14.9.12
(CNN) -- Up to 30,000 people are expected to gather in Cheongpyeong, South Korea, on Saturday for the funeral of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial founder of the Unification Church who died this month.
(CNN) -- Up to 30,000 people are expected to gather in Cheongpyeong, South Korea, on Saturday for the funeral of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial founder of the Unification Church who died this month.
The ceremony, at the church-built Cheongshim Peace World Center, will take place after nearly two weeks of mourning. During this period, an estimated 180,000 people visited the mortuary where his body has been put on display to pay their respects, church official Ryu In-yong told CNN.
Prayers, singing, floral tributes and eulogies are expected as the remains of Moon arrive at the arena. After a two-hour ceremony, he will be laid to rest on Mount Cheonseong in the northern South Korean province of Gyeonggi -- known as the "holy land" of the church.
The 92-year-old died on September 3 after complications related to pneumonia. He had been in intensive care in a Seoul hospital since August after he fell ill, church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeol told CNN at the time.
Moon had been a high-profile international evangelist for decades, having said that Jesus Christ came to him in the 1930s and "told him to finish (Jesus') mission," according to James Beverley, a professor at the Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto.
The Unification Church believes that Jesus was divine but that he is not God, a stance that puts it outside the bounds of traditional Christianity. Followers regard Moon as the messiah.
His church officially started in the 1950s, with missionaries being dispatched around the world by the end of that decade. His was one of several religious movements that emerged after World War II and the Korean War in South Korea and Japan, drawing from "a tremendous pool of people ... looking for answers as to why the world had turned (against them)," said Virginia Commonwealth University professor David Bromley.
Moon was imprisoned in North Korea during the Korean War before being freed by the allies, an experience that turned him "virulently anti-communist," according to Eileen Barker, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Globally, the church's reach may have peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s, as hundreds of thousands joined the singular religious movement, Beverley said. Critics have said the controversial Moon led a cult, whose followers were colloquially known as Moonies.
In his role as church leader, Moon became famous for conducting mass weddings, including one in 1982 at New York City's Madison Square Garden and one in 1995 in South Korea uniting 360,000 couples.
He also gained influence in other ways as well -- growing a massive, diverse business empire that included holdings in industries such as chemicals, arms manufacturing, mining and pharmaceuticals.
Moon helped create news publications, universities, religious institutions and other groups. Some such organizations that Moon founded stress interfaith dialogue and peace, like the Universal Peace Federation, which advocates "building a world of peace in which everyone can live in freedom, harmony, cooperation and prosperity."
Two Universities Expel Students and Professors
in crisis and finally chose a measure that had never
been used before and has never been used since. Ewha fired
five professors, including Professor Young Oon Kim, and expelled
fourteen students. The expelled students included five in the graduating
class. Yonsei also fired one professor and expelled two students.
The school chaplain of Ewha tried advising the students, “You
can attend that church after you graduate. That way, no harm will
come to the school.” But it was of no use. It had the opposite effect.
The expelled students protested vehemently. “There are many
atheists in our school,” they said. “And we even have the children of
traditional shamans attending our school. How can the school justify
expelling us and following the hypocrisy of this double standard?”
The school, however, stood fast. It simply repeated its position:
“We are a private school and a Christian school. We have the right
to expel any student we choose.”
When the media got word of the incident, one newspaper carried
an editorial titled, “Expulsion Is Wrong in a Country with Religious
Freedom.” This situation soon became a topic for debate among the
general public.
Ewha, since it was supported by a Christian foundation in Canada,
was concerned that its support would be cut if it became known that
large numbers of its students attended a church declared to be heretical.
In those days, Ewha held chapel three times a week, took attendance,
and submitted these attendance records to mission headquarters.
After the students were expelled and the professors fired, public
opinion began to turn in our favor. Ewha, in an effort to counter this
trend, began a campaign of false rumors too vile to repeat. Unfortunately,
as is so often the case, the more vile the rumor, the more people
revel in believing and repeating it as true. These false rumors began
to feed on themselves, and soon they took on a life of their own. Our
church suffered from this for more than a year.
