The Words of the Kamono Family
|
|
The Words of the Kamono Family |
Abduction and confinement incidents for the purpose of deprogramming Unification Church believers have occurred frequently in Japan. It was in 1966 that the first confinement incident took place. Since then, more than 4,300 Unification Church believers over 43 years until present have suffered involuntary deprogramming attempts.
What makes abduction and confinement vicious is that these kidnapped victims aren't freed from confinement until a believer renounces his faith. These abductions and confinements are often repeated 2 or 3 times, until a believer renounces his beliefs even after escaping. Unification Church believers worry that relatives who conspire with anti-Unification Church ministers, will attack again, when and where an abduction may take place again, "If I'm locked up again, I may never be freed", so Unification Church believers live under constant mental anxiety, living a fugitive-like life, making it very difficult to conduct daily life.
The system of continued confinement until renouncing one's faith was used in Japanese Christian persecution. An accomplished Christian who becomes a martyr would be revered as "a model of a believer". But Japanese rulers didn't allow Christians to choose the "martyr's way" of glory.
"It would be easy to kill off
Christians, but persecutors chose the way for Christians to give up
their faith (They made them apostatize.). The reason was that even if
they exterminated Christians, they would be an insult because they
couldn't make the believers obey them, the rulers, which would mean
the leaders lost (face). Persecutors wished for Christians to obey
their orders"
Report of missionary Orfanel, March 28th in
1612
To succeed in attaining apostasy, persecutors take every possible way. As a psychological strategy, they deeply shock the child's affections toward the parents, and the affection of the victims' teachers towards the former student; polarizing parents and children; bringing and confronting former missionaries and believers together and forcing the latter to give up their faith.
Forcing apostasy incidents using relatives against Unification Church believers have long history in Christian persecution. Consequently, there are many members still suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) after suffering confinement.
I wish this book to be the beginning of understanding about the truth of Unification Church member deprogramming history. I also wish that the abduction and confinement for deprogramming purposes end as soon as possible.
11. How did the end of the long and cruel Christian persecution come about?
Mamoru Kamono
Director, PR Department
HSA-UWC Japan
July
1, 2009
Christian ministers feel that the teachings and the very existence of the Unification Church is a problem that is putting Christianity virtually at stake.
While these struggles to protect and assert their dogmatic beliefs in Christianity have been the core motives underlining these dissenting activities of those ministers, some have trumpeted that they have done such things for "social justice".
According to the teachings of the Unification Church, the criterion of salvation lies in establishing a true family which is God's ideal of the creation. It is because building a true family is the hope and common assent of everyone that the Unification Church is able to stand from an inter-religious perspective making it possible for Shintoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and other religions to unite.
But as Christian teachings place the cross as the sole criterion of faith, it literally makes it difficult to be in concord with the other faiths which do not believe in the cross, as long as Christians are being strictly dogmatic. Researching the 2000 years of Christian history, we can see how Christianity bitterly assaulted the other religions that it felt were antagonistic towards the cross. The Christian Crusades is a striking example of that.
In Christian teachings, it is believed that Jesus Christ had come to die on the cross, while according to the Unification Church, the cross was not originally obliged by God, but was a secondary foreordination. Accordingly, if the teachings of the Unification Church were to be correct, then the cross which is the core doctrine of the 2000 year tradition of Christianity must be altered. This for Christianity is an absolutely intolerable battle which could risk even its very own existence.
It was on the 15th of July, 1958, that the teachings of the Unification Church were first advocated in Japan by a missionary, and in the following year on October 2nd the first Sunday service was held in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Shortly after, an explosive progress in ministry took place leading to the official certification of the Unification Church as a religious organization, and the beginning of its influential impact on the Japanese society in July 15th, 1964.
For the Christian opposing ministers, the infiltration of the teachings of the Unification Church in society is something absolutely impermissible which is likely in time to pose a threat to Christianity if left unaddressed.
In fact it was in a short period of one year and a half after the Unification Church was officially registered as a religious organization that the first confinement took place in the spring of 1966 which was conducted by Minister Satoshi Moriyama (of the Japan Jesus Christ Church). As they found it difficult to coerce the members' withdrawal from membership peacefully, they turned to taking forceful measures, claiming that their motivation for such is that it is touching deep issues in the Christian faith.
It is extremely abnormal that the number of the cases of coercion into membership withdrawal has exceeded 4000 cases in 43 years.
Those opposing ministers are justifying their actions and legitimizing them by using the religious argument (that the Unification Church is not Christianity), and as long as they stand behind this religious motive, these violent cases of coercion into membership withdrawal will not be easily terminated.
Regarding this motive, Minister Satoshi Moriyama said, "If they (the Unification Church) had not used the name of Christianity, there would have been no problem. It is because they are using the name of Christianity... and deluding people into incorrect interpretations of the Bible that we cannot leave this unaddressed".
Doctrinal disputes over the interpretation of the cross have constrained missionary activities of the Unification Church in the Christian sphere, but nevertheless, with less than 1% of Christians in Japanese society, and with the persuasive teachings of the Unification Church, an explosive growth and expansion of its foundation have been witnessed especially during the 70's and the 80's with tremendous momentum.
Ultimately, such a situation had increased Christians' "sense of crisis", which was reinforced by Japan's pro-communists who are the backbone of the nominal left-wing, as well as the Christian missionaries whose hope and efforts to Christianize Japan over all these years have been unsuccessful. However, it is unlikely to be just a coincidence that both sides at around the same time had diligently been engaged in anti-Unification Church activities (intensified especially in the late 70's).
In March 1978, the Japan Communist Party (JCP) declared that, "The democratic forces of Japan must hunt them down (the Unification Church and the International Federation for the Victory over Communism, IFVOC) on theoretical grounds and on practical ones, and we must follow through on that until there is no room for any of their activities to even exist" ("Unification Movement and International Federation for the Victory Over communism" JCP Central Committee Publication Bureau, page 131).
Christians who are unduly focused on the doctrine of the cross (especially the anti-Unification Church ministers) have been also working towards that end and for this same goal. Mr. Sadao Asami (United Church of Christ in Japan) said as follows, "There is another way to make the Unification Church collapse, and that is by elevating negative public opinion to make them unable to stay in Japan. (By Mr. Sadao Asami, "Unification Church = Unification Movement" United Church of Christ publishing bureau, page 224)
This, "to make them unable to stay in Japanese society", is the common goal of both sides. Furthermore, mentioning former members whom they have persuaded for withdrawal, "they have become excellent Christians and on the contrary they have started to witness to the Unification Church members in order to save them" (speech by minister Moriyama, "Christian Newspaper" March 21, 1976 issue).
During the late 70's and to the first half of the 80's, forced conversion incidents took place frequently through using JCP related mental hospitals. But these incidents which used the mental hospitals came to end when the Unification Church members who escaped from there, filed a civil suite, "claim for damage trial" and won the case (Tokyo District Court) in February 28, 1986.
Yet, what kept increasing through the years was the number of cases of the coercion for withdrawal incidents with confinement carried out by the collaborative relationship between the anti-Unification Church ministers and the Unification Church member's relatives. While those left wing forces could not continue these persuasions for conversion by using the mental hospitals any further, they began to build cooperative alliances through supporting the Christian people concerned.
And, from around the late 80's, these alliances between the Christian people concerned and the left wing forces succeeded in pushing those former members whom they got through the persuasion for withdrawal incidents to start the court battles. These are "Give me back my days of youth!-trial" and "Invalid matrimony trial". These judicial court battles are nothing but a part of their (left wing forces and Christian churches) activities which are aimed at reaching the goal of heightening the public opinion" to force the Unification Church out of Japan".
The purpose of the anti-Unification Church groups is to crush the Unification Church, and towards that goal the Christian affiliated groups, the former members of the Unification Church, the left-wing journalists and the opposition lawyers, knowing all about all of these abductions, confinements and the forceful coercions for withdrawal from membership which have been afflicting the members of the Unification Church all these years, they have been deliberately ignoring these facts.
There have been various motives behind all these engagements of the opposing groups.
The first abduction incident took place in 1966. Since then, and for 43 years, the numbers of incident cases which we could find have become over 4000 cases.
