Growing up in the Unification Church

When I was 24 years old, I saw no way forward in my life and I chose to try and end it. I moved to Fargo, North Dakota from Bridgeport, Connecticut to finish the deed. After being "unsuccessful," I wandered to a homeless shelter and started my life up again. But I had abandoned the faith I was raised in by that point.

 

My desire for a community lead me to the good folks at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fargo-Moorhead. They were a group that accepted all believers whether you were Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, Jew, something else, or even an atheist or an agnostic. I felt it was the perfect fit for me at that time.

 

Each week a new speaker took the podium at the church, offering their wisdom and experience. I felt I also had some meaningful things to share. After thinking about it for months, I asked if I could speak and the good people there obliged me.

The first speech I gave was well-received and so I gave two more. I have pasted the first speech below. The second speech follows this one. The third speech I have unfortunately lost for the present. If it shows up, I will post it.

Growing up Unificationist

I remember playing with a friend up the road as a child. I didn't know the girl very well but she had a cool swingset and that was enough. She was 4. I was 5 and a half. So I felt a little parental when she told me about the amazing thing the Pope recently did. "He's probably the most Godly person in the world," she had said. I smiled to myself for I knew of a man who was much more Godly. But how to tell her about Reverend Moon?

As a child growing up in the Unification Church, there were pictures of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon throughout the house. He was the True Father of humankind. His wife, Hak Ja Han Moon was our True Mother. You would see them standing in the bedroom above the bed, their smiling faces looking down at us. You would see them in a golden picture frame above the mantle in the living room. You might have a picture of them in your pocket. There was a certain comfort to knowing they were there. True Father used to say, "When you look at my picture, it will give you strength."

I grew up in a house in upstate New York with my parents and three older sisters. Life was good in the sleepy town of Red Hook. My parents were devout and loyal. Every Sunday, my Dad would turn on the lights in my room bright and early for the Family Pledge. We would trudge over to the living room and form neat rows. Parents in front. Me and my sisters behind.

The first thing we would do, is bow before the picture of True Parents. I'll give you a demonstration of the Korean ceremonial bow. [Perform bow for congregation]

Then we would recite the 7 lines of the family pledge. Here is one as an example: "Our family pledges to strive every day to advance the unification of the spirit world and physical world as subject and object partners, by centering on true love."

Sometimes we would switch it up and recite the verses in Korean: u-ri ka-jung-un cham-sa-rang-ul chung-shim-ha-go, ha-na-nim-eh chang-jo-i-sang-in chun-ju dae-ga-jok-ul hyung-sung-ha-yoe, ja-yu-wa pyung-hwa-wa tong-il-gwa haeng-bok-eh se-gye-rul wan-sung-hal-go-sul mange-se ha-na-i-da.

The Unification Church had some interesting traditions. For instance, we would disperse small amounts of Holy Salt over the groceries after returning home with them from the store. As youngsters we would attend workshops where we learned church teachings. Our holidays were always joyous occasions. Whether it was God's Day, Parents Day, Childrens Day, or The Day of All Things, these were times when Unification Church members from the whole area would come together and celebrate. If we were lucky, True Father would be speaking somewhere nearby.

If my Dad got a call that Father would be speaking, he would wake up at 2am, clean himself up, put on his best suit and tie and bring any and all waking members of the Kirkley family to Tarrytown in New York. It was only an hour and half drive but you had to get there early so you could find a spot close to True Father. There was a horde of Unification Church members (we knew them as Family Members) that would enter the rolling garden property of Belvedere on those Sunday mornings. There would always be a flood of cars parked on the huge lawn. We would get out of our vehicle and walk the curving roads to the house on the bottom of the hill where Father would speak. And as we walked, we noticed families we knew, and were close to, walking alongside us. "Oh look, there's the Minkler family!" "Oh hey, look! It's the Reids." "Mom, I'm gonna go say hello to Lin!"

Down at the bottom of the hill was a brown house that was colloquially known as.... The Brown House. They dazzled it up and put a rug in the 4-car garage. If you were lucky, you got to sit on the carpet. If you weren't quite so lucky - if those pesky kids of yours took too long to wake up in the morning - you might be sitting just outside on one of the fold-up chairs. Sometimes there were as much as 600 people huddled up in and around the Brown House. Sometimes more. Ultimately however, we were all lucky because the Messiah was living on the earth in the flesh. And we had a chance to be with him and hear him speak.