I did not want the problem to grow out of control like this. I did not
want to cause problems. I tried to convince the students and professors
to lead simple, quiet lives of faith. I explained that there was no need for
them to leave the dormitories and cause such public trouble. But they
were adamant. “Why do you tell us not to come here?” they asked. “We
wish to receive the same grace as everyone else.” In the end, they were
forced to leave their schools. I was not comfortable with this.
After being forced from their schools, the students went as a group
to a prayer hall on Mount Samgak on the outskirts of Seoul. They went
to seek comfort for their wounded hearts. They had been kicked out
of their schools, their families were angry with them, and their friends
no longer wished to meet them. They had no place to go. They fasted
and spent their entire time praying with such emotion that their
eyes cried and noses ran. Soon, some began to speak in tongues.
It is true that God appears when we are on the edge of despair and
desperation. The students who were expelled from their schools and
cast out by their families and society found God in the prayer hall
on Mount Samgak.
I went to Mount Samgak and gave food and comfort to the students
who had become emaciated from fasting.
“It is bad enough that you’ve been unjustly expelled,” I explained.
“Please do not fast also. If your conscience is clear over what you have
done, then being insulted for it is not dishonorable. Do not be discouraged,
but wait for your time.”
Five of those students who were seniors later transferred into Sookmyung
Women’s University. But the damage was already done.
This incident played a decisive role and was the turning point in
gaining me a profoundly negative reputation. Newspaper reports began
to read as if all the evil acts committed by various religions were done
by us. People who at first reacted to the rumors with “Could it be true?”
now began to say, “It’s true.”
It hurt to be subjected to such unfair treatment. The injustice was
so intense that it made me angry. I wanted to shout out in rebuttal,
but I did not speak out or attempt to fight. We had too much else to
accomplish and had no time to waste in fighting.
I believed that such misunderstandings and hatred would dissolve with
time and that we should not use our energy to be overly concerned about
them. I pretended not to hear people say, “Sun Myung Moon should be
struck by lightning,” or the Christian ministers who prayed for my death.
But instead of dying down, the rumors grew ever more outrageous
with each passing day. It felt as if the whole world had united in pointing
fingers of accusation at me. Even in the heat of the Heungnam fertilizer
factory, I refused to let others see even my shins. Yet now rumors had
it that I danced naked in our church. Soon people who came to our
church for the first time looked at me with eyes that seemed to say, “Are
you the one who takes off his clothes and dances?”
I knew better than anyone that it would take time for such misunderstandings
to go away, so I never tried to argue with them, saying, “I’m
not like that.” We cannot know someone without meeting the person,
yet there were so many who did not hesitate to curse me without ever
having met me. I knew it was useless to battle against such people, so I
endured in silence.
The Yonsei–Ewha incident forced our church to the brink of destruction.
The image of “pseudo-religion,” or “cult,” became inseparably
identified with my name, and all established churches joined together
to call for the government to prosecute me.
On July 4, 1955, the police raided our church and took me and four
members—Won Pil Kim, Hyu Young Eu, Hyo Min Eu, and Hyo Won
Eu—into custody. Ministers and elders of the established churches
joined hands with secular authorities in writing letters calling for our
church to be closed. These four members, who had been with me from
the beginning, were forced to stay in prison with me.
The matter did not end there. The police investigated my background
and came up with a charge of draft evasion. But this, too, was egregious.
By the time I escaped my North Korean death camp to head south, I
was already beyond the age of compulsory military service. Still they
charged me with draft evasion.
문선명 떠난 통일교 내분, ´속초 계시´ 뭐길래… - 중앙일보 뉴스
문선명 떠난 통일교 내분, '속초 계시' 뭐길래…
[온라인 중앙일보] 입력 2012.09.14 09:10 / 수정 2012.09.14 09:35
[온라인 중앙일보] 입력 2012.09.14 09:10 / 수정 2012.09.14 09:35
[사진=JTBC 캡처]"
'via Blog this'
12.9.12
A Church with No Denomination
Koreans have a saying that a person insulted by others lives
of insults I’ve received, I could live another hundred years.