It was Minister Satoshi Moriyama who was the one who came up with this motive and this abduction method, being this "witch hunt", that is, 'the Unification Church is heretical'.
Looking back at the ongoing conflict between Christianity and Judaism over the interpretation of the Old Testament for more than 2000 years now, it is very difficult to imagine that any amicable approaches could drive the members of the Unification Church to convert, so that they had to resort to such forceful measures of abductions and confinements to force them into membership withdrawal.
In time, the left wing camp who has hoisted the same goal of "crushing the Unification Church", joined those anti-Unification Church activities. By then, the tension of the Left wing camps was at its height over the anti-U.S.-Japan Security Pact strife in the 1960's and the 1970's,with their schemes aiming to achieve the total communization of Japan by the end of the 70's or at latest in the early period of the 80's. Here, an associated group of the Unification Church, the "International Federation Victory over Communism (IFVOC) was founded in 1968. With the infiltration of the VOC movement into society, the communization of Japan gradually became more difficult to achieve. What escalated the sense of crisis in the left wing even more was the serious defeat of Communist Party at the Kyoto prefectural governor's election in April 1978.
Then chairman of the JCP at that time, Mr. Kenji Miyamoto declared a total war at the prefecture and regional JCP chairman's meeting, "The battle against the IFVOC is a vital matter. We need to make an overall fight in all fields of mass strife, ideology, the Diet and legislation, and also cooperate together with the forces that have received damages. It is important to create the situation where, for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), "it is disadvantageous for them to work with the IFVOC, for if they do they will be counterattacked. To stand in the front line for the extermination of IFVOC is a holy war that will be recorded in the history of the future generations." (Akahata,-Red Flag, June 8, 1978)
Around that time the persuasion for forceful withdrawal incidents using JCP affiliated mental hospitals occurred more frequently. But as mentioned above, the method of using mental hospitals ended because the Unification Church members who filed violation of human rights court cases had won these trials. In exchange, what had increased every year was the coercion for withdrawal cases by involving the relatives of the members in practicing these confinement incidents.
The so-called "Spiritual Sales" issue got a lot of publicity when it was reported to the mass media when court cases were filed by those former members who where persuaded to withdraw from membership, ("ignored freedom of religious belief" page 112-41, Kogensha).
And, towards those Unification Church supporters such as LDP, aiming at creating divisions between them, they have denounced them saying "Do you assist the Unification Church who are practicing the Spiritual Sales?"
This so-called Spiritual Sales issue has then become able to follow the tracks of what chairman Miyamoto has once said, "To create the situation that shows them that it is disadvantageous for them to work with the IFVOC for if they do they will be counterattacked". In this flow-directed methods, the opposition groups aiming at "crushing the Unification Church" had continued towards the fulfillment of their goal.
As it is that one would always want to confirm the result of their own activities, when journalist Mr. Yoshifu Arita who aggressively featured and reported Spiritual Sales issue in his work, heard from one of the LDP member's, saying, "Spiritual Sales isn't it? I flatly have broken away since then", that for him was the confirmation of the record of what Chairman Miyamoto had said. (Yoshifu Arita's " Awake and dreaming stray notes", September 23, 2006)
According to those media people "Spiritual Sales"is an issue which must be addressed and reported, while all such forceful conversion incidents through abduction and confinement does not need any reporting.
To destroy the Unification Church and IFVOC is the goal of left-wing forces. As mentioned above, in June 1978, JCP chairman Kenji Miyamoto declared war against all Unification Church affiliated groups and the IFVOC stating for all "to stand in the front line to exterminate IFVOC". "Red Flag". But for 10 years from 1968 to 1978, various battles between IFVOC and JCP had taken place. It was said that after the Second World War, there were several times of crisis where attempts to communize Japan occurred. Especially at that time, with the strife of the anti-US-Japan Security Pact in the 1960's and the 1970's, the left-wing forces had penetrated into the strata of students and youth and had achieved a strong momentum almost on the verge of actualizing a communist revolution.
In order to defeat this critical crisis in Japan, IFVOC was founded in 1968 to promote the victory over communism movement within Japan. Members went out all around the streets and in front of all stations in all the major cities campaigning to expand awareness about the fallacies of the communist regime. In September 1970, IFVOC gathered more than 20,000 people at the Budokan and held a "World Anti Communist League (WACL) world rally" and had a resounding success.
Also, in April 1972, we delivered 12 letters, "open inquiry letters" to chairman Miyamoto. But we did not receive any response from him, therefore on June 6, we went to JCP Head Quarters and handed them a letter requesting: "Agree to a public debate". We prepared sidewalk debates at Shibuya and Shinjuku station, and waited. But JCP continued to ignore our requests.
Then on June 22, Mainichi Television broadcast company (TV Tokyo at present) came to ask us to have a public debate with JCP on the TV program called, "Document Talk". IFVOC accepted it but JCP rejected. In the end, the program was called off.
Besides, when IFVOC criticized the communist bible, "Communist Reader", JCP rewrote and eliminated the parts in the book that were criticized, and republished it. But as we still continued to find its faults and criticize the theories, they took this very book "Communist Reader" out of print. JCP came to prove their own defeat on the theoretical debate completely by their own hand.
From the whole story mentioned above, in March 1978, JCP published "The Unification Movement and IFVOC", and made their appeal that "Japanese democratic forces must hunt them (the Unification Church and IFVOC) down on theoretical grounds and on practical ones, and we must follow through on that until there is no room for any of their activities to even exist" ("Unification Movement and Federation for the Victory Over communism" Japan Communist Party Central Committee Publication Bureau, page 131).
That following month, the JCP lost at Kyoto prefectural governor's elections. As 28 years of control over the Kyoto prefectural government collapsed because of the IFVOC, Mr. Miyamoto called in rage for the "extermination of the IFVOC".
Journalist Yoshifu Arita is actually from Kyoto prefecture. He was affiliated with the JCP student organization, the Democratic Youth League and then joined the JCP. Mr. Arita's father was the vice chairman of the JCP Kyoto prefectural committee and his name was on the name list of constituency representatives. Mr. Arita had also joined the JCP affiliated publishing company (1988) after graduating from University. They are enthusiastic communist activists who followed through in succession to the second generation. Mr. Arita who has criticized the IFVOC and the Unification Church has been following the same pattern in line with Mr. Miyamoto.
Also, we do need to know that those lawyers who took charge of the former members who abandoned their faith through the coercion for withdrawal by anti-Unification Church ministers, they themselves are leaning left politically, and espouse left-wing ideology.
Beginning from the 60's, the IFVOC, which is an affiliated movement within the Unification Church, made an appeal about the fallacies of communism and socialism, and developed the movement for the prevention of the communization and socialization of Japan. And also, a friendly group of IFVOC, "National Conference for Promoting the Establishment of the Anti espionage law" worked to advance the movement to establish a "Anti espionage law" in order to crack down on spies and agents who had engaged in secret maneuvers for communizing Japan. NNL was founded to stop these national movements and is a politically intended movement.
It was a great shock for the left wing that the JCP lost at the Kyoto prefectural governor's elections in 1978, ending 28 years of control over the Kyoto prefectural government. But moreover, what really heightened their sense of crisis was the "Levchenko incident". In 1979, Mr. Levchenko who went into exile in the USA, gave a shocking testimony in Washington D.C. on the spy activities of the KGB secret service of the Soviet Union and their agents.
In 1983, the "Levchenko incident" case began between the IFVOC and the Socialist Party (presently the Social Democratic Party). This trial was filed by the IFVOC, suing the Socialist Party for defamation due to the fact that "Syakai Sinpo (social new news)" mentioned that Levchenko's testimony was a plot between the CIA and the IFVOC. (The case was settled in 1994 by the Socialist Party agreeing to pay the resolution fee of 2 million yen to the IFVOC) One of the representative lawyers of the Socialist Party side was lawyer Hiroshi Yamaguchi of NNL. That sense of crisis which was heightened in the left wing forces at the enactment of "the anti espionage law" made them launch aggressively to crush the IFVOC. This took place at the re-submitting of "the Anti espionage law" in Nov. 26, 1986.
