Someone wrote, "Suppose, for example, that an ultra-rightist offshoot of the Nazi party decided to do what a number of other essentially non religious organizations have done, simply call themselves a religion for the two common reasons: tax benefits and freedom from official investigation." This is the common motif in criticism of the UC. It is not really religious but a front for a right wing political dictatorship that condones force and tyranny. Hitler was anti-Communist also and so it doesn’t’ mean anything that he is against totalitarianism. That he has said Christians took over the Roman Empire by love not guns is not mentioned. Critics pick only a few quotes that are taken out of context. It gets down to simple persecution. Black people look different, so lynch them. People, by and large, are still not educated as Allen shows. He considers himself an intellectual leader in America whose campaign in life is to get Americans to think clearly. Jefferson was disgusted by this type of bigot. There are Nazi groups in America who hate blacks and use violence and the police are onto them. There are gangs of predators in the projects and in rural America killing over drugs. Why the hysteria about Moon. It is from Satan. Who distorts the media and people to repeat history and kill the messiah.

Where is greed when he gives billions to organizations. What billionaire has given more? No one. They keep their money. Where is the sexism when he sends a woman as the first missionary to America, Miss Kim a Ph.D. . Where is the racism when he marries interracially and says he wants to end race by blending everyone together? Where is the hate when he constantly talks of family and love of God, country and family . Where is the meanness when he responds with forgiveness to Kim Il Sun who condemned his parents to hell in North Korea and when he carried the luggage of his Japanese dominators and torturers when his country was freed after W.W.II. Where is abuse of members when he works harder than anyone around him, when he carries a member 600 miles on his back to South Korea after walking out of a concentration camp where for three years he shared his meager food with fellow prisoners and works for ecumenical religious conferences and hires non member professors for this seminary and . Brainwashed followers. I dare MR. Allen go into any home of a member who is married and find one family who shows any sign of being dangerous, insane and depraved? As for bizarre. I find Mr. Allen bizarre for creating an atmosphere of violence against the UC. Go into any home and find someone who is a slave.? Out of excitement for the vision of winning America to God and returning it back to the ideals of the founding fathers that Mr. Allen fights against in this cultural war. Mr. Allen is like so many liberals who have a fear of the right to turn America into a place like the book and the movie it was based The Handmaid’s tale of religious nuts who talk love and then rape the bodies and minds of nice liberals like Him . Allen hates the Reagans too. They just aren’t’ "new" enough for him.

Where is the fake religion when almost every mainline denomination in America stood by Rev. Moon and asked the Supreme Court to throw out the judgment of the jury who persecuted Rev. Moon. They didn’t and he went to Jail and Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, a Mormon, held a special subcommittee hearing on religious freedom and Rev. Moon spoke in his own defense and Sen. Hatch a friend of Rev. Moon called him a "great Man." And mentioned that America killed the founder of his church. Even the liberals that Allen would have to like, such as Senator Eugene McCarthy supported him.

The constant theme of criticism is the comparison of Moon to Hitler.

"Suppose further that this new ‘religion’ preached that Jews, Communists, blacks and Catholics were agents of the devil and therefore rightfully prey to the new avengers of God. How many people would have to be killed before the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Congress and other agencies of public order decided that matters had gone to far? As the authors of Gifts of Deceit ask: 'Does freedom of religion give Moon the right to violate the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which outlaws slavery.'" This is intellectual sloppiness and he is the truly dangerous person for defining words and twisting words in such yellow journalism and tabloid journalism.

A couple of "cults" out of thousands commit suicide. Out of the tens of millions of Catholics there have been thousands of suicides and every depravity known to man and Hollywood makes movies out of these terrible abuses of every mainline church. To lump all Catholics with some crazed person is not done because it is established.

There is also the factor that Rev. Moon is Korean. An oriental. He looks different, talks different.