After a prayer and cheering, the True Parents would come out. They were royalty to us. The cheering would die and it was time to bow. Every one of us performed as solemn a bow as we could muster. Then we were seated.

An image comes to mind. While bowing once, I stole a moment and looked up. There were the eyes of Reverend Moon, barely perceptible through their Korean epicanthic folds. He was scanning the audience, almost like a rabid animal. His head moved side to side as he seemed to absorb the face of each and every member... His Children.

Moon spoke with a boisterous voice. It was a grand opera to hear him speak. He used his native tongue - the language he learned back in the hinterlands of Pyongyang. If you didn't know Korean, you didn't understand a word. Even if you knew Korean, you might not catch it because his accent was so thick. Thankfully, there was a dutiful English Translator to relay every message. Sometimes Father would correct the Translator if he thought he didn't get it right. Sometimes he would use the translator as a whipping board, metaphorically whipping the audience for some transgression or sin. We all loved it and we all deserved it.

I remember once watching Father place his head on the translator's upper torso behind the arm. He waddled like a duck, moving the helpless translator across the stage. I don't remember the joke but we all laughed uproariously.

On those special Sunday mornings as the sun rose out from behind the pines and showed lovingly upon the waters of the Hudson River, you could sense that you were part of something important. Among the world's people, you were special.

As a Family Member, no one knew Reverend Moon the way I knew him.

Moon grew up in a united Korea. The closest city to his home was Pyongyang. He was born in 1920 during harsh Japanese colonial rule. His family was poor and he was raised in typical Confucian fashion. Sun Myung was a restless child. His great-grandfather, a wise man in the town, came once to visit the family. When he saw Sun Myung, it is said, he declared "This child will grow to be either a great leader or a great criminal." I sometimes think about that legend and wonder if both were not true.

In his early teens, the Moon family converted to Christianity. Sun Myung poured over the pages of the Bible. Even as a youth he spent hours praying fervently. What were the hidden meanings behind the many parables and stories? Why did the Jewish Nation, God's Chosen People have to go through such turmoil before finding a country of their own? What explained the endless warring? And especially, why had they turned their back on and betrayed their Savior, the man God had worked so hard to bring to the earth, Jesus Christ?

Moon would climb the tallest mountains in the area determined to meditate on these questions and discover their solutions through communion with God. On one special night, at the age of 16, a vision appeared to him. To his surprise, Jesus had come before him. He had come to ask Sun Myung to perform a mission given to him by God. Specifically, Moon was asked to continue the work of Jesus on the earth. The time had come for Jesus' Second Coming. But it would not be Jesus in the flesh. As Moon liked to say, the laws God put in place, not even He could break. And resurrecting a man from the dead would break the laws of physics. The Second Coming of Christ, as prophecied in the New Testament, was not to be Jesus in the flesh. It was to be one of God's Chosen.

At first, Sun Myung refused to accept this mission from God. But he returned the next night... and the next. Finally, he promised, with tears flowing, that he would bear the cross that was given to him. He would do his best, to carry out the mission of Jesus on the earth.

This was not something you could take lightly. Moon went about his life and studies keeping this knowledge to himself. Intuitively, he may have known that he was not ready to go out and preach the word of God at the young age of 16. Perhaps he knew he had more to learn.

Moon later went to University in Japan. For him, it was a passport to the Lion's Den - for the Japanese were the oppressors of the Korean people. Joining a separatist movement in school, Moon quickly got a reputation as a dissident. If he was captured by the Japanese and questioned, he was beaten brutally. On one occasion he had his ribs and back broken and lost a significant amount of blood.

When he returned to Korea, he continued his efforts to free Korea from the grip of its oppressors and it landed him a sentence in a concentration camp. But these weren't just any concentration camps. People who entered, even if the sentence was short, did not come out alive, and for that reason, they were known as death camps.

Prisoners were forced to dig, fill, and carry bags of lime. The chemical is toxic and corrodes the skin. Forced into cells of 20 to 25 men, Moon, always going the way of sacrifice, chose the spot closest to the toilet where the stench was extreme. People would die all around him. Rations were a bowl of rice and some gruel once a day. If a prisoner died suddenly, other prisoners would rush to remove the rice from his mouth.