According to the book entitled "The Truth of Spiritual Sales" (Sekai Nippo, p.206?`207), lawyer Atsushi, a lawyer who is associated with Yokohama Lawyers Association at the symposium of Japan Journalists Conference in October 23th, 1986, said "When NNL was formed there was only one victim, so we decided to set up a lawyers group and find more victims by using the mass media's coverage." He also mentioned about the whole story that NNL was founded in order to stop "he anti espionage law, centered on Japan Young Lawyers Association (JYLA) which is a leftist activist's lawyers group affiliated with the JCP.
It's true that some of the Unification Church members sold items promising the client would gain better fortune, and Buddhist alter fittings, etc. as a means of economic activity. However, those sales were done by the sales staff of the affiliated companies, and the Unification Church had no relations with any of those businesses. But lawyers of NNL suspected, without reason, that Unification Church is using the profits from those businesses for the promotion of Anti-Espionage Law establishment. Therefore, they held campaigns against Spiritual Sales in collusion with the left-wing mass media.
A year later, on the 23rd of October, 1987, Masataka Ito, the chief editor of "Asahi Journal", gathered with his close journalists at Shiseido parlor in Ginza, Tokyo. There he gave a lecture on "Spiritual Sales and Journalism". Customers who had purchased the items from Unification Church members are called "victims" in newspapers and on TV.
Unification Church members often protest as to why we focus on 1% of the customers who are complaining, even though 99% of them are satisfied with the items. Actually, there is something to what they say, because it's true that approximately less than 5% of the customers are complaining of "Spiritual Sales" damage. When I conducted a specific survey, most of them still believed in the merits of what they have purchased.
As the gathering of the people who were around Mr. Ito were those who are very close to him, he blurted out that the data of those customers who are claiming is less than 5%. Yet, being inconvenient for the promotion of criticism of the Unification Church, he had never mentioned about these figures before.
As we can conclude from his comment, those opposing groups are not reporting from the facts, but they are working with the political intention to socialize the problem in any way to mire the Unification Church and the IFVOC. We need to know the facts and the story behind the so-called "Spiritual Sales" campaign.
The Asahi Shimbun* launched its "Spiritual Sales" campaign on February 14, 1987. Since then, the opposing groups exploited this criticism through the mass media saying that "the Unification Church is conducting anti-social Spiritual Sales". Here we need to be clear about the existence of the prearranged maneuverings which was worked out by the former Unification Church members (hereinafter called "Ex-Members") in this campaign. (*official name)
Those Ex-Members who were persuaded to withdraw from the Unification Church demanded not only a return of his/her donation, but also if that person was working in a company run by Unification Church members, even though the company is not related to the religious corporate side of the Unification Church, he/she also convinced the company's customer to file a claim for a refund.
As a concrete example of that, we can look in the newsletter called "Ekureshia" vol. 21 (published on May 10th, 1982). It is published by Ekureshia, a group run by Mr. Shinya Waga who is an anti-Unification Church minister. It reports that Ms. M (alias), she herself an Ex-Member, after withdrawing from membership, went visiting her former customers accompanied by the opponent who had processed her withdrawal out of membership of the Unification Church, stressing how willingly she had committed herself in so doing. This report is as follows: "I have finally decided to leave the Unification Church, and went to Osaka with the minister who convinced me to leave.
We visited each customer who bought the personal seal/jar from me. I apologized for my misunderstanding and told them that I shall stop selling those things."(p.14)
A similar article appears in the "Ekureshia" newsletter vol.18 (published on March 10th 1982): "Last year, I had succeeded in cancelling the deal which was worth more than 10,000,000 yen. And this year, again, I succeeded to return an expensive item and cancel the deal. A victim of this case is a good widow who lives in Nagano prefecture. Her misadventure was used to sell her the fortune item, and she paid 13,000,000 yen from her husband's heritage. Later she was told by EKURESHIA that the item was sold from a Unification Church business enterprise. Since then, she wanted to withdraw the deal." (p.6) As you can see evidently, those opposing groups are visiting the customers and making them cancel or get a refund by steering them to think that the enterprises and the Unification Church are connected.
Here is another example from a book titled "Rescuing People from the Unification Church", written by Tamiya Taguchi. You can find a factual story in which an Ex-Member of Unification Church had visited his/her customers whom he/she had met through their previous company so as to lead them to return the item(s) they've purchased: "After leaving the Unification Church, N (alias) visited each customer he had sold a jar / two-storied pagoda by using Spiritual Sales. He apologized for his mistake, yet no matter how many times he went there, the door was always shut in front of his face, and testified that he was saved by Jesus Christ. And in another, it says that there was a lady whose name is Mrs. F. She refused to open her door for 3 days, but N's sincere attitude and seriousness finally moved her. She listened to what he said and came to believe in Jesus..., she returned the Pagoda she bought and got a refund."(p.189~190)
Similar cases are reported in "Believer's Friend" which is published in May 1988, by United Church of Christ in their Japan publication office. They say the article is written based on several cases in order to avoid personal identification: "I consulted with my friend, and finally I met one minister. I lied to my wife (she was a Unification Church member) and visited him with that friend and my mother.
The minister started convincing me to make my wife leave the Unification Church from 20:00 until morning. I came back to myself all of a sudden around 12 o'clock, as if Satan had left me."
"He said that a pile of complaint reports had been turned in, told me what kind of person Rev. Moon is and how he lives, explained the differences between the Unification Church and Christianity, etc..."
"My total amount of damage was 14,500,000 yen, including a donation and some from my mother. I demanded that the Unification Church and also the affiliated companies cancel the contract(s) through a lawyer, and then almost the full amount was returned."(p.20)
As you can see from these cases, the opponents preach "differences between the Unification Church and Christianity" and persuade our members to leave the Unification Church, and use those Ex-Members to convince others to claim for a refund/payback. This payback is not only for the donations which they have offered, but also for the amount which is paid for the things purchased from affiliated companies run by Unification Church members. Opponents added up these payback amounts to the amount of damage by "Spiritual Sales", so as to criticize the Unification Church.
The opposition groups prepared well before launching the "Spiritual Sales" campaign, they worked through various channels to find "victims", and worked to get their cooperation in filing lawsuits and refunding their donations and even worked with Ex-Members to convince their customers for paybacks.
Once the campaign was launched by the mass media, even the people who had been satisfied with the items they purchased had become anxious and called customer centers to consult about it. As the mass media picked up these cases as well and reported them, the campaign was scaled up and gradually expanded.
It could be said that if there were no such persuasion for withdrawal activities performed by those anti-Unification Church groups, then there would be no prearranged maneuverings by Ex-Members to cancel their purchases, or to convince their customers to cancel the deals. That is to say, this "Spiritual Sales" issue would not have been escalated to the extent of becoming a social problem.
Abduction and confinement acts are a crime. It doesn't matter who commits them, whether it is a family relative or not. The opponents want to cover-up that they aid and abet kidnapping, so they say such a group doesn't exist and make it look like a family affair. Opponents and mass media have been criticizing the Unification Church for years now, and those anti-Unification Church ministers have been active behind the scenes for 43 years, and more than 100 books criticizing the Unification Church were published (excluding magazines). Their feelings towards us are quite abnormal.
Opponents spread rumors which do not have any basis in fact, like that which says that "lynching is performed in the Unification Church", and that the Unification Church is guilty for unsolved heinous crimes. They have been also fault-finding Rev. Moon's biography, pointing out what they called "contradictions" in Unification Church publications, twisting and criticizing the Unification Principle as nothing but a heretical doctrine, and accused falsely of "adultery in the name of pure lineage" and so on. Records and articles on judicial actions such as, "Give my youth back", "Spiritual Sales", and "Invalid Marriage" are used by anti-Unification Church ministers to convince the members to leave the church.
All of these materials make the relatives anxious. When members' relatives read any of those articles, many of them call the phone numbers shown on these articles, and by so doing they would be connected to the anti-Unification Church ministers. Then the minister with the ex-members would make those relatives feel more anxious, and finally pressure those relatives to also cooperate in carrying out these coercion for withdrawal incidents.