Also, my stomach has been filled not with food but with insults,
so you could say that my stomach is the most full of anyone’s. Established
churches that had opposed me and thrown stones at me
when I started a church in Pyongyang resumed their persecution,
this time in Busan. Even before we had properly begun our church,
they set out to give us trouble. Words like heretic and pseudo- were
placed in front of my name so often that they seemed to become
part of my name. Indeed, the phrase Sun Myung Moon came to be
synonymous with heresy and pseudo-religion. It’s hard to even hear
my name mentioned without these words.
By 1953, the persecution reached extremes. We closed the hut
in Busan and moved first to Daegu and then to Seoul. In May of
the following year, we rented a house in Seoul’s Bukhak Dong
neighborhood, located near Jang-choong-dang Park, and hung
out a sign that read “Holy Spirit Association for the Unification
of World Christianity.” We chose this name to signify that we
belonged to no denomination, and we certainly had no plans to
create a new one.
“World Christianity” refers to all of Christianity worldwide and
both past and present. “Unification” reveals our purpose of oneness,
and “Holy Spirit” is used to denote harmony between the spiritual and
physical worlds built on the love of the father-son relationship at the
center. Our name is meant to say, “The spiritual world, centering on
God, is with us.”
In particular, unification represents my purpose to bring about God’s
ideal world. Unification is not union. Union is when two things come together.
Unification is when two become one. “Unification Church” became
our commonly known name later, but it was given to us by others. In the
beginning, university students referred to us as “the Seoul Church.”
I do not like using the word kyo-hoi in its common usage to mean
church. But I like its meaning from the original Chinese characters. Kyo
means “to teach,” and Hoi means “gathering.” The Korean word means, literally,
“gathering for teaching.” The word for religion, jong-kyo, is composed
of two Chinese characters meaning “central” and “teaching,” respectively.
When the word church means a gathering where spiritual fundamentals
are taught, it has a good meaning. But the meaning of the word kyo-hoi
does not provide any reason for people to share with each other. People in
general do not use the word kyo-hoi with that meaning. I did not want to
place ourselves in this separatist type of category. My hope was for the rise
of a church without a denomination. True religion tries to save the nation,
even if it must sacrifice its own religious body to do so; it tries to save the
world, even at the cost of sacrificing its nation; and it tries to save humanity,
even if this means sacrificing the world. By this understanding, there can
never be a time when the denomination takes precedence.
It was necessary to hang out a church sign, but in my heart I was
ready to take it down at any time. As soon as a person hangs a sign
that says “church,” he is making a distinction between church and not
church. Taking something that is one and dividing it into two is not
right. This was not my dream. It is not the path I chose to travel. If I
need to take down that sign to save the nation or the world, I am ready
to do so at any time.
Our sign hung near the front entrance. It would have looked better
if we had hung it someplace high, but the eaves on the house came
down very low, giving us no good spot to place a sign. In the end, we
hung it about as high as the height of a child. In fact, some children in
the neighborhood took down our sign, played with it, and broke it in
two. Because of its historical significance, we could not throw it away.
We attached the two pieces back together with wire and nailed it more
securely to the front. Perhaps because our sign was treated with such
humiliation, our church also received humiliation beyond description.
The eaves were so low that people had to duck their heads in order
to pass through the entrance. The room was about eight feet square,
and it was so cramped that when six of us would pray we might bump
foreheads with each other. People in the neighborhood laughed at our
sign. They made fun of us, asking what kind of world unification we
dreamt of in that tiny little house that “you have to crawl to get into.”
They didn’t try to find out why we had chosen such a name. They simply
looked at us as if we were crazy.