Too many members probably just live for the day. Be a good foot soldier, follow your leader like some private, seaman or airman and the generals will tell you what to do and they will win the war. That is natural in all organizations. But rev. moon really wants educated, geniuses who have a superior standard to the "outside world." The idea of suicide is ridiculous because it violates the basic tenets of faith that this world will be the first kingdom of heaven. Jesus was a utopian. Christians don’t know this. They think he was talking about the afterlife but he meant the building of the ideal world here on earth. Going to spirit world is not the answer. IT is a low realm and we learn in the Principle you can’t die. We can’t escape ourselves or our responsibility. Toynbee wrote that maybe a violent dictator might be good if he unites the world. Toynbee wanted unification so bad he missed the point that God does not want that now. The ancient Israelites were told to use force. Christians aren’t.

In the Canadian magazine Macleans, a former member raises the same charges. To do so shows that the church has not taught its own members Rev. Moon’s value system. It should be crystal clear. Under the title "Moonstruck" in the letters to the editor, we read: "Edward R. Schreyer and George Bush would have to be naive in the extreme to believe they could work for one of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s organizations without lending credibility to his religious views (Ed Schreyer and the Moonies" Cover, Oct. 23, 1995) I was a follower of Moon from 1976 to 1986, and during that wasted decade I attended many religious services and public functions at which Moon spoke. The public should not be too quick to conclude the Moonies are merely a fringe group with no chance of achieving their aims. One need only consider the fateful turn in German politics in 1933 that led to Hitler’s taking power. Regardless of how bizarre Moon’s claims may seem, his bid for legitimacy is no laughing matter."

Hostage to Heaven

Betty Underwood says courts should "be brave enough to tackle head-on the fact of coercive persuasion applied not physically but psychologically." How about those grating furniture salesmen who yell at you on tv to come in and buy furniture on credit no matter how bad your credit is? Would beer commercials be coercive? How about the Republican Party that says the fate of the country lies in its hands. Then there are those who hate the republicans. The list is endless of people giving money and time to help their cause, sometimes incredibly long hours. Should we kidnap workaholics and make them spend time at home with their family? This is just persecution for heretics pure and simple.

Then she writes how the state should regulate religious groups writing "inhibitions should somehow be placed on proselytizing by coercive persuasion such as mandatory licensing of those who practice high powered behavior modification techniques, or requiring mandatory cooling-off periods for initiates." After a person changes from a Democrat to a Republican as some U.S. senators and congressman have done, or someone wants to fly to Italy to live in a Roman Catholic monastery and deny women forever (Is that bizarre or what?) And career (pray and do gardening for the rest of their life (Is that bizarre or what?) And family (solitude in chapel endless hours) (Bizarre!) Should be "required" to think about it. The word "required" is a euphemism for "force." Betty can’t talk straight. And who is going to be the people "requiring" this of all the people in America who get religious conversions? And how will they "require" that is force people to get rational? Will there be a department of religion and federal agents using guns and dogs to "require" people to "cool off " in a jail?

Then she has the audacity and illogic of saying in the next sentence after she has written her goal for thought police that when minority religions against people like her that (defend themselves from her hired thugs) aren’t waiting around for congress to form a thought police and has set herself up as a judge of what is good and bad religion --she says they have created a "chilly effect on free speech."

The UC is one of the "high intensity" cults because of their widespread use of severe, intellectually and emotionally disarming pressures on members and prospective converts." So is an Amway convention that whips up the people to go out and make a million. They have used "mind control."