Opponents often say, "Family can't rescue alone, but only family can rescue" ("Nihonkai Shinbun" May 28th, 2007), which means that for these coercion/persuasion for withdrawal incidents to succeed, it is vital for the relatives to cooperate with those opposing groups. Saying "Family can't save alone" means that to succeed, an expert on Unification Principle and an agent for the withdrawal process are both required.
Sadao Asami criticized the Principle of the Unification Church using half of the pages in the book "Unification Church = Principle Movement". There he writes, "It's better to let an expert handle the doctrine."(p.29) Minister Keiko Kawasaki also says "unveil the cover called Principle to convince the Unification Church members to withdraw".
What these opposing groups do in carrying out these enforced persuasion for withdrawal incidents is that they put the Unification Church members in captivity in an apartment or somewhere, saying that it is just to create an environment for dialogue, while the real purpose for confining them is to bring an anti-Unification Church minister, and an expert there to succeed in persuading them.
As you can tell, "withdrawal persuasion" has been carried out by the combination of relatives (responsible for the kidnapping), and the "expert" (responsible for the persuasion).
In a statement titled "Statement again on the Unification Movement case" which was released on January 28, 1993, by United Church of Christ in Japan. It stated that "Ex-Members who withdrew from the Unification Church are filing law cases in courts across the country, and a movement for both saving victims and avoiding more victims is being promoted." The group states those lawsuits as a "fruit" of their series of anti-Unification Church activities, and says "we recognize anew the importance of our resistance activity against Unification Church. We shall make more effort to tell the truth of the Unification Church to the society (world), and work on avoiding more victims and rescuing victims. And here we declare to work on these activities until the Unification Church disappears."
Also, the Communist party working to fulfill their objectives has stated that, "The democratic forces of Japan must hunt them down (the Unification Church ) on theoretical grounds and on practical ones, and must follow through on that until there is no room for any of their activities to even exist" ('Unification Movement and Federation for the Victory Over Communism' Japan Communist Party Central Committee Publication Bureau, page 131), declaring what they have been engaging in for so many years.
Relatives confine the member usually in an apartment and call it making an environment for dialogue, but their purpose is to introduce the member to an anti-Unification Church minister(s) in order to break his faith. "Discussion" is a deceptive word; it is a part of their "deprogramming" strategy.
If the member refuses to see a minister in a closed environment, it only prolongs the period of confinement since deprogramming is their goal. Ms. Hiroko Yamazaki (a famous athlete) laments in her book, "They (her family) asked me to explain DP to them and I did my best. But they would express difficulty even understanding the first few lines. Why is it so hard for them to understand?" [When Love Ends in Falsehood, P.185], but this is one of their tactics used in most cases. Relatives are not trying to understand the member or the Divine Principle, but are only trying to create an excuse to bring in a third person, the anti-Unification Church minister, by pretending to have difficulty comprehending what the member is saying.
If it is truly dialogue or conversation, it should be conducted in a free environment and continued until both sides understand each other well. However, once an anti-Unification Church minister (or a deprogrammer who is not a relative) starts intervening, "Parents are suggested not to interrupt when the member and the deprogrammer are having give and take." [Unification Movement, Sadao Asami, P.38]. They become mere "guards", as agreed beforehand.
Asami says "There are regrettable instances when the client (member) returns to Unification Church, after I thought he/she understood what I shared." [op. cit P.44] and confesses that there were some deplorable cases in which persuaded members kept up the faith of Unification Church.
Pastor Keiko Kawasaki also lists a few cautions for deprogramming: "(When organizing the meeting with the minister) you should never compromise and set a deadline. Once a deadline is set, your failure is almost decisive. If you do that, you are actually encouraging your child. It is like saying, 'Just endure it for a week and you'll be free to go back to Unification Church.' The merit of having more than one persuader is that if one pastor's explanation is not enough, another pastor can supplement it. Moreover, a different perspective will help detect a false compliance by the believer to quit Unification Church." ('Reality of the Unification Church', P.191 - 193). She continues to say that even after the member decides to leave Unification Church, "He will definitely experience depression and uncertainty again and you will not be able to feel at ease for a while." Thus, anti-Unification Church pastors strongly advise against deadlines and urges constant persuasion until the believer loses faith.
On top of that, she emphasizes "double checking on the believer" [op. cit P.196 - 197] and gives thorough guidance to "completely uproot" the faith of Unification Church. From these words, it is obvious that the opponent only wants to "deprogram" Unification Church members and have no respect for their faith. Their concerns lie in "double-checking" and "successful persuasion", which in itself shows that this is not about having a pleasant conversation, but is about forcing someone to break his faith.
In this way, their attitude to convert a believer is that of absolute cruelty, and the confined member must suffer through hell, for the only alternative given him to end this so-called "discussion" is abandoning his faith.
Mr. Toru Goto refused to give in and ended up in confinement for 12 years and 5 months. They would only set him free if he abandoned his faith. How can this be called a "discussion"?
There are more than four thousand victims who were abducted and confined in the forty three years since 1966 that the Unification Church is aware of. However, an anti-Unification Church figure said in an interview with journalist Kazuhiro Yonemoto, that "there are at least five thousand of them", which shows that there were probably more cases that were not reported to the church.
Around the time of Ms. Hiroko Yamazaki's abduction (March, 1993), when the Unification Church experienced immense bashing from the media, the number of abductions soared to 302 in 1991, 375 in 1992, and 360 in 1993, amounting to more than 1000 victims in just those three years. It is assumed that a substantial percentage of the victims suffer with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Since confinement continues until the member loses faith, and about 70% of the victims actually left the church, it is impossible to obtain an accurate count. Some of those among the 30% who escaped confinement and returned to Unification Church suffer from serious psychological damage. There is no accurate report of these members either, because many of them are victimized a second and third time, eventually leaving the church and becoming unreachable.
Some members who succeeded in pretending to lose faith and were able to return to the church, witnessed many former members who suffered from serious psychological damages. There were some who uttered senseless words, tried to commit suicide, became misanthropic, became languid, and couldn't function properly in society. As there are many who suffer with nightmares among believers who were able to return to the church, there must be a large percentage of victims who suffer with PTSD on the whole.
A research conducted by American religion scholars David Bromlee and James Lewis in the "Cult faith-breaking syndrome -- Result of the wrong motive" (1987), shows the following results:
61% of those who were forced to leave faith (11% of those who left on their own will) can't concentrate or act strangely, 47% (vs. 11%) have nightmares, 58% (vs. 8%) experience forgetfulness & amnesia, 36% (vs. 4%) have hallucinations & illusions, 56% (vs. 3%) have monotone psychological rhythm, 42% (vs. 9%) have tantrums, and 31% (vs. 9%) have suicidal self-destructive tendency. It is clear from this report that forcible deprogramming method leaves the victims with substantial psychological damage.
In February, 1597, twenty six saints were martyred in Nagasaki. That marked the beginning of the era of persecution in Japan. Mr. Yakichi Kataoka, a Christian history scholar, states the following. "Three hundred years of Christian persecution under the Roman Empire is well known in world history. But even that was not as severe as Christian persecution under the Tokugawa regime. In the case of the Roman Empire, some emperors were generous and there were periods of time when persecution was discontinued. There were Popes and priests who survived and performed rituals. But the Tokugawa family never stopped persecuting during their 250-year reign, continued to search from corner to corner and made sure they got rid of all of them until there was not a single living priest for seven long generations." [Investigating Japan in the Age of Geographical Discovery---Tragedy of Christians, Shogakukan P.36]
The reason why Christian persecution in Japan was incomparable to others was that persecutors didn't allow believers to become martyrs, but chose to keep torturing them until they abandoned their faith. Orfanel, a missionary who came to Japan in 1607, reported after witnessing the persecution at the time: "It was not so difficult to just kill all the Christians but the persecutors decided to force them to give up their faith. Just killing them would mean they could not control the Christians and would result in humiliation and defeat on their part. The persecutors only wanted Christians to obey their orders." [op. cit P.40]
Thus persecutors took all kinds of effective measures to get them to abandon their faith.
Torturing methods were insidious and cruel.
Methods of torture:
1. Burning -- They were burnt alive while tied to a post. In order to give them a chance to break their faith by prolonging the torment, the rope was tied rather loosely over them and firewood was placed away from the post.
