Moon's Dead: Not Exactly Good News (Not Exactly Bad)

Well lookee-lookeee - a very-profitable false prophet has died: 

  Sun Myung Moon, a self-professed messiah who claimed millions of religious followers in his Unification Church and sought to become a powerful voice in the American conservative movement through business interests that included the Washington Times, has died. He was 92

. …His stated ambition was to rule the world and replace Christianity with his own faith, which blended elements of Christianity, Confucianism and Korean folk religions. A leading symbol of the 1970s cult wars in America, he attracted a great deal of attention and ridicule for holding mass weddings for Unificationist couples whom he had paired, often without the prospective partners ever having met.

Sigh. "His stated ambition was to rule the world,…" And, of course, with that ambition there's a Romney connection. How cool is that? You guys LOVE him and his world-striding cult, too!

“The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world.” 

 Whatta guy. My hero. Being subjugated is all I've ever hoped for.

By the mid-1980s, Mr. Moon’s recruitment efforts in America had begun to flag. The National Council of Churches had rejected Unificationism, calling it “incompatible with Christian teaching and belief.” Congress had investigated Mr. Moon’s connections with the South Korean CIA and issued a report damning his businesses as a global network designed to further the growth of a religious cult.

 So what? It was just another cult in America. That's the "in" thing now. 

Bowing before cult leaders. Totally American.

In 2004, he was photographed in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, wearing regal robes and a gold crown and flanked by members of Congress. The picture was taken after a ceremony in which Mr. Moon proclaimed before U.S. senators and representatives that he was “none other than humanity’s savior, messiah, returning lord and true parent.” That was a truth, he told the gathered crowd, that Stalin and Hitler had recognized in conversations from beyond the grave. 

In fact, according to Mr. Moon’s sermons, Jesus also had spoken from the spirit realm and recognized Mr. Moon as the savior of humankind. So had Buddha, Muhammad and Satan, among others. Mr. Moon claimed he had found a wife for Jesus and blessed the couple’s marriage.

 

My education was such a waste when faced with this. I really don't know what the point of it was anymore. I should've been a preacher, or guru, and said wacky shit for shits and giggles, then I, too, would've been respected. 

  In 1998, a steady drip of stories about the dysfunctionality of the supposedly perfect Moon family reached a climax when Nansook Hong, the ex-wife of Mr. Moon’s son Hyo Jin Moon, published a tell-all memoir. “In the Shadow of the Moons” accused Hyo Jin of cocaine addiction and domestic abuse and alleged that Mr. Moon was himself guilty of adultery and money laundering. 

In 1999, another son, Young Jin Moon, fell from the 17th floor of a Reno, Nev., hotel. His death was ruled a suicide by the local coroner. A third son, Heung Jin Moon, was killed in a 1984 car crash; four years later, Mr. Moon announced that Heung Jin had been reincarnated in the body of a Zimbabwean church member.

I read “In the Shadow of the Moons”. It was pretty horrifying. But even after that, nobody really challenged Moon. To do so was "bigotry." Just go along to get along. He made a lot of money, right? That's all that matters. The people trapped in his cult definitely don't. I mean, it's not YOU, so what do you care?

“I will continue to lead the church from the spirit world.” 

 Yeah, sure, whatever you say, asshole,....