For Sun Myung Moon, Satan was testing his resolve. In order to conquer the powers of evil, he committed himself to certain values he would later entrust to all his disciples. Life was to be lived for the sake of Others. If Heaven asks you to do 2 good deeds, you should do 4. If you are asked to give 100% of your effort, you should think, "I will do 110%." The way to treat your enemy is to conquer him through love.

When the United Nations forces bombed the prison, the guards dispersed, and Moon fled south with two of his disciples. After one of his disciples broke his leg and asked to be left to die, Moon chastised him and forced him to climb on his back. Through an amazing force of will, Moon carried his disciple all the way across the 38th parallel - or what is now known as the Demilitarized Zone. As Korea engaged in its most profound war in history, Moon made his way around the country, ministering wherever he went. In 1954, in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, he founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity or what is now known as The Unification Church.

As the Church grew in Seoul, he would send his most zealous members on missions to foreign countries to bear witness to The Truth. Missionaries would carry their copy of the church's textbook, The Divine Principle, to all 4 corners of the globe and proselytize. Soon there was no region of the world that was left untouched.

But what was Moon's mission exactly? Here, in brief, is the basic theology of the Unification Church:

God created Man to carry out the Purpose of Creation which was to live without sin, follow the mandate of Heaven, and enjoy peace in an eternal Eden. The one fruit they could not eat was the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. This was a metaphor for sexual intercourse before the Blessing of Marriage. When the fallen angel Lucifer tempted Eve, and Eve tempted Adam, the couple attached themselves to the Bloodline of Satan. Because of this, the proper lineage of God could not be established. Human history since that point has been a history of Restoration. Each generation from Cain and Abel to Noah to Abraham to Jacob and Esau to Moses to Jesus was another chance to set up the conditions for Restoration. That could only be accomplished when a Man chosen by God, lived a life without sin and found a woman without sin and beared children and a family who could follow the tradition of heaven. In Unification theology, Jesus failed in his mission to marry and create a True Family. As a result, the dispensation of Restorational History was delayed 2,000 years until the time of Reverend Moon.

Sounds like a load of Hooey? Well... for most of my life there was no question in my mind about any of this.

Well, here I was, growing up in this church and receiving the special treatment of being the 2nd generation in a burgeoning religious movement. My parents, who joined the church and whose marriages were arranged and sanctified by the True Parents, were known as the 1st generation. We were tasked to live a life of service to the will of heaven.

My Dad left the family when I was 5 years old. My parents' marriage was in bad shape, and my father went to Korea to take a job as an English professor. For him, it was not just a career but a mission to serve the people of Korea.

I was in a lonely world hanging on to the every word of my longsuffering mother, a very devout French woman. My only goal in the world was to please her and make her life easier. Of course, growing up in America, it was hard to escape the reckless depravity of consumerism and the spectacle of the boob tube. I was a zealous, puffy, self-righteous, little kid that loved Goosebumps and Redwall books, saturday morning cartoons, the Magic The Gathering Card Game, and bicycling around my neighborhood.

When I was 14, I went to a boarding High School on The University of Bridgeport Campus in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Both the High School and University were holdings of Reverend Moon. I continued my religious education and tried very hard not to be a 14 year old young man with all the sexual desires that come at that age. I tried to be a shining example to my fellow students, all of whom seemed more interested in body-building, skipping class, and doing drugs. I was one of the few nerdy kids who was dedicated to my faith. I was destined to be matched to a woman and have a marriage that God and the True Parents could be proud of and happy with. Maybe one day, my family could be one that would give Heavenly Father such immense joy. That was my fervent desire.

As a teenager, I was truly perplexed by the behavior of some of my peers. People in the Fallen World did not know the Principle and so had an excuse for a sinful lifestyle. But why was it that wherever I looked, the Second Gen were having sex, drinking or doing drugs, going out after curfew, or clashing with the Headmaster of the school? Some of them said very awful things about True Father or seemed not to care at all about the church. I even heard about some older Second Gen that were the age of my oldest sister who left the church. How sorrowful God must feel when he sees this?

It only strengthened my resolve to be a good son of God, a good son to my parents, a good brother to my sisters and to my friends. If no one else could do it, I could be the kid that God could trust.

After graduating high school, I sought to escape the vagaries of those tumultuous few years. I worked hard for a company owned by one of the True Children... that is, one of the sons of Sun Myung Moon. The company was called UV3 and we sold sunglasses at rest stops along the highway. I scrimped and saved and soon had enough money to attend the Korean Language Institute in True Father's homeland of Korea.