2. Bamboo Saw Torture: Christians were tied to posts on street corners with a small sword cut on their neck. Executive officers or passers-by would tear the wound, using the bamboo saw placed nearby.
3. Hanging Torture: They hung the believers upside down from a pole into a hole, one meter in diameter and two meters deep. They wrapped their body with a rope and punctured a tiny hole in their ear to prevent reversal of internal organs or congestion of the brain, causing premature death. They covered the hole with two pieces of wood that fit around the body at the hips. In order to further torment the victim, they sometimes put excrement in the hole.
4. Unzen Sulfur Spring Hell: Persecutors brought believers to a sulfur spring in Unzen (volcano) and collected the boiling water in a dipper with a long handle. They poured drops of the hot water from a tiny hole they had made in the dipper onto their naked bodies. In order to prolong the pain, doctors treated the burns and made them rest on straw in a shed. Believers were fed one bowl of rice and a sardine a day, and the torture lasted for several days. [History of Japan Vol.10 Century of Christians, Akio Tanaka]
As evidenced above, persecutors confined and tortured Christians in various methods to force them to abandon their faith and prevent them from becoming martyrs. The hanging method was so cruel and devious that even a visiting anti-Christian Dutch man abhorred it. In the case of "Unzen Sulfur Spring Hell", they would treat their wounds and feed them until they recuperated, and then would go right back to torturing them again. Using "candy and whip", they toyed with the Christian minds to force them to abandon their faith. Thus Christians in Japan were historically confined until they finally gave up their faith.
Long-time victimized Christians have now taken the position of the persecutor. Even though they do not torture physically, they have inherited the method of indefinite confinement until the faith is broken. How painful it must be for those who become victims of this kind of persecution. Christians inherited one of the cruelest methods in the history of persecution.
The fact that certain Christian ministers have been conspiring with relatives to indefinitely confine Unification Church members for the purpose of persuading them to abandon their faith is a serious problem. It is inexcusable for Japanese society to have been tolerant of this infringement upon the right to exercise freedom of religion in the name of "discussion between parents and children" and will inevitably receive judgment from future generations.
Unfortunately, it was not because the Japanese government came to a great awakening to "freedom of religion" that Christian persecution finally came to an end, but it was brought about by criticism and pressure from foreign countries against the "Urakami incidents". The "Urakami Incidents" were major anti-Christian campaigns that took place from the end of the Tokugawa Era to the beginning of the Meiji Era.
In 1865, seven years after the Tokugawa regime decided to re-open the country to the world, a cathedral was built in Nagasaki and that prompted many Christians in long-hiding to come out and identify themselves. It was called the miracle in the history of world religions. Two years later, in July, 1867, the regime dispatched officials to Urakami, Nagasaki and arrested them.
Believers yielded to torture and broke faith, but immediately regained their faith. In July, 1868, the following year, believers were called to the government office, were taken away one after another and were transported to Fukuyama, Tsuwano, Kagoshima, Hiroshima, Okayama, Himeji, Matsue, Tottori, Tokushima, Takamatsu, Matsuyama, Kochi, Wakayama, Nagoya, Kanazawa, and Toyama, away from their hometown and were forced to leave their faith. These Christians were treated like dogs, imprisoned in a strange land and forced to abandon their faith.
In November, 1871, in the midst of this Christian persecution, the Iwakura delegate, headed up by Tomomi Iwakura, Ambassador Extraordinaire and Plenipotentiary, left the Yokohama harbor to visit European countries via the United States for a total of one year and 10 months, in order to negotiate a treaty revision. They ended up suffering intense criticism from these countries that refused to sign a treaty with such a barbarous country as Japan which doesn't believe in religious freedom.
The circumstances of the Iwakura delegation are told in the following work of Takashi Nagai, Otome-toge (Chuo Publishing Company).
No matter where they went, the Iwakura delegate faced attacks of roaring public opinion that claimed Japan was a barbarous country because it did not give its people the right to religious freedom. When their carriage was passing through the city of Brussels in Belgium, citizens surrounded them and yelled at them to give the people of Japan the freedom of faith, and to release the Urakami Christians who were imprisoned.
Finally, the delegate wired a message to Tokyo. "Wherever we go, we are confronted with the strong appeal of foreigners for the exiled Christians and the freedom of religious faith. Unless we release the Christians immediately and express some sort of tolerance for religious freedom, we will never be able to reach friendly compromises with these foreigners."
This telegram took the Japanese government by surprise. They realized for the first time that the religious issue which seemed like a minor problem to them, was the biggest obstacle to concluding an international equality treaty." (72 -73 pages)
With this kind of foreign pressure, the Japanese government had no other choice but to finally lift the ban on Christianity on February 21st, 1873, and on March 14, brought Urakami's believers back to their home towns from the various places of exile. After the Japanese government granted religious freedom to their people and won a better reputation in the international circle, they were able to sign the "equality" treaty with foreign countries.
In order to be a true world leader today, Japan should learn from such historical events instead of pretending not to see these unlawful religious confinements taking place right under their nose.
Anti-Unification Church groups have been spreading many kinds of rumors such as "People are lynching and murdering in the Unification Church," or "Some people are missing in the church", or "They become criminals", that led the parents of Unification Church members to feel very insecure.
In February, 1977, "The National Association of Parents of the Divine Principle Movement Victims" (Anti-Unification Church Parents Association) spread the following information: "Among 119 Unification Church members who are under investigation, 32 are missing, 3 are dead, and 49 are mentally ill." Those parents who took this information seriously began aggressively conspiring with anti-Unification Church ministers to persuade their children to abandon their faith, which resulted in a great increase of abductions and confinements.
This information prepared by the Anti-Unification Church Parents Association was used by a member of the Socialist Party (the current Social Democratic Party) during the House of Representatives budget committee in 1977 as inquiry material to attack the Unification Church. The information, however, turned out to be very inaccurate.
In the questionnaire that the Anti-Unification Church Parents Association sent out, it was written: "Please exaggerate your answers as much as possible so that your child will be classified as having psychiatric disorder or malnutrition." (Japanese edition The Island of Concentration Camps, edited by A Study Group on Communism and Religious Issues, published by Zenpon-sha, P. 407) The information was distorted intentionally in order to bring the downfall of the Unification Church.
The Unification Church requested this member of the Socialist Party (at the time) who used this information during the Diet session, to list the individual names corresponding to the research results. But he could only come up with 3 individual names out of the 32 missing people, and 6 out of the 49 mentally ill. Moreover, when these individuals were traced, it became clear that the information was groundless and false. (op.cit, p.407-413).
Even after such fabrications were brought to light, the Anti-Unification Church Parents Association maliciously continued to spread the same kind of disinformation. There were unfortunately many parents who were affected by those groundless rumors.
How many parents became so fearful that they had to actually confine their own children to try to get them to abandon their faith, because of these false rumors?
Anti-Unification Church groups continued to spread information that instilled fear in the believers' parents even after the 80's, and built up the image of a frightful Unification Church. For example, on July 21, 1987, when a Hiroshima University professor was murdered in the dean's room, the media proliferated news of the possibility of the culprit being a Unificationist.
Mr. Yoshifu Arita wrote an article entitled "The Hiroshima University Occult Murder" in the "Asahi Journal" (Aug.7, 1987) relating the incident to the Collegiate Association for the Research of the Principle (CARP), an affiliate group of the Unification Church. He writes: "We hope that this, along with the Asahi Newspaper Hanshin Branch Assault incident, is not foreshadowing an ominous time, and eagerly await the quick arrest of the culprit." (Concerning the Asahi Newspaper Hanshin Branch Assault incident that happened in May that year, Mr. Arita also incriminated the Unification Church by equating the Sekiho Group with Unification Church members in the May 15th, 1997 issue of "Shukan Bunshun" (a weekly magazine).
The killer of the Hiroshima University professor was arrested on October 2nd that year, and it was proven that the Unification Church had nothing to do with it. However, there was no apology on the part of the media for misguiding the public by falsely accusing Unification Church, and therefore leaving only a bad image of the church.