This did not bother us, however. In Busan, we had begged for food to
sustain ourselves, and now we had a room to perform services. We had
nothing to fear. For a suit, I took a pair of U.S. Army fatigues and dyed
them black. I wore these with black rubber shoes. Even if others sought
to belittle us, in our hearts we were more dignified than anyone.
People who attended called one another shik-ku, or family member. We
were intoxicated with love. Anyone who came there could see what I was
doing and hear what I was saying. We were connected by an inner cord
of love that let us communicate with God. A woman would be at home
preparing rice and suddenly run off to the church. Someone else would say
she was going to change into a new dress and then run off to the church in
her old dress with holes in it. If a woman’s in-laws shaved her hair to keep her
from going to the church, she would come with her bald head.
As our members increased, we began to evangelize on university
campuses. In the 1950s, university students were premier among intellectuals
in Korean society. We began by working near the gates of Ewha
Womans University and Yonsei University. Soon a sizable number of
students were spending time at our church.
Professor Yoon Young Yang, who taught music at Ewha, and Professor
Choong Hwa Han, who was the dormitory master, came to our
church. Many students also came, but they did not come just one or two
at a time. Dozens came, and their numbers grew in geometric progression.
This surprised the established churches and us as well.
Within two months after we began our campus evangelical work, our
congregation exploded in size, primarily with students from Ewha and
Yonsei. The rate of growth was incredible. It was as if a spring breeze
had blown through and changed the hearts of the students all in a moment.
Dozens of Ewha students packed up their belongings and moved
out of the dormitory. This happened on a single day. If someone tried
to stop them, they would say, “Why? Why are you trying to stop me? If
you want to stop me, you’ll have to kill me. Kill me!” They even came
out by climbing the walls around the building. I tried to stop them, but
it was no use. They did not want to be in their clean school; they wanted
to be in our little church that smelled of dirty feet. There was nothing
anyone could do about it.
Finally Dean Hwal Ran Kim (Helen Kim) sent Professor Young
Oon Kim of the Department of Religious Social Welfare to our church.
Professor Kim had studied theology in Canada and was a theologian
in whom Ewha held out great hope for the future. Dean Kim chose
Professor Kim because her specialty was theology, and she assumed she
could develop a definitive critique of our theology that could be used
to finally stop this influx of students. But a week after meeting me, this
special representative, Professor Kim, joined our church and became
one of our most enthusiastic members. This gave us even more credibility
among the other professors and students at Ewha. Our membership
numbers snowballed.
The situation grew out of control, and established churches resumed
their accusations that we were stealing their members. This seemed
unfair to me. I never told anyone to listen to my sermons or attend
our church. If I chased people out the front door, they would come
in the back. If I locked the doors, they would climb over the fence. I
was powerless to stop them. The people most perplexed by this were
the administrators of Yonsei and Ewha, who in turn were supported by
Christian foundations. They could not stand by and do nothing as their
students and faculty came swarming to some other religious group.
11.9.12
The Crazy, Handsome Man by the Well
When we built the mud-walled house and began the churchin Beom-net-gol, there were only three people to hear me
preach. For me, however, I was not talking to just those three
people. I thought to myself, “Though they cannot be seen, I am preaching
to thousands, even tens of thousands.” I envisioned as I preached that
all humanity was in attendance. These three people sat before me while I
conveyed the words of the Principle in a loud, booming voice.
There was a well in front of our house. Soon a rumor began to spread
among those who came to take water from that well: A crazy man lived
in the house with mud walls. They fetched their water and peered into
this ramshackle mud house to see a man in wretched clothing speaking
like he was shouting commands to the whole world. It is only natural
that people began to whisper among themselves. I preached that heaven
and earth would be turned upside down and Korea would unite the
world. Rumors about me soon spread beyond those using the well to
those at the bottom of the hill. Perhaps these rumors are what brought
people coming out of curiosity to see the crazy man living next to the
well. Among these curious ones were students from a nearby seminary,
as well as a group of professors from the prestigious Ewha Womans
University. The rumors also became embellished to say that I was a
handsome man with good stature, so middle-aged women began to
climb the hill to see me as a way to pass the time.
