,” July 3, 1985. “Rev. Moon will have spent about 13 months in custody, having earned good-time credit to reduce the 18-month sentence imposed after he was convicted by a federal jury in New York.”
Los Angeles Times, “Moon to Be Released From Prison Thursday,” July 3, 1985.
267 “The Unification Church has settled”: Ferguson, “The Mooning of Conservative Washington,” American Spectator.
267 “people are more willing”: Jennifer 8 Lee, “A Call For Softer, Greener Language,” The New York Times, March 2, 2003.
267 boot-marching title: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “Our Future Path of Advancement,” The Words of Sun Myung Moon From 1973, TParents.org. Moon adds, “That’s why we opened the Unified Science Conference in Europe last month.”
http://www.tparents.org/moon-talks/sunmyungmoon73/SM730130.htm
Accessed 6-27-22.
267 “We will surely influence”: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “Our Future Path of Advancement,” The Words of Sun Myung Moon From 1973, TParents.org.
267 “and which would be governed”: Investigation of Korean-American Relations: Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, United States Congress, Committee on International Relations, October 31, 1978, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978. 378, “Conclusions and Recommendations.”
267 there were honoraria: Dan Greenberg, “Washington View: Nuts in August,” New Scientist, August 14, 1975.
267 Who came?: One journalist at the Boston Globe pointed out a telling, accidental similarity between tobacco industry values and Moon industry values. The Church claimed attendees “represent ‘the cutting edge of science.’ But that’s not true.” Most of the attending scientists were “either retired or semiretired or are not the leading practitioners, spokesmen, or activists in their specialized fields.” That Tobacco Institute recruitment document had been very specific: “Ideal are people at or near retirement with no dependence on grant-dispensing bureaucracies.”
Robert Cooke, “News Analysis: Moon Conference: Demonstration That Jargon Is Universal,” Boston Globe, Nov 26, 1978.
The Globe writer listed only two exceptions: one of whom was, of course, Frederick Seitz.
267 “gives Moon the aura”: Isikoff, “Church Spends Millions,” Washington Post, 1984.
The Los Angeles Times quoted a former Church organizer. “Gary Scharff, who was director of the church’s collegiate wing in the mid 1970s, said films of the conferences are used to impress new recruits with Moon’s image of scholarly respectability.” Which is the service scientists provide all denial enterprises.
And FYI, the spokesperson added, in the same piece, that the Church might screen a documentary about the conferences “to members to show that this is one of the things Moon does.” Impressed newcomers, confirmed the elect.
George Alexander and John Dart, “Sect-Sponsored Meeting Grows in Scope Despite Charges That Scholars Are ‘Used’ Los Angeles Times, Nov 22, 1979; pg. A3.
267 scientist-on-scientist accusations: Dan Greenberg writes in 1975 of being “astonished” by attending scientists. When he got some PhDs on the phone, to ask and explain about Moon, he found he was dealing “with idiot savants.” (Greenberg, “Washington View,” New Scientist, August 14, 1975.) Ziauddin Sardar warned the conferences “serve their basic purpose admirably—they provide intellectual respectability for Reverend Moon and his Church of Unification.” Nor did Sardar think attendance was accidental, flights and honoraria accepted in ignorance. He noted some scientists who had defended attendance. “They, like all other participants, are well aware of the real purpose of these conferences.” Ziauddin Sardar, “Intellectual Respectability,” New Scientist, June 25, 1981.
Students (the market most susceptible to the Reverend’s product) at Harvard asked all scientists to stay away. “If they do not wish to aid the goals of the Unification Church as stated in Moon’s dubious dogma, they should boycott the church’s cultural activities.” Harvard Crimson, Editorial, “Boycott Moon,” November 29, 1978.
Nature, “Best Not To Attend On Moon,” Nature, November 27, 1980.
267 the entire British scientific roster: Peter David, “World Unification Church: Mixed Motives at Conclave,” Nature, December 8, 1983.
268 As vice chairman, as speaker: For example, ICUS, “Program,” The Eighth International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, November 22-25, 1979. See page four for a shot of Dr. Frederick Seitz, on the conference board; and page 19 for a dapper, seventies-inflected snap of Dr. S. Fred Singer. Mustached, and looking either like a detective or the precinct captain on a really old-style weekly procedural.
https://icus.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ICUS-VIII-Program.pdf
Accessed 6-24-22.
