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whatisonthemoon · 1 year

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On the Unification Church Inheriting the Moral Re-Armament Movement’s Role (and Resources on the MRA)

▲ Pictured: MRA event at Madison Square Garden

It is widely believed that the Moral Re-Armament Movement, an anti-communist organization that sought moral and spiritual revival in individuals and in society. This organization was also propped up by U.S. intelligence and played a role in post-war reconstruction in Europe and Asia, including both Japan and South Korea. Both Nobusuke Kishi and Kim Jong Pil supported the MRA, likely due to the CIA’s direction. The MRA’s willingness to engage in the diplomatic interests of the U.S. and the United Kingdom, as well as other imperialist powers, and their desire to shift culture to become “God-centered,” which in its ambiguity implied conservative values grounded in the Christian faith. They pushed a politic of reconciliation between leaders of enemy nations, with the leader of the “oppressor” nation often apologizing on behalf of their people’s war crimes, and the leader representing the occupied or oppressed nation apologizing for resentment and/or rebellion. The MRA was also used to quell militant union activity, pressing against class struggle in factories and instead “industrial harmony.”

The MRA squashed any politics of “class struggle” or “social justice” with vague rhetoric on peace and universal brotherhood.

The Christian orientation of the MRA did not quite make sense in Japan. In many ways the MRA had to obscure its Christian origins in order to successfully gain support among the political establishment. With both Kishi and the CIA’s support, this organization became an influential force in Japan.

▲ Pictured: Frank Buchman posing with American actress and entertainer Mae West

Buchman, the founder of both the MRA and Alcoholics Anonymous, was also sympathetic to fascism. He later claimed that MRA pushed a worldview that was contrary to both fascism and communism, but in 1936 he was quoted in Time Magazine saying, “I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism.”

In 1962, Buchman passed away, and the MRA lost considerable influence, though retaining many important contacts and restructuring a number of times. That said, the seeds for other similar organizations began to take shape, once again propped up by the U.S. government. This includes the Fellowship, or the Family, who run the National Prayer Breakfast (though the breakfast alleges they broke with the organization).

In 1962, it has been said that the Unification Church experienced major internal restructuring, coming into a closer, more intimate partnership with the KCIA.

Many believe that in 1962, the MRA’s role as a theologically-flexible, diplomatic movement that served U.S. interests through soft power, offering a third “God-centered” way beyond capitalism and communism, was taken up by the Unification Church’s network. The work of the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation (KCFF), with Radio of Free Asia and the Little Angels, was an early example of this in the United States. Through the 70s, there were a number of Moonie bands, choirs, and other musical and creative groups, which was something that the MRA and its associated organizations were known for (”Sing Out”).

The Unification Church network also helped bring taekwondo to the United States through the efforts of Bo Hi Pak and mainly his cousin Jhoon Rhee. Rhee was a member and in the early days of the Unification Church in the U.S., played a central figure role to some new members. He was said to have attempted recruiting members of the military to the Unification Church.

The 70s and 80s were an especially active time for the Unification Church’s political work, with tens of thousands of Japanese recruits campaigning, rallying, lobbying, working as secretaries for politicians, and even fighting communists in the streets. This was also when there was the highest number of both American and European recruits, which aided the Unification Church’s ability to organize internationally, as there was now an extensive network of multi-lingual free labor. The UC’s network had already been giving education and training to Japanese and Korean governments and militaries, and had to some degree been an influence in D.C. through Bo HI Pak’s efforts and the political Moonie cadre surrounding Freedom Foundation Leadership, but their influence and reach exploded during this period, as they consulted and organized society’s most respected and influential figures, all over the world, through different cultural and service initiatives, academic conferences.

These conferences and events had hundreds of members offering their free labor as translators and interpreters, masseuses, tour guides, aides, A/V techs, lecturers, musicians, etc.

Their work also expanded in its more explicitly “anti-communist” activity, especially as it began to take hold of the World Anti-Communist League. Though Moon formally distanced himself from the WACL, saying it was “fascist,” the Unification Church has been said to have funded 85% of their work into the 80s, including their covert actions. Under the veil of “soft power,” the Unification Church funded, organized, and armed anti-communist vigilantes and death squads all over the world.

It is likely around 1962 that the Unification Church became formally became acquainted with the CIA, with Bo HI Pak acting as a liaison between the CIA and KCIA as the Korean Embassy’s Assistant Military Attaché. This was the year that Kim Jong Pil visited both the government and intelligence officials in D.C., organized by Moonie KCIA agents. Kim also visited the Moonies in California, assuring church members that the South Korean government supported them.

