Moon Over Washington
By K.E. Grubbs Jr.
Wall St Journal
July 2, 2004The Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon first walked into the consciousness of most Americans three decades ago as a champion of the beleaguered President Richard Nixon. Since then, he has been known mostly as the head of the Unification Church and as a newspaper proprietor. Most people who work for a living will have had, at one point or another, a boss who ruled as if by divine right. Those of us who once worked at the Washington Times had a boss who actually believed he was the messiah.
Unification Church
So it did not come as a surprise to me to read, in the past couple of weeks -- first in Salon and then in the Washington Post -- of an event at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in March in which Mr. Moon declared that he was "sent to Earth ...to save the world's six billion people," adding that he himself was "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."
He has long expressed similar sentiments. Mr. Moon formulated the "Divine Principle" when he first heard, he says, from the Almighty. That was in Korea in 1954, a time of devastation. Raised Presbyterian, Mr. Moon claims that he learned from on high that Adam, Eve and Jesus all failed to produce the perfect, sinless race. God, goes the theology, had to wait two millennia for Sun Myung Moon to finish the work. Since he founded the Unification Church it has grown and grown, now claiming more than two million members in nearly 200 countries, with extensive holdings in real estate, commercial enterprises and even a recording studio.
The Washington event put on display a less-known aspect of Mr. Moon's belief -- his time-leaping claim that "the founders of five great religions and many other leaders in the spirit world, including even Communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin...and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons."
Even that claim might not have stirred so much controversy had not at least a couple of hundred lawmakers and staffers, both Democrats and Republicans, been present at the event. A few later claimed to have left when they realized that the Ambassadors for Peace ceremony was sponsored by an affiliate of the Unification Church and included a Crown of Peace Award -- "for leadership in reconciliation and peacemaking" -- to Mr. Moon and his wife.
Chris Lisi, spokeswoman for Sen. Mark Dayton (D., Minn.), in attendance at the event, told the Washington Post: "We fell victim to it; we were duped." Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R., Md.) explained that he and his GOP colleagues attended out of respect for the Washington Times, the Post's competitor. The Washington Times Foundation was listed as a co-sponsor of the event.
Only yesterday the Times ran a story, titled "Clerics Defend Moon Event," in which the Rev. George A. Stallings, the archbishop of the Imani Temple African-American Catholic Congregation in Washington, was quoted saying that "the term 'Messiah' is relative. It depends on your particular religious persuasion. Ultimately, we must judge Reverend Moon not by what he says but by what he does." Clergymen affiliated with the Unification Church made similar statements of support.
It should be said that such a blatantly pro-Unification Church article is the exception. The Washington Times has never been a mere lapdog to the church. Today -- as in the 1980s, when I worked there -- the newspaper's editors produce an indispensable second newspaper in the nation's capital. Times journalists have operated since the paper's 1982 founding under assurances that the church would not interfere with editorial policy. Only occasionally have such breaches occurred, allegedly. (They are always disputed.)
In the early days, Times staffers felt justified in their arrangement with the "Moonies" because the church leader's pronounced anticommunism grew out of his own experience. It didn't hurt, either, that he had served time for violating U.S. tax laws, thereby qualifying as a true IRS "victim." But this recent outburst of profane self-exaltation -- including chats with Hitler and Stalin -- has got to be freshly embarrassing to the many fine journalists who work at the Times.
Before I accepted a position there, I was worried about the owner's cultish tendencies. (In those days he was best known for performing mass marriages, each pair of mates matched just before the ceremonies.) I actually consulted a Christian clergyman, who gave me a tentative green light. I don't think he would do so today.
Mr. Grubbs is director of the National Journalism Center in Herndon, Va.