268 “luminaries on the organizing committee”:
Peter David, “World Unification Church: Mixed Motives At Conclave,” Nature, Vol 306 December 8, 1983.
For re-readers, the next story, typeset on the same Nature page, is about the biochemist Arthur Robinson and his lawsuit against Nobel laureate Linus Pauling. So first time also for Frederick Seitz and Arthur Robinson (who would later collaborate to devastating effect), and for the overall Singer, Seitz, Robinson trio. Coincidence is an eerie pleasure.
268 “All these people should know better”: Marc Fisher, “Celebrities Pulled Into Moon’s Orbit; Speakers Unaware of Conclave’s Cult Link,” Washington Post, July 30, 1996.
268 “If we weren’t on the up-and-up”: Ferguson, “Mooning of America,” The American Spectator.
268 “These academics are selling themselves”: Michael Isikoff , “Church Spends Millions On Its Image,” Washington Post, September 17, 1984.
“These academics are selling themselves,” charged Ann Lindgren, president of the Citizens Freedom Foundation, an anti-cult group. “All these conferences are taped and those materials are used in recruiting programs all over the world. They say, ‘Here’s professor So-and-So from Yale University’ and that makes a big impression on young people. It adds credibility to their organization.”
Ann Lindgren is also in Eric Pianin, “Year-Old Paper Seeks Its Place in the Sun,” Washington Post, May 17, 1983.
For general cult interest, her unsettling family story is below.
While studying pre-med at Stanford University, Mrs. Lindgren’s son, Jonathan, was approached by “very friendly” young people his own age. They said they belonged to Creative Community Projects [the Moonies were perpetually changing alias] and ran a free health clinic for the poor, she said.
There was no clinic and Creative Community Projects was only a branch of the Unification Church, she said. Jonathan went away to a camp with them for a weekend which stretched into a week. By the end of the week he was ready to drop out of school and join the church, she said.
Talking on the phone, Jonathan told her, “I now see I have to take personal responsibility for the maintenance of the whole world,” she said.
After an hour of pleading on the phone, Jonathan agreed to leave the camp for a day. A college friend who was a religion major talked with him for three hours to convince him to leave for that short period.
His father said, “You’ve known them for a week and you’ve known us for 18 years, who do you trust?” There was a long agonizing silence and he said, “That’s a hard question.”
Lindgren told the reporter that prior to the temporary loss of her son, she’d thought “only ‘weird kids’” could end up in cults.
Greg Couteau, “Shore May Be Target of Cults,” Star Democrat, September 24, 1981.
268 “It adds credibility to their organization”: True Parents, Rev. Sun Myung Moon: A Life of Love For God and Humanity, His Works, Academia: The Search for Absolute Values in Science and the Unity of Knowledge, TParents.org.
http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Publications/Smm-Org/works_academia.html
Accessed 6-27-22.
268 “this kind of persecution”: Tamara Grapek, “The Seventeenth International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences | Los Angeles, November 24-27, 1988,” Today’s World, January 1989. pps. 9-10.
Accessed 6-27-22.
268 an official goodwill photo with the Reverend: Today’s World, October-November, 1992. 16.
Accessed 6-27-22.
Accessed 6-27-22.
268 “The conferences”: True Parents, Rev. Sun Myung Moon: A Life of Love For God and Humanity, His Works, Academia: The Search for Absolute Values in Science and the Unity of Knowledge, TParents.org.
https://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Publications/Smm-Org/works_academia.html
Accessed 6-27-22.
269 “Who digested whom?”: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “Our Pride,” December 13, 1981.
https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon81/811213.htm
Accessed 6-27-22.
It was, as above, his overall metaphor. He was an eater; dominance was about the bite and the swallow. “Once you have this great power of love, which is big enough to swallow entire America,” Moon preached, “there may be some individuals who complain inside of your stomach. However, they will be digested.”
Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “The Parents of Heaven and Earth and the Family of Absolute Unity,” Belvedere–International Training Center, August 4, 1996.
https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon96/SM960804.htm
Accessed 6-27-22.
269 “The umpire has declared”: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “Our Pride,” December 13, 1981.
https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon81/811213.htm
Accessed 6-27-22.
269 “But the problem is”: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “Our Pride,” December 13, 1981.
https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon81/811213.htm
Accessed 6-27-22.
269 “a riddle he left readers”: Peter Maass, “Moon at Twilight,” The New Yorker, September 14, 1998.