The MRA partnered with Nobusuke Kishi and Yoshio Kodama, two war criminals, CIA-connected allies of the Unification Church with considerable connections to organized crime. Kishi was even present at their headquarters’ opening in Japan. It seems that into the late 60s/1970, the Unification Church replaced the MRA’s role to these men, and Ryoichi Sasakawa. The thousands of young cadre in the Unification Church became an unending resource to the Japanese Right, which was a hot bed of wealthy, union-busting fascists, and was seen as a vital weapon in shutting down the revolutionary fervor of the 60s and 70s.

From the 90s into the 2000s, Unification Church-organized fronts, like Women’s Federation for World Peace and Unification, Universal Peace Federation, as well as their IFVOC-type organizations, continued to influence politicians inside and outside the Liberal Democratic Party, and push grassroots organizing efforts against gay marriage and other conservative initiatives.

There’s a lot to be said about the MRA, but below there’s some posts that touch on the MRA, Frank Buchman, as well as related organizations (such as the Fellowship/The Family), and other notes.

MRA / Oxford Group / Frank Buchman

On Frank Buchman and Fascism

The Imperial Ghost in the Neoliberal Machine (Figuring the CIA) by Koichiro Osaka (2019)

Religion: God-Controlled Dictatorship (1936) MRA and the politics of reconciliation - excerpted from “The conservative imaginary: moral re-armament and the internationalism of the Japanese right, 1945–1962” by Reto Hofmann

On the MRA’s Ideology, its influence on Kishi and potentially Moon

On the alleged “naive” fascism of the MRA

Rev. Moon Goes to College by Daniel Junas

Happiness ginseng from earth-conquering Moonies – Japan (1978)

The Family/The Fellowship/The National Prayer Breakfast

Steve Hassan on the National Prayer Breakfast (twitter thread)

The Moonies, The Family, the MRA

On the Connections Between the MRA and the Fellowship

Internal Email Reveals The Family Still Involved in "New" Prayer Breakfast

Moon at the 1974 National Prayer Breakfast

How Rev. Moon’s ‘Snakes’ Infested the US by Robert Parry (Consortium News)

Exposé: The Christian Mafia (Where Those Who Now Run the U.S. Government Came From and Where They Are Taking Us) By Wayne Madsen

How the National Prayer Breakfast became an opportunity for presidents and faith leaders alike to push their political agendas

On “The Family” or “The Fellowship” - Excerpted from ‘C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy’

More Questions about Young Oon Kim, and What is Clear

US-Funding in Post-War Japan

More Testimonies - Frank Frivolous on Sun Ae Kang’s mention of the MRA

Did Young Oon Kim become an asset? - questions on Young Oon Kim’s potential MRA activity

MRA-associated Weatherhead’s Influence of Young On Kim and Unification Theology

What Can We Learn From the Uncanny Parallels Between the Moonies and the Cult of Trump?

Confession in the Unification Church

Notes

Bo Hi Pak was connected to the controversial DC-based Family or the Fellowship soon after coming to the US. This group, founded by Abraham Vereide, continues to run the National Prayer Breakfasts, and can be linked to the Moral Re-Armament Movement. This group was where Pak was seeking to make anti-communist, Republican allies, when he first came to Virginia from the Republic of Korea.

Japanese Religions, Vol. 9, July 1976, No. 2:

According to the followers of the Uniﬁcation Church, President Nixon was the greatest President to be known as ardently anti-Communist. However, the Communist-influenced politicians are destroying the President with the Watergate issue. At the national Christmas tree lighting ceremony in 1973 over 1000 followers of the Uniﬁcation Church turned out to “cheer President Nixon,” carrying signs like “God loves Nixon” and “Support the President.” Not long after this “cheering of the President,” Moon was invited to the twenty-second annual National Prayer Breakfast at the Hilton Hotel. On the following day the President invited him to an unscheduled meeting.

Bad Moon Rising by John Gorenfeld:

“I must lay a firm foundation for Master by making influential political and social contacts,” Pak explained one night over dinner to Bob and Betty Roland, whom he had finally won over as friends despite repeated rejections. They dined at Pak’s house in a middle-class neighborhood on Utah Street in Arlington, which by evenings were awhirl with guests—not just Pak’s fellow Moonies but new potential friends—other figures in the northern Virginia suburbs drawn, like the Rolands, to his hospitality. Pak hadn’t mentioned Moon until months after their first dinner. He was combing Washington for anti-Communists and Christians with whom he could find common goals, while presenting a mainstream image. The country club luncheon had been a good lead. Started in the Depression, the cozy atmosphere of men’s fellowship was intended by Republican founders of the International Christian Leadership (ICL) to combat labor unions with the new fusion of Jesus and American enterprise. ICL soon found friends on Capitol Hill, and from 1953 onward, it hosted the presidential National Prayer Breakfast. The Senate chaplain hailed the new tradition as a sign of a “Return-to-God movement” in America.

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