Then she jumps to the treatment of prisoners of war in North Korea in the 1950s. [ And this is good because Rev. Moon is Korean. )] These men began as patriotic Americans and ended as hating America. "Many had no desire to return home to family and friends." Their personalities were scarred. She writes, "The Korean captors shrewdly orchestrated the use of violence and threats of violence, social; and emotional isolation ... unfamiliar environments in order to disorient prisoners .. Individual attention was monopolized by enforced participation in a rapid, exhausting schedule ... opposing ideas were ridiculed ... "etc. This is exactly what faith breakers and their goons do in motel rooms. Can the person walk out or is there threat of violence? Are they isolated? Is there a rapid and exhausting schedule? Are opposing ideas ridiculed? This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

In Hostage to Heaven former member Barb Underwood and her mother, Betty write alternate chapters telling of their nightmare of having Barb be a member for four years much of that time spent on grueling hours traveling around selling roses. No one she worked with for those few years and are still in are not doing that now. It was a phase. The Mormons had polygamy for a while too. I don’t have time to get into a discussion of fundraising here, but there was no gun at her head and many thousands tried it and walked out. Betty did not honor her daughter or respect her by deprogramming her. Barb tells a little of her life before the church and the church has a higher moral standard than the one she lived and the church in my eyes has a better sense of politics than their liberal left wing version. These two women are staunch liberal feminists and that alone was too much for them.

Betty writes that the UC pushes for zombies like conformity and makes the person feel so guilty if they don’t follow blindly like slaves: "It’s not so much the deceit," Barb’s father says, a pacifist by politics, "the dictatorship, the exploitative hard work, or where the money goes, it’s the rape of the self. I think that when Barb was given a chance to step back, she sensed that." Let’s look at these words. It is sloppy and dangerous to call kidnaping "a chance to step back."’ It was really "forced to step back" and to get interrogated in a locked room until she broke. Might does not make right. What if someone were addicted to cocaine or potato chips or being a workaholic Catholic nun risking her life with Cannibals in Africa ? Do we kidnap them and give them a "chance to step back"?

The Libertarian party has as part of their platform a statement strongly condemning kidnapping for religious conversion: The Libertarian Party rightly puts in its constitution that government should leave religion alone and specifically condemns the sick socialist practice of deprogramming. They don't write this because they necessarily love so called cults; they write it because they believe deeply in freedom.

Jim Lewis was the vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in 1984. In his book, Liberty Reclaimed, he teaches that America must give up its tendency to turn to government force to punish non coercive people and groups regardless of whether they are businessmen or churches who are simply offering their services voluntarily. America, he says, must go to a "new level of tolerance for others. Our nation is made up of many diverse groups, nationalities, customs and lifestyles. For centuries the political process has been used by some groups to harass, imprison, and even murder other groups. It has been used by Catholics against Protestants, by Protestants against Catholics, by one nationality against another. It has been used to eradicate customs, languages, and beliefs.  And as tolerance was destroyed so was freedom because the two are intimately linked together. A free society must be a tolerant society because intolerance leads to crusades which need big government."

"As crucial as tolerance is to freedom, it is still very difficult for many of us. Sometimes we watch someone get wrapped up in a religious cult and lose his individuality. We may want to grab him by the arm and drag him off somewhere until we can get him thinking straight again. But if we respect that person's right to make decisions we can only try to persuade him. Or perhaps we see a friend gorging himself on pastry and candy. We know he is gaining an incredible amount of weight. We know that it affects his heart and can ultimately kill him, but still we have no right to forcibly wire his mouth shut or lock him up while we feed him health foods. Instead, we must limit our actions to non coercive means. Or perhaps a dear friend has started taking drugs which we feel will be destructive to him or he becomes an alcoholic. Do we have a moral right to call in the State and have him incarcerated 'for his own good?' No! All we can morally do is try to help him while respecting his right to be wrong.... This respect for the right to commit moral errors is the core of any philosophy of liberty."

