Unification Church
The
original and official name of this new religious movement founded by Sun Myung
Moon is the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity.
Despite its relatively small size (less than 500,000 members worldwide), it has
received considerable publicity and media attention because of its
controversial beliefs and practices.
Moon
was born to Presbyterian parents in Korea in 1920. He claims that on Easter
Sunday, 1936, while in prayer on a Korean hillside, Jesus appeared to him and
revealed that he had been chosen to complete the work which Jesus had
begun. This experience was the first in
a series of revelatory encounters with God in which Moon states that he
received new truth for a new age. The new revelations and teachings of Rev. Moon
were subsequently set forth in the Divine Principle, first published in 1957.
Moon officially established his new church in 1954 with the avowed purpose of
bringing salvation to the world and initiating a truly international family.
The
doctrine of the Unification Church is highly eclectic and spiritistic in
nature. It reflects the peculiarities of Korea's religiously fertile soil and
Moon's lifelong interest in spiritualistic phenomena. The presence of much
biblical and Christian terminology in Unification theology has led casual
observers to conclude that Moon's church is just another variant of
Christianity. However, Moon himself has admitted that his teachings are
heretical from the standpoint of traditional, orthodox Christianity. He
maintains that because of sectarian divisions and the inability of conventional
churches to meet the needs of today's complex world, God desires to communicate
a new revelation of truth which, assisted by the spirit world and the
movement's loyal followers (popularly known as "Moonies"), will bring
about a spiritual revolution. Such a movement will result in the true, lasting
unification of the family of man and the world.
At
the core of Unification theology is Moon's teaching on the fall of Adam and
Eve. According to the Divine Principle, the primary theological document of the
Unification Church, no one has truly understood the fall until Moon's
revelation, which brought illumination and clarification to the existing
biblical account. Moonies believe that Lucifer seduced Eve and that this sexual
union caused the spiritual fall of mankind as well as the fall of Lucifer. Eve
then entered into a sexual relationship with Adam, which resulted in the
physical fall of man.
This dual aspect of the fall, spiritual and
physical, requires a restoration to God (salvation) which is likewise both
spiritual and physical in nature. Unificationists teach that God's original
intention for humankind at the time of creation was for men and women to mature
to perfection in God, to be united by God in a marriage centered on God's love,
and to produce perfect children, thereby establishing a sinless family and
ultimately a sinless world. However.