Moon, Sun-Myung

(b. 1920)

   Sect Founder.

   Moon was born in Korea. The story of his origins and early life is obscure, but he claims to have had a vision of Jesus Christ in 1936. This was the first of several visitations and, at the end of the Second World War, he started his own Church. He was arrested on several occasions and served time in a labour camp, but in 1954, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity was founded. The Unification Church, as it is called, is based on Moon’s Divine Principle. He teaches that the fallen nature of humanity can only be restored through the purification of blood lineages which takes place at the sect’s mass marriage ceremonies. In the 1970s, Moon moved his headquarters to the United States, where he was subsequently imprisoned for tax evasion. Undaunted, the Church sustains a theological seminary, the Washington Institute, the Washington Times newspaper and various other organisations. Moon and his followers have been accused of using brainwashing techniques on new recruits, but this has never been substantiated.

   The Church is known to be virulently anti-Communist and it supports (and is supported by) a range of rightwing causes.

   E. Barker, The Making of a Moonie (1984);

   Sun- Myung Moon, The Divine Principle [many editions].