Moon-Struck

For weeks his placid Korean countenance seemed to be everywhere New Yorkers looked: on commuter train posters, in full-page newspaper ads, in a flurry of broadsides handed out by earnest young men and women on the sidewalks of Manhattan. The message of his coming was brief: CHRISTIANITY IN CRISIS. NEW HOPE. REV. SUN MYUNG MOON. Last week, in Carnegie Hall, the Rev. Moon finally appeared in person to begin a four-month, 21-city "Day of Hope" tour of the U.S. His goal: nothing less than the unification of all mankind. His credentials: though Moon himself never quite claims the title, his followers believe him to be the "Lord of the Second Advent"--the Second Coming of Christ.

That part of Moon's message does not get top billing these days, however. At a tour kickoff dinner at the Waldorf Astoria, Master Moon--as his disciples often call him--was presented somewhat vaguely as the standard-bearer of a new ecumenical morality campaign who is a staunch anti-Communist to boot. His audience was a prosperous looking crowd which was liberally sprinkled with U.S. military uniforms. Scattered among the guests, saying "sir" and "ma'am," were Moon's own well-scrubbed troops: neatly barbered young men in crisp new suits and carefully coiffed young women in demure dresses.

Moon does not fit the standard image of the guru out of the East. At 53, he is, in fact, a millionaire whose holdings in various enterprises (including ginseng tea, titanium production, pharmaceuticals, air rifles) are worth perhaps $15 million. The business success has grown hand-in-hand with his religious endeavors, which began, as he tells it, with a vision of Jesus Christ on a Korean mountainside in 1936, a vision that told young Moon--then a Presbyterian--to "carry out my undone task."

Moon became an electrical engineer before he found his mission after World War II in Communist North Korea. He fell in with some Pentecostal Christians in Pyongyang's underground church--among whom there were already predictions of a Korean Messiah--and developed a following of his own. Imprisoned by the Communists for nearly three years, he was liberated in 1950. By 1954 he had founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity--known more simply as the Unification Church. In the same year his wife of ten years left him because, he claims, "she could not comprehend my mission."

His book of doctrine, Divine Principle, appeared in 1957, quickly to become the Bible of his followers. It is a curious mixture of Christian fundamentalism, Taoist-like dualism, numerology, and even metaphors from Moon's electrical engineering (the "give and take" between proton and electron, for example, as a model for that between God and man). The book points to a new Saviour from Korea, whose timing is remarkably similar to Moon's.

Moon's main focus is the tragedy of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve, intended by God to be joined in divine matrimony, were to have been the perfect parents, and form, with God, a kind of Trinity to shape the world. But Eve sinned by committing adultery with an archangel, who thereby became Satan. According to Moon, Jesus was supposed to be a second Adam, creating the perfect family. His crucifixion, before he had a chance to marry, redeemed mankind spiritually, but not physically--a task left over for the Lord of the Second Advent. In Moon's divine account books, there is also a law of restitution that requires an "indemnity" of suffering, especially from the Jews because they rejected Jesus.

Onstage, Moon sells his ideas like a tub-thumping evangelist, slapping his fist into his hand to make a point, belting out his words in enthusiastic Korean, which an aide quickly translates. After two decades of such evangelizing, Moon's church and its affiliates (One World Crusade and the Freedom Leadership Foundation, among others) seem to be just hitting their stride. Although orthodox Christians recoil from Moon's teachings, the Moonists claim 600,000 followers worldwide, with perhaps 100,000 "core members" who are willing to give up their personal lives entirely to work for the master. In the U.S., there are some 3,000 core members, perhaps another 7,000 sympathizers.

Forty Days. The core members--most in their 20s, many of them converts from other spiritual, psychological or political trips--display a dogged devotion that makes even Jehovah's Witnesses look like backsliders. They are enthusiastic capitalists who rise at dawn to hit the streets with wares to exchange for "donations": flowers, votive light candles, even peanuts. Last year, when Master Moon moved his international headquarters to Tarrytown, N.Y., members sold candles across the U.S. for seven weeks to meet the down payment of $300,000 on an $850,000 estate.

Apostolic salesmanship is not all that is required: the movement's puritanism might impress Cotton Mather. There is no dating; marriage partners for disciples are selected by Moon and his lieutenants. Both men and women submit lists of five candidates and, after counseling, their leaders make a choice. Newly married couples must refrain from sex for 40 days after the wedding ceremony, which is the holiest act of the sect. Moon thunders against adultery and fornication; members who fall, he warns darkly, may never be saved.

As for Moon himself, he married for the second time in 1960. His wife, a quietly beautiful woman named Hak-Ja Han, has since borne him four sons and three daughters. Though he recently told followers that his wife has not yet reached his own spiritual perfection, Moon is apparently confident that she will do so eventually. Together, his teaching makes evident, they are the new Adam and Eve, their children the first of a new, perfect world.

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