On the day I finished writing Wolli Wonbon, I put my pencil down
and prayed, “The moment has come for me to evangelize. Please send
me the saints to whom I may give witness.” After this, I then went out
to the well. It was May 10, late spring. I was wearing traditional Korean
trousers with cotton lining and an old jacket, sweating in the heat. I
caught sight of a young woman wiping the sweat from her brow as she
struggled up the hill toward the well.
I spoke to her, saying, “God has been giving you tremendous love
for the past seven years.” She jumped backward in surprise. It had been
seven years since she had decided to dedicate her life to God.
“My name is Hyun Shil Kang,” she said. “I am an evangelist at the
Beom Cheon Church that sits in the neighborhood at the bottom of
this hill. I heard there is a crazy man living here, so I have come here to
witness to him.”
This was how she greeted me. I invited her into our house. She looked
around the squalid room, making plain how very strange she found it.
Eventually, her eyes settled on my desk, “Why do you have so many
pencils?” she asked.
“Until this morning,” I replied, “I was writing a book that reveals the
principles of the universe. I think God has sent you here so that you can
learn about these principles from me.”
“What?” she demanded, “I am here because I heard there is a crazy
man living here who needs to be witnessed to.”
I handed her a cushion to sit on, and I sat down as well. The spring
water made its trickling sound as it flowed beneath us.
“In the future, Korea will play its role at the pinnacle of the world,” I
said. “People will regret that they could not be born as Koreans.”
She clearly thought I was speaking nonsense.
“Just as Elijah appeared in the person of John the Baptist,” I continued,
“Jesus will come in the flesh to Korea.”
This made her angry.
“I’m sure Jesus will have better places to come than a place so
wretched as Korea,” she retorted.
Then she said, “Have you ever read the Book of Revelation? I . . .”
I interrupted her in mid-sentence, saying,
“You want to say you have studied at the Goryo Theological Seminary?”
“How did you know that?” she demanded.
“Do you think I would have waited for you without knowing even
that about you? You said you came here to witness to me. Please, then,
teach me.”
Hyun Shil Kang was clearly knowledgeable in theology. She quoted
Bible texts to me one after another in an effort to attack my views. She
continued to challenge me strongly as I kept busy responding to each
of her challenges with answers in a strong and clear voice. Our debate
continued so long that it began to grow dark, so I stood up and cooked
dinner. The only thing we had besides rice was some over ripe kimchi.
Nevertheless, we sat there with the sound of water trickling below and
shared this food before resuming our debate. She came back the next
day and the day after that, each time to continue our debate. In the end,
she chose to devote her life to the principle I teach.
Later that year, on a windy November day, my wife showed up at the
door of the Beom-net-gol hut. There standing with her was a sevenyear-
old boy, my son, who was born the year I left home. I had left that
day simply to go pick up some rice but went to Pyongyang instead. The
years had passed, and now he had grown into a young boy. I could not
bring myself to look him in the eye, nor could I reach out to stroke his
face and embrace him in joy. I just stood there like a stone statue, frozen
in place, speechless.
My wife did not have to say a word. I felt the pain and suffering
this poor mother and child had to experience in the midst of war. Even
before this visit, I knew where they were living and what their situation
was, but I was not yet to the point where I could take care of my family. I
knew this, and I had asked her several times, even before our marriage,
“Please trust me and wait just a little longer.” When the time was right,
I planned to go get them. But in this situation, as they stood in the
door, the right time had not yet come. The hut, our church, was small
and shabby. A number of members ate there and lived there with me to
study God’s word. I could not bring my family there.
My wife took a look around the hut, expressed great disappointment,
and turned to leave. She and my son set off down the steep path.
Президиум Верховной Народной Ассамблеи КНДР посмертно наградил преподобного Мун Сон Мёна премией за национальное воссоединение
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