As we were taught, the Korean peninsula was a place of great turmoil for heaven. Just as Jesus was persecuted and rejected by his people, so was Sun Myung Moon in his time. Just like Israel was divided into a Northern and Southern territory so long ago, so was Korea, corrupted by the agents of the evil spirit world, divided in two parts. One part represented goodness - the Christian South, the other represented evil - the Communist North. Through prayer, conditions, and special campaigns, it was the job of Unificationists to help usher in a peaceful, united country under God. As Father would say, "Once Korea is united, Japan will be united. When Japan is united, America and the Western World will be united. And then soon the whole world will be united."

Here was my chance to go to Korea and help further the Providence.

For 4 months, I would rise early every morning to read the Bible. I already knew The Divine Principle through and through. I spent an hour and half each morning reading The Old Testament. Then I would pray and get ready to go to school. A friend of mine who joined me in my journey to learn Korean quit coming to these early morning sessions after the first few times. Another little thing I would do that was a popular spiritual condition for UC members was take cold showers. Every time I took a shower, it was cold. In Korea, people of the same gender shower together. I would resolve myself to spend at least 5 minutes under the cold water that in winter time became pretty damn cold. It didn't matter that my shoulders and head became red and numb. It didn't matter the looks I got from the other people in the shower. I thought of the persecution of Sun Myung Moon his whole life. I thought of the times he prayed all night, with tears rushing like a river. I thought of the times he would be beaten for the things he believed. I thought of the persecution he received from the American people - the way the press would call us a cult - the fact that he was imprisoned in Connecticut. When I thought of those things - it was easy to follow the course I had set for myself.

Then, in the winter, on break from studying Korean, I engaged in a program many 2nd Gen were asked to do. It was a simpler program to the witnessing and fundraising my parents did when they were part of the Mobile Fundraising Teams. We called it STF or the Special Task Force. We would go around Seoul paired with another STFer and ask for donations for a charity to help build homes for the poor in the African continent. If your Korean was not very good, you would just read from the script posted to the front of your donation box. We would get on a bus or subway car, read the script, and then mill around collecting donations. At night we would receive lectures on Unification Thought, the life of Reverend Moon, and what our job was as a Blessed Child of God.

I remember one day being paired with a beautiful Korean girl. I had made the mistake a week before of giving her a small gift on her birthday. She seemed enamored with me for much of our time together fundraising. She seemed tired of the work and pleaded with me to rest. Once, in a narrow corner in a secluded alley of Seoul, she tugged at my arm and pulled me down. I tried to pull away from her but she crouched on her knees like a wounded animal. I didn't know what was the matter with her but said we could rest there a bit. She looked up at me with these fawning eyes that I will never forget. An urge to touch her came over me. But my training as a Blessed Child kicked in. This girl was my spiritual sister. I was not to engage in sinful lust. If I touched her, who knows where that would lead? Maybe I would go out of control and commit the sin of Adam and Eve. I just couldn't do that. If I did, what woman would want me to be their husband?

We did not do much fundraising that day. At night we went to a KFC in town and had biscuits and strawberry jam.

Sometimes I think about that girl now and what I would have done if I wasn't who I was then. I would have given her a kiss she would never forget.

One night, as we prayed in the gathering hall, I felt the urge to leave the group and go out. It was as if a spirit was moving me. I found a corner of the small campus out in that cold, crisp, winter air. Suddenly, the weight of the world and my path in life seemed to dump on my shoulders. I dropped to my knees in prayer. I cried and cried telling God about my troubles. I prayed that he would remember the suffering of the True Parents and all the Unification Members who were working hard across the globe to help realize the goals of the Providence. I prayed that I could be entrusted with more responsibility. I could do it. I swore I could. It wouldn't matter how much trouble was handed to me. It was nothing. I cried and cried, and then cried some more. And soon there was nothing to pray about. There was just the tears and the heartache.

But soon I looked up towards the sky. It was a clear night without a single cloud. The stars seemed to glow peacefully above. I felt in that moment something I couldn't describe to another soul. There aren't words for the tranquility I felt inside.

At present, I live in Fargo, North Dakota, many mental and physical miles away from the family and tradition I once loved. There is a comfort to knowing through and through that you are a son of God. I know one thing for certain, I will never feel that same way again. If you think I was brainwashed, I challenge you to consider what it is you are saying. I challenge you to think again.