Similar cases continued in the 90's. When an Anti-Unification Church activist, Mr. Myung Hwan Tak was killed in front of his house in February, 1994, the rumor spread that "Unification Church was behind the scenes." Though the murderer was arrested and the church's innocence proven, the media took advantage of the incident to criticize Unification Church and reported as if the church was involved. (Christian Newspaper, March 6, 1994)
At the time of "the Subway Sarin Attack" incident set off by the Aum Shinrikyo in March, 1995, despite there being no connection between the Aum Shinrikyo and the Unification Church, there were malicious reports that connected the two groups. One such groundless statement was made by Takeshi Ono, an anti-Unification Church lawyer: "there are some former Unification Church members in the Aum." (Shukan Gendai (weekly magazine), May 27, 1995)
Furthermore, the Unification Church was falsely accused of its involvement in two other incidents: when the former executive of the daily newspaper, "Sekai Nippo", Yoshikazu Soejima was attacked and injured in June, 1984; and when a family in Setagaya was murdered at the end of 2000. (Arita, Marco Polo, January, 1995, and Fumiya Hitotsubashi, Shincho 45, March, 2002) In this way, the anti-Unification Church groups succeeded in building a very negative image of the Unification Church, by linking the church with hideous murder incidents, and with the help of negative overage on "Spiritual Sales"
We must understand that usually there is a deep doctrinal issue involved when former believers say they were "deceived". They are saying they were deceived because they lost faith in the teachings of the Unification Church as a result of receiving lectures from the anti-Unification Church ministers, not because Unification Church deceived them.
One of the reasons why the anti-Unification Church ministers oppose Unification Church, concerns a doctrinal issue of how to interpret the Bible. The biggest issue is that of "the redemption of the cross" which is a very fundamental teaching in Christianity.
The Divine Principle teaches that the hanging on the cross should not have originally happened. It explains that God's desire was for Jesus to bring victory alive, build an ideal family and thus the Kingdom of Heaven on this Earth, but because of the faithlessness on the part of the Jewish people at the time, Jesus was killed on the cross, and could only bring about spiritual salvation. Anti-Unification Church ministers have criticized this teaching as "Satanic" "enemies of the cross" (Philippians 3:18).
The reason why Christians are stuck on the cross is because their basis for salvation rests on it. If the cross is taken away from them, their grounds for salvation will completely disappear. This is why they regard the Unification Church as Satan.
Anti-Unification Church ministers have upheld the scripture and persuaded Unification Church members that the cross was absolutely predestined and that they had been deceived, pressuring them to abandon their faith.
It is probably impossible for Unification Church members who met the church and came to have faith without previous knowledge of the traditional Christian viewpoint of salvation through the cross, to endure doctrinal criticisms by anti-Unification Church ministers using scriptural evidence. It would be very easy for someone to be influenced by the traditional Christian viewpoint that the cross was predestined, if one reads the New Testament without any speculation.
In the Gospels, there are indeed many scriptures that depict Jesus himself prophesying his death on the cross to save humanity. This is what seems to directly confront the Unification interpretation of the cross. Anti-Unification Church ministers attack the members with these kinds of scriptures, throw their minds into confusion, and eventually convince them to break their faith.
In this way, former members who come to think that they were deceived by the church, start to even believe that Satan is behind the Unification Church.
In Christianity, there was rapid progress after the 19th Century in the research of Jesus' life, and it is now common knowledge in Critical Bible Studies, that what is described in the Gospel is not a faithful historical account of Jesus' life but that it is only a portrayal of the "missionary" image of Jesus.
The accounts that describe the cross as being absolutely predestined were written with the necessity and motive to proclaim Christ's "redemption through the cross". They were nothing more than "prophecies written after the actual event" by Gospel writers who recollected the cross after it happened. They were dialectical descriptions of Jesus' life of suffering leading up to the cross. Many Unification Church members who did not have this knowledge abandoned their faith as a result of skillful persuasion on the part of the anti-Unification Church ministers, and have thus remarked that they were "deceived" by the Unification Church. This is not about Unification Church trying to deceive people, but is really about religious doctrinal disputes.
However, media coverage of former members who claim they were deceived, together with the already existing negative frightful image of the Unification Church, lead people into thinking that this mysterious group uses special "mind-controlling" techniques to deceive any kind of person.
Please refer to the book, "Trampled Freedom of Faith" by Tomohisa Ohta (Kogensha, pp. 231-245) concerning this doctrinal dispute over the cross.
Anti-Unification Church ministers often use the "blood sharing rituals" story when they are trying to persuade members to leave the church. The following is an excerpt from the book, The Real Face of the Principle Movement, written by Hiroshi Yamaguchi, published in 1975:
"Blood sharing rituals" does not refer to a blood donation from the church founder. It is not the blood-drinking ceremony performed by gangsters doing their brotherhood pledge. "Blood sharing rituals" are performed by having sex with the honorable founder of the church. Therefore only a female member can perform this ritual with the founder. The female member then performs it with another male member, and in this way, the ritual is carried out alternately between a male and a female." (p. 144)
According to the explanation by journalist Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Unification Church practices the aforementioned "sex relay", but this is completely groundless. There is no one among those who were abducted, confined, and left the church as a result of coercion, that had such an experience. (In some spiritual groups, for example the Wu Myung Shik group, Wu seems to have had children with more than one mother. These groups have nothing to do with the Unification Church that teaches "abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage".)
When they found out that there were no Japanese members that experienced this "ritual", some anti-Unification Church groups started claiming it was only the 36 elder Korean couples that performed the "blood sharing". For example, Keiko Kawasaki writes in her book, The Real Face of the Unification Church (April, 1990), that the "First 3 couples and 33 couples (36 couples) participated in the "blood sharing ritual" performed by Sun Myung Moon."(235 pages)
However, when Mr. Myung Hwan Tak, a former member of the 36 couples and one of the first accusers of the "blood sharing rituals", appeared with another former member of the 36 couples on a TV variety program which aired on Oct. 27, 1993, they were questioned by the MC as to whether they performed "blood sharing" with the founder. The latter answered "there was no such thing" and denied it. Even Mr. Tak who had long been criticizing the "blood sharing" said, "The Unification Church doctrine is that of sex, but we never found actual evidence of such activity."
It turned out, therefore, that there was no evidence in the claims made by anti-Unification Church groups that "blood sharing rituals" were performed up until the 36 couples. (Now, some are even saying that it was only the first three couples, but there is no evidence about this either.) It is mind-blowing to know that the opposition groups actually continued to criticize the church without any actual evidence, and fair to say that they were just spreading rumors with malicious intent.
In fact, Mr. Tak was the source of Pastor Satoshi Moriyama's criticisms on "blood sharing rituals". Moriyama is the one who invented the methodology of forcible conversion through abduction and confinement.
In Pastor Moriyama's books, he talks about the "blood sharing rituals", but does not clarify his source. However, we can see that the source was Mr. Tak when we read the October 12, 1974 issue of the Christian Newspaper. Pastor Moriyama irresponsibly used Mr. Tak's groundless statement on "blood sharing rituals" without verifying the information, and heavily criticized it as if he saw it with his own eyes.
When writing something that might possibly defame someone, one should be extremely careful to make sure the information is factual and accurate. The fact that Mr. Tak expressed no guilt in stating "there was no evidence" shows the nastiness of the nature of these "blood sharing rituals" persecutions
The fact that so many Unification Church members were forced to leave the church because of these deplorable rumors of "blood sharing rituals", even though they had never actually witnessed or experienced such things, is lamentable.
It is Mr. Sadao Asami that spreads a false rumor like this with a groundless suspicion. In his book "Unification Church, the Fear of Body Control" (published by Kamogawa Co.), he speculates as follows, stating that there is a teaching in Unification Church to purify a person by sexual relationship describing Archangel Lucifer as "L", Eve as "E" and Adam as "A".
If each process of the fall were sexual relationships from L to E to A, in order to restore the process of the fall, the reversed process of sexual relationships must be necessary. If the fallen angel Lucifer disgraced Eve and Eve disgraced Adam, Lucifer (L') without the original sin should purify a woman (E') with "pure" sex and the purified woman should purify a man (A'). ------- According to their logic, originally Jesus should have been "Second Lucifer". Otherwise, he would not be able to purify the woman back who was disgraced by First Lucifer. (Page 16)
His interpretation is distorted because he did not have a clear total grasp of Divine Principle.