Talk about guilt! The UC may say it has a total world view and to deny it is to deny God, but it is another thing when Calvin burned heretics at the stake and deprogrammers use bullies to violently imprison adults against their will and then screamed at as if he or she is a weak brained moron who can’t control themselves. There is no respect here or self-esteem or decency. We all put guilt on others. I’m trying to make deprogrammers feel guilty by writing this. But I’m not going to get a few muscular UC members and kidnap Betty Underwood even though she has used violence and I never have. I’m not afraid of freedom of religion and speech. Human history is one of using force to initiate against those who are considered evil. Jesus was killed in Israel and Joseph Smith was killed in America.  Rev. Moon himself has been beaten to near death and jailed many times for his beliefs and lifestyle that goes against the grain of people like the Underwoods. To them, he and Jesus and Joseph Smith are dangerous kooks and the followers should be punished. Christian radio pounds on the Mormons every day for being a cult. The Mormons have US Senators and a respected university and millions of members and have been around for close to 200 years and still they are a "cult"

Many people have joined and left the Unification Church as many have left and joined countless other groups in America and there is always some who felt their idealism and naiveté were used to become slaves. Many join the US Navy and army and walk out of boot camp. The Roman Catholic church is 2000 years old and has 500 million members and there are countless books and movies against them by non-members and former members. This does not mean the Catholic church or the Mormons or the Jehovah Witnesses or anybody else should be kidnaped.

The really sad thing is that in the case of the UC the years of service Barb gave was not in vain because Rev. Moon is the messiah. But even if he wasn’t, who can tell if they had made different choices their life would have been better. Some former members who joined were on a destructive course of drugs and immorality and confusion and not close to their family that the church stopped. The UC probably saved some lives. The UC is not made up of perfect people and some leaders and early members created some situations that probably were not truly religious and good. But, again, we must be careful here too, because what we just know in our heart is wrong sometimes turns out to be true and vice versa. We often misjudge people and events incorrectly and years later see our folly. And change our ways. The Church will continue to defend itself in print and in court after being attacked, but unlike Betty, will never stoop to using as Satan would use words of "coercive persuasion." Yes, I called her actions satanic. I also say I will defend her right to call me Satan also. Just not in a locked room with her goons holding me down as she brainwashes me.

It’s really sad that the Unification Church leadership has been too busy to find time to explain deeply the goals and values of Rev. Moon so that some people leave and think the wild thoughts that Barb Underwood writes of in her book such as the absurd statement: "Moon’s principles appear racist." He is seen as everything from being anti-Semitic and has "Hitlerian obsession with the superiority of Aryan ‘blood’" Moon is sexist because he is quoted as saying "when you are blessed in marriage, you women must be absolutely obedient to your husbands." Many mainline religions teach that. The Underwoods are deeply feminist and of course will have a hard time with Rev. Moon. She writes that "Moon flatly endorses the Asian extended family over the nuclear family and orders his women to be servants to parents and grandparents-in-law." Rev. Moon is very critical of American women for not wanting to care for the elderly in their home and putting them in a nursing home. The Underwoods are again wrong on this one and need to learn from him that there are some customs and traditions in Asia that are superior to ours.

They write that "Rev. Moon lectures to his young enthusiasts, are sprinkled with violent imagery." So does Jesus. So do coaches at a pep rally. Then she writes. "How literally this is to be taken, is not clear." After four years why doesn’t she know? It is crystal clear that there is no teaching to use violence as Cain killed Abel and its teaching is to restore that.

Time itself is all that is needed to show who is right. As I write Rev. Moon is approaching 80 and still not turned to violence. In fact, many people are beginning to see that. He believes his ideology is the absolute truth and will sweep the earth, but no, he is honorable and good.

No one fears seeing wholesome Salvation Army soldiers in uniform playing church songs and begging for money in shopping malls. No one thinks that its leader, a general, is a threat. Perhaps, it is because he and his troops do not think they can win the world. Rev. Moon is the first "guru" as he is called to come up with the idea that everyone will end up in heaven. On earth and in spirit world. Which truth sounds higher? The Salvation Army people don’t get scared responses of fear and looked at as dangerous but they teach that the vast majority of the people who put coins in their pot are going to burn forever in hell or the Moonie as they derisively call them who think that those who are hating them and fear that they will hurt them think that they will end up in heaven.?

Ephesians uses military language. Jesus used harsh language.