Word: moons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Unification Church believes the line of towering Judeo-Christian prophets begins with Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and is revived with Reverend Moon. According to this view, Christ redeemed man's spirit while Moon wants to redeem the whole man; to exalt his material side as well as his spiritual. This is why the Church encourages its members to found businesses and to give generously to the Church--actually just another version of the American Protestant work and tithe ethic...
...Indeed, Moon is in some ways quintessentially American. He was tortured in several communist prison camps and was once left for dead on a bloody snowbank in Dac Dong, but he survived to become an immigrant millionaire. A devout anti-communist, Moon's speeches frequently echo not only of one of his heroes, Douglas MacArthur, but also of earlier American patriots. One of his recent statements: "I am even willing to give my life, if that will ensure that the nation and world survive and do God's will" echoes of Nathan Hale...
Unfortunately for his place in U.S. history books, however, Moon spent the decade after he came to America in 1971 earning a reputation as a kidnapper and brainwasher of freckle-faced Kansans. The vast majority of press accounts of the Unification Church during the 1970's were unfavorable," and Moon's national image is still tarnished...
...controversy aside, Moon's theology has yet to achieve widespread acceptance in the United States, where he numbers only 45,000 followers. An amicus curiae or "friend of the court" brief submitted on Moon's behalf by churches representing over 40 million parishioners noted that...
Cases such as this, while nominally related to taxes, bear a striking resemblance to the ordeals of Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, Joseph Smith, and Mary Baker Eddy, all of whom appeared hardly less alien and threatening to many in the early days of their movements than Reverend Moon appears to many today...