He overlooked the following 2 major points in the Fall.
The spiritual fall between Lucifer and Eve was not just a matter of their sexual relationship but also an "act against the Principle of Creation", which is that they had an 'illicit relationship' even though their relationship was not the one to be husband and wife.
A Their motivation was not based God's love but "Self- centered love".
From this we must conclude that he did not understand Chapter II, let alone the basics of DP.
DP reads, "Abraham was his wife Sarai taken by King Pharaoh from their positions as brother and sister. But because God punished Pharaoh, Abraham could take his wife back and came out of Egypt with his nephew Lot and a lot of properties. Abraham had to go through this kind of course without knowing in order to establish the symbolic condition to restore the position of Adam's family through indemnity." (Page 318) This is an interpretation about the story in Genesis12/10 to 13/1.
Abraham, the central figure of the Restoration Providence, had to indemnify the position of Adam and therefore he almost had his wife Sarai taken by King Pharaoh who was representing the position of the Archangel. But he started to walk the course of taking his wife back again. It explains that this was the course to restore the fall through indemnity which had taken place in Adam's family in the reversed way.
In this case (See Chart 1), Abraham who was to restore the position of Adam remained in the position of Adam and Pharaoh who was representing the Archangel remained in the Archangel's position. When the spiritual fall happened, the two, the Archangel and Eve who should not have become a couple, had an illicit love relationship and fell. To restore that mistake Sarai (Eve) came back to Abraham (Adam), her original partner of Principle of Creation, without making an illicit relationship with Pharaoh (Archangel). Sarai overcame the trial of a "temptation" by false love with "the heart to risk her life centering on God" rather than "centering on a self- centered motivation" in order to protect the life of her husband and her virtue.
That is, the fall was a matter of "adultery" and therefore not to commit it; it occurred by a "self-centered motivation" and therefore to stand with a "God-centered motivation" this time around. Likewise, Abraham's reversed course means the course of true restoration.
Unification Church never teaches that Jesus was the "Second Lucifer" neither that the Messiah as the "Second Lucifer" purifies with sexual relationship unlike Mr. Asami states. All of his quibbles are his groundless pure speculation. He just claims his own idea assertively about the teachings of Unification Church even without understanding their basics.
If they criticize the Unification Church doctrine, using the Bible and a person says that he still believes in DP, it will take time to deprogram him since it becomes a matter of choosing which explanation to believe in.
But in the criticism of personality with saying, "Rev. Moon does "blood-sharing." or "He is telling a lie." It can bring results more effectively. Therefore, there is an "Easter issue" as one of those criticisms of the opposition ministers.
Ms. Hiroko Yamazaki who left the church said the following. She was shocked with the explanation of the opposition minister that the day was not the actual Easter.
"We were told that Jesus appeared spiritually to Rev. Moon on April 17, 1935 and asked him to inherit the mission which Jesus could not accomplish." But the day was not Easter. In Christianity, they decided Easter would be the first Sunday after the full moon after Vernal Equinox Day. In that year, April 17th was not Sunday. Once opposition factions pointed it out, they said that that was Easter as was decided by Unification Church. It was strange that they decided when Easter was, when Unification Church had not been established yet. Since then they celebrate Easter on April 17th. Moreover, it seems that recently they stopped explaining about Easter in their lectures. (When The Love Changed Into A Falsehood (Pages 195~196))
Decidedly, as Ms. Hiroko Yamazaki mentioned, April 17, 1935 was not Sunday but Wednesday in the Passion Week. (Note: Easter in 1935 was on April 21st) However, even though that day was not Easter for Christianity, we cannot come to a conclusion that Rev. Moon is a liar.
In the book "History of Unification Church" which was published by Seong Wha Sa in Korea on Oct.14, 1978, it was said that on Easter of the year when Rev. Moon became 16 years old, on April 17th Rev. Moon came to know that the day was the true Easter for the first time. It was revealed to Rev. Moon by Jesus who appeared spiritually to him. The date of Easter which was celebrated by Christians was changed every year because they could not find out the exact date when Jesus passed away. Therefore, it is impossible for them to decide the exact date of the true Easter. Then in 325 AD at the first council of Nicaea they decided to celebrate Easter on "the first Sunday after the full moon after Vernal Equinox Day".
That is, Christianity itself could not figure out when was the actual Easter for a certain period of time. It is the Easter Christianity celebrates that was decided at the council in 325 AD. Therefore, Christians are not sure if the Easter they celebrate is the real day of Jesus' resurrection. Rev. Moon was taught by Jesus himself that April 17th was the correct date of Easter. Detailed information was not given properly to Japan. That is why the "Easter issue" happened in Japan. Actually, when we checked several publications of Unification Church we could find some discrepancies in them as the opposition factions mentioned. Sometimes the information about revelation brought to Japan came in fragments or the person who got the information misunderstood it. Furthermore, the difference of customs between Korea and Japan also affected the information. These were the reasons for the discrepancies. For example, the one who had heard that Rev. Moon received the revelation when he was 16 years old, didn't know that in Korea they counted their ages in the Chinese way, and the person simply added 16 to1920 (Rev. Moon's birth year) and wrote that Rev. Moon received the revelation in 1936. Or the content that the date, April 17, 1935, when Rev. Moon actually received the revelation was the very date of Easter, was changed a little and it became hearsay that Rev. Moon received the revelation on April 17, 1935, on Easter.
In this way, the discrepancies in the information came about. The opposition factions criticize and take advantage of (abuse) them as a factor to convince members to leave the church. This is the truth of the "Easter issue".
In the early church age, there were some contradictions in the epistles as well as the gospels in the New Testament, too. (Note: There were some contradictions among the four Gospels, also.) Jewish people accused Christianity with saying that Christian documents were in self-contradiction. It was the same situation with the act of these opposition ministers.
One of the data which an opposition minister uses for withdrawal persuasion is the photo in which Rev. Moon has been believed to be crossing the sea carrying Mr. Jeong Hwa Park on his back. Mr. Pak was guided by an old person who appeared in his dream and believed Rev. Moon as the Lord of Second Advent and became his disciple when Rev. Moon was suffering at a Hungnam concentration camp in North Korea.
On October 14, 1950, Rev. Moon was liberated by the bombing of the United Nations forces, and visited his disciple in Pyongyang. At that time Mr. Park had broken his leg. When an evacuation order was given in the city of Pyongyang, his family left him alone because they thought he would become their burden. Rev. Moon rescued him in such a situation without forsaking him.
In December of the same year, Rev. Moon put Mr. Park who had lost the use of his leg on a bicycle, and together with Mr. Park and Mr. Won Pil Kim, went south, heading for Pusan. On the way he found out that there was a boat going from Yongmae Island to Inchon. So he carried Mr. Park on his back and waded across a shallow sea.
The photo which the opposition ministers use to criticize Unification Church was originally put in the President Seungman Rhee's wife's memoirs which was published serially in the Choong Ang Ilbo (daily newspaper) in Korea and this photo did bear a close resemblance to Rev. Moon who crossed the sea, carrying Mr. Park. (Choong Ang Ilbo 10/ 24/ 1983)
In May 9, 1984, Mr. Jeong Hwa Park who visited Japan, testified at the HQ church in Tokyo, "This photo shows Master Moon and me." Then he visited around Nagoya, Takarazuka and Kyushu, etc. Since the person concerned testified, of course, many people accepted his claim without any doubt that the photo showed Rev. Moon and Mr. Park. But later it was found out that they were not Rev. Moon and Mr. Park.
The time when the photo was found, and Mr. Park's visit to Japan in1984 was the time when it was about to be decided in court whether or not Rev. Moon would be imprisoned in Danbury in the US, and it was several months after Heung Jin Nim was killed in a car accident.
How much the discovery of the photo comforted and encouraged Unification Church members! This good news spread immediately to all Unification Church members.
