The Words of the Hendricks Family
|
|
The Words of the Hendricks Family |
Dr. Hendricks has been president of the Unification Theological Seminary for ten years. He teaches courses in worship, family and ministry and is the author of Family, Church, Community, Kingdom: Building a Witnessing Church for Working Families.
To discuss Unification traditions, we need to begin with what the church does. Any church has only three characteristics: people gather, the Word is spoken, and the sacraments are given. In the last global speaking tour, led by our Founders, Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon, their children and grandchildren and numerous ministers, this is exactly what happened. People gathered, the speech was read, and the sacrament of marriage blessing was given. That is the basic mission of the church. This is how humankind inherits the true love of God. This is the core messianic mission, to gather people, teach them God's Word and, on that foundation, bestow the Holy Blessing.
By these sacraments, our sins are forgiven, we receive new life and are released and liberated to do acts of love. Once the church started to grow, the members began to "do acts of love" through different organizations for peace-building, service, family formation, teaching, witnessing, counseling, feeding the poor and so forth. But the core act of love is to gather people to hear the word and receive the Blessing; that is called evangelism or witnessing.
The essential tradition is that of attending God and True Parents with sincere heart, or "Jung Sung." Unification rituals have the purpose of expressing Jung Sung in everyday life, whether in public gatherings, at home, or by oneself. They may change and evolve, in particular because we have the living author of our faith, and by his word and practice, a tradition can change. And traditions have little meaning without the internal heart or Jung Sung. Here, Unificationism is carrying forward the spirit of Micah, through whom God said that the offerings in the Temple were a stench, and Paul, who declared that without love, nothing else matters. The Tradition: Book One states, "each of us must remember that the important aspect of keeping a tradition is our attitude, not the ritual itself. In attending God and True Parents our attitude should be to comfort God's heart; we should not feel that traditions are compulsory based on our duty to some church law"
Religious or spiritual traditions bring God into the world. James F. White, in Introduction to Christian Worship, calls Christian sacraments "God's love made visible" and this applies to Unification traditions. A sacrament is a sign and act that conveys divine meaning, and by which God takes ownership of that event and those people and things.
Sacraments require specific words, objects and actions. In a sacrament, the physical becomes the vehicle of the spiritual. The sign-act expresses the encounter between God and humans. They can take place in formal worship and they can take place informally as worship in everyday life. The Unification traditions are sign-acts with God's Word and promise embedded in them.
The scholastic theologians of the medieval church said that that which is necessary is the proper matter (the object or thing, such as water), the correct words or form, and the proper intention on the part of the ministrant to do what the church intends. So we have the ministrant, matter and the form. This is comparable with Unificationist theology of a parent or pastor who is sincere, an object for the condition representing God's Word, and time period in the foundation of faith. Sacramental life also compares with the Unificationist theology of the foundation of substance, in that it involves a person through whose love and heart God works to reach another person. This is the Unificationist "Abel-Cain" relationship or the parent-child, or elder-younger relationship. Our traditions and church life are built around family relationships; their real foundation is love for God and for each other.
Unificationism affirms Christian sacraments as "conditions of indemnity." For example, "By making the indemnity condition of baptism by water, we can be spiritually born anew through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, by taking a piece of bread and a cup of wine at the sacrament of Holy Communion, we receive the precious grace of partaking in Jesus' body and blood."
Sacraments arise historically in the faith tradition, in particular the life of the Founder and original community. Reverend Moon is a prolific constructive theologian and religious architect. What follows are major traditions that he has set in place, which comprise in fact a comprehensive and beautiful faith tradition. I have broken down the traditions under the title: Family Church, Household Worship and Community Life.
By defining the traditions of the church, we naturally separate the church from the various organizations Reverend Moon created for the sake of peace, service, character-building, and so forth, which are para-church organizations. They are not the church. They do not proffer salvation. They do not claim to do so. The church is the vehicle of salvation. The church exists for one purpose -- to proclaim the word and give the sacraments. The church is the bearer of the traditions mentioned above. The acts of love that people carry out with on the basis of the "liberation and release" that the church conveys are world-changing works of God. They vary from place to place and time to time. They express the heart of the church and grow out of the core ministry that defines the church as the vehicle for the creation of God's kingdom.
Unification members express their commitment to God and True Parents through "vessels of clay:' We build strong marriages and families and strive to help others do the same. We strive to display virtuous personal lives of moral and ethical excellence, and support character-building and most importantly a culture of sexual purity among youth. Guided by Reverend Moon, our church has invested in uniting the sciences, creating healthy media, resolving philosophical problems, developing the productive capacity of the oceans, building schools, sponsoring orchestras, ballet schools and other institutions of high culture. We call for all branches of human endeavor to serve the purposes of bridge-building between races, nations and religions. These activities reflect a God-centered philosophy called Godism, or Unificationism, that views the world as one family created by a parental, personal God, a world created to expand human and divine joy on earth and in heaven.
Naturally, observers of the plethora of activities in the "unification movement," and even its members, are challenged to sort out its essential nature. What is its fundamental, core identity? Is there one common base by which one can identify a person as 'an Unificationist?
To identify what they are, religions create simple statements of belief. One common English word for this is "creeds." A creed provides the purpose for education and lodestone for evangelism. Creeds are powerful statements, and good ones last for millennia. Consider the Jewish creed:
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, is the Lord one:'
One essential Christian creed is the Nicene Creed:
"I believe in God the Father
Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ his
only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Born of
the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified,
dead, and buried:
He descended into hell;
The third day he rose
again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
And sits on the
right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From thence he shall come
to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost;
The
holy Catholic Church;
The Communion of Saints;
The Forgiveness
of sins;
The Resurrection of the body,
And the Life
everlasting. Amen."
The Islamic creed is called the Shahadah:
"I testify that there is no god but God (Allah), and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God."
We have the following proposal from the church that is the closest approximation of an Unificationist creed of which I am aware.
"We hold the following to be true: The True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind are the first in all history and will eternally be the one and only Returning Lord, Peace King and King of Kings because they are the only ones to have fully revealed the nature of God's divine essence. This essence is true love, a love that can bring even Satan to voluntary surrender. Our True Parents have enabled us to resemble God and approach His divine value as human beings."
Re-wording:
I believe in the Parent God, maker of heaven and earth, and in Rev. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon, the only ones to have fully revealed God's divine essence. This essence is true love, a love that can bring even Satan to voluntary surrender. Therefore they are the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, the unique and irreplaceable returning Lord, King of Peace and King of Kings. Through them, we are enabled to resemble God and approach His divine value as human beings.