269 “Father does not use lots”: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “The Ideal Family Is The Base For Peace And Unification,” The Words of Reverend Sun Myung Moon from 1994, July 24, 1994. TParents.org.
https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon94/940724.htm
Accessed 6-25-22.
269 “Love manifests especially beautifully”: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “To the Matching Candidates,” Lancaster Gate, London, September 14, 1978.
https://history.familyfed.org/tf-sermons/to-the-matching-candidates
Accessed 6-25-22.
269 “When there is true love”: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “God’s Day – 1983,” World Mission Center, January 1, 1983.
http://www.unification.net/1983/830101b.html
Accessed 6-28-22.
269 “or the rootless Americans”: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “Pinnacle Of The Heavenly Universe,” December 1, 1989.
https://history.familyfed.org/tf-sermons/pinnacle-of-the-heavenly-universe
Accessed 6-28-22.
269 “Not even Mother and his children”: Peter Maass, “Moon at Twilight,” The New Yorker, September 14, 1998.
269 “all but choking”: Frank Rich, “Journal: Bennett’s Moral Filter,” The New York Times, December 9, 1995.
270 “after he had spent the entire week”: Nansook Hong, In the Shadow of the Moons, 177. (“By 1993 Hyo Jin’s use of cocaine was constant.” Hyo Jin Moon died of heart attack, age 46, a decade after the book.)
270 “He kept saying”: 60 Minutes, “Heaven on Earth?”, Mike Wallace Interview with Nansook Hong, S31E01, September 20, 1998.
This being in the media age, there was a response—a diss track—from Nansook’s former father-in-law. Notice the date: within twenty-four hours. This is from Claude Aubert, “Father Addresses Members At East Garden,” The Words of Reverend Sun Myung Moon from 1998, September 20, 1998, TParents.org.
“Yesterday afternoon, September 21, Father talked to a group of members at East Garden, after calling for this meeting just a few hours earlier. Many people in the audience were wondering if Father would talk about the 60 Minutes program that had aired on Sunday on CBS, and if he would comment on some of the statements made during that program made by Nansook Hong and Un Jin Moon.
“First Father talked about topics such as God’s heart, true love, sexual organs . . . Father talked of how he had trained and disciplined himself in the area of his sexuality, how he could lie next to even a naked woman and control himself. He said that he had absolute control of his sexuality. He would explain to a woman that he was impotent and could not have sexual relations all the while controlling his sexual urges. . . Father said that Adam had been destroyed by a woman, Jesus was destroyed by women and now women were trying to destroy the Lord of the Second Advent, even his own true daughters!
“ . . . At the end of it all Father asked if he had succeeded in comforting the members’ hearts. He asked if he could go to South America now and not worry about the members. He said ‘I gathered you together to support you at this time.’
“Then Father left for South America. For those who attended his speech a nice dinner was served.”
https://www.tparents.org/moon-talks/sunmyungmoon98/UM980920c.htm
Accessed 6-25-22.
270 “licked his hand”: Nansook Hong, In the Shadow of the Moons, 184. “I was seven months pregnant at the time. While he punched me, I used my hands to shield my tummy. ‘I’ll kill this baby,’ Hyo Jin screamed and I could see he meant it. The next morning, my tearful children gave me ice for my blackened eye.”
You can see the warm, stylish former Mrs. Moon on the BBC Church documentary. She comes in around the last four minutes. A moment later, a glimpse of Heung Jin Nim’s wife Julia, too.
BBC, “The Rev. Sun Myung Moon: Emperor of the Universe,” August 6, 2001.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1KruPlKi68
Accessed 6-21-22.
270 “You think I’m afraid?”: Nansook Hong, In the Shadow of the Moons, 177.
270 “such little results”: Hak Ja Han, “Father Worked On External Things For The Sake Of The World . . . But It Didn’t Work Well,” November 5, 2012, Hoon Dok Hae at the New Yorker Hotel.
Mrs. Moon complained, “Who was in accord with Father’s request? Father is so sad after he went to the spirit world. He said, ‘I trusted them, but I didn’t know they only had such little results.’”
https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/HakJaHan-21/HakJaHan-211216a.pdf
Accessed 6-28-22.
270 “how many respectable figures”: Ed Kilgore, “Sun Myung Moon and His Peculiar Empire,” Washington Monthly, September 3, 2012.