The opposition ministers criticize that "This man is not Rev. Moon. He is telling a lie", by showing the photo to Unification Church members at the place where he is confined. But Rev. Moon was not telling a lie, nor did Unification Church try to deceive anyone.
Because the atmosphere of the photo resembled Rev. Moon so much and the person concerned testified that Unification Church members started to believe it.
Even though this photo might not show Rev. Moon and Mr. Park, the fact that Rev. Moon went south without forsaking Mr. Park who had lost the use of his leg is not denied. It is true that Mr. Park who broke his leg arrived in the south of Korea.
In comparison, there are a lot of rumors going around about the truth of the Shroud of Turin, which, it is said, wrapped the corpse of Jesus. Some criticize that "It is counterfeit." But even if the Shroud of Turin is counterfeit, it does not deny the fact that Jesus died on the cross. The problem of the above-mentioned photo can be said that it is the same as that of the Shroud of Turin.
It is true that there are inaccurate quotations of Bible verses in Divine Principle. But it is a matter of the level of perfection in terms of expression. It means that the Bible verses which are quoted with the intention of trying to explain clearly the content of Divine Principle are inaccurate. It does not mean the theory of Divine Principle itself is wrong.
As a matter of fact, there is a problem of quotations of verses from the Old Testament in the New Testament, and it could not avoid criticisms by Judaism. We must know that early Christians who had no solid foundation could not avoid the criticisms by Jewish people who had an overwhelming foundation, saying, "Really inaccurate quotations of Bible verses, distorted --".
Regarding the "Bible quotation problem" which the New Testament is holding, in the "History of Biblical Interpretation" edited by Akira Demura and Nobufumi Miyatani and published by the Printing Department of the United Church of Christ in Japan, Mr. Shigeo Hashimoto (Professor of Doshisha University Theology Department) states as follows.
"In the utilization of verses from the Old testament in the Gospels as it is stated above, the interpretations common to Judaism have been adopted without conscious discussion, and these have not been consistent in the process of transmission. And the basic purpose of quoting the Old Testament is to show that the Jesus event is the decisive event of salvation for human beings, and that it is the fulfillment of words of the Old Testament. It is on the assumption of the belief that Jesus is the savior, and the interpretation of the Old Testament is from that view point. On the contrary, it is not the case that if you study the Old Testament deeply, you will come to comprehend the faith of Christianity. Therefore, in spite of the quotation of the Old Testament in order to testify the legitimacy of kerygma, the places which include contradictions and problems are found."(Page 67)
Furthermore, Mr. Shigeo Hashimoto states in the "New Version of Co-translation: An Exposition of The New Testament I" (the Printing Department of the United Church of Christ in Japan) as follows.
"He (the writer of the Gospel of Matthew), in order to justify his theology, takes advantage of the Old Testament, yet he is not bound by it, and adds to it, not seriously, some changes. In other words, for him, the Old Testament is turned into, so to speak, a tool for Christology. The question whether in this way his theory can persuade Jewish people or not, will remain. As a matter of fact, for a long time the Jewish people have come to grieve over Christianity's making use of the Old Testament not seriously and its attack against Judaism with an inaccurate text of the Old Testament, and later have come to publish the a new revised translation of the Old Testament in Greek (Aquila translation)". (Pages 37-38 )
In this way, just like opposition ministers criticize Divine Principle at the present time, the quotations from the Old Testament which are quoted in the New Testament are, from the view point of Jewish people, the content which is criticized as "truly inaccurate quotations from the Old Testament, distorted --"
In conclusion, the opposition ministers are finding fault with the problem of quotations of Bible verses in Divine Principle and taking advantage of the Bible for deprogramming (Unification Church members), hiding the similar problems included in the New Testament, which is their official canon. (Page 67)
The opposition ministers criticize Divine Principle, stating that "In the Japanese version there are omitted parts which are included in the Korean version, and in the revised version, there are corrected parts. Truth is eternal and unchanging. To change itself is the proof that Divine Principle is not truth anymore."
Surely at one time, there were some omitted parts in Divine Principle. But that was based on the consideration of ministry. And because in the chapter of the Lord of Second Advent, there were similar quotations from the Bible, then, there were missing parts due to, so called, the "Eye-skipping phenomenon" (Note: Because on the same page, the same Bible verses were quoted, the sentences between the same verses were not translated.) .
Furthermore, the problem which was caused by a lack of a translation skill occurred. For example, on Page 23 in the Japanese edition of Divine Principle, the part which is written in the Korean version as "one purpose" was mistakenly translated into "God's purpose" in Japanese.
In fact, there were similar problems in the process of the formation of the New Testament. Therefore, if they say, "Unification Church is insincere and Divine Principle is not truth," then the criticism that "Christianity is also insincere and the New Testament is neither truth," can be established as well.
Actually, when we research the process of the compilation of the New Testament, which is the canon of Christianity, there is a historical circumstance where the same situation as Divine Principle lies. The original text of the New Testament was in Greek, but the Bible which was translated into Latin was in such a confusion as to be said that each manuscript already differed as of the 4th century, and in 381 AD, the Pope Damasus I finally could not help but order Hieronymus (347-419) to revise the Bible in Latin.
And because the original text of the Bible in Greek itself was very confusing, even today "Text Critique" is studied as an effort to restore the true original text. The Nestle-Aland edition of the Greek Bible, which is published based on the latest research achievement has gone through 28 editions. In that Bible, a large number of textual variants were recorded as footnotes. If you see this, you will understand how the manuscript of the original Greek text was confusing.
Moreover, in the New Testament, in Chapter 8 of the Gospel of John, there is a story of an "adulterous woman" which is considered to have been deleted at one time.
Furthermore, in the 3rd verse of Chapter 14 in the Gospel of Matthew, which reads "For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife" the name "Philip" was mistaken, and the manuscript writer (Codex Bezae) in the late 5th century deleted this name.
Likewise, the Bible itself has been passed on up to today, creating (the above-mentioned) various situations. That is, rewriting, addition and even deletion have been done in the Bible, and it has been changing as time and environment change. Anti-Unification Church ministers never teach this kind of fact to Unification Church members. The opposition ministers who criticized Divine Principle at the time of deprogramming Hiroko Yamazaki, defined truth, saying, "Truth means that it never shakes, and never moves, doesn't it?" and criticized that "Divine principle which is shaking and moving is not truth." If we say from this view point, then we can conclude that "The Bible also is not truth."
Christianity has believed in the Bible as God's revelation. Especially in the Protestant churches, there is a tendency of identifying the letters of the Bible as "Truth". But after the 19th century, the study of Biblical Critique has developed rapidly, and it was pointed out that the Bible contained mutual contradictions and descriptive mistakes. And it has come to light that even in the words which were considered to have been spoken by Jesus, mistakes are included. Because of the development of the study of Bible critique, Christians who lost faith began to emerge, saying, "The Bible is wrong." "The Bible is not truth."
Those opposition ministers who are aware of this are shaking the faith of Unification Church members, using, so to speak, the same trick, saying "Divine Principle is wrong." "Divine Principle is not truth." and working to destroy their faith. Those Unification Church members who lost faith by this kind of deprogramming come to badly hate the Unification Church and even take their cases to court. We cannot help but feel that those opposition ministers who are bent on criticizing the Unification Church, shutting their eyes to the problems of the Bible have a grudge against the Unification Church, and are insincere.
It was the "Constitutional Amendment Article 1"established in the United States of America, in which the freedom of religion was codified for the first time in human history on November 3, 1791. This Constitutional Amendment Article 1 is indispensable for the freedom of religion.
It requires the separation of church and state. To be brief, in order to protect the right of the minorities, 1) State must not recognize officially a particular religion.(Note: If a particular religion is recognized officially, then the other religions which are not may become the object of oppression.) 2) State must not establish a law which forbids religious worship, the freedom of speech and publication, etc., and must not violate the right of people to have a peaceful gathering.
In the background of the establishment of this "Constitutional Amendment Article 1" there was such a tragedy as follows.
Over the freedoms of thought, speech, and association, etc., the Catholic Church, the Church of England and the Protestant Church were expelling, suppressing, and fighting each other in some cases among relatives over their beliefs.
The establishment of the "Constitutional Amendment Article 1" came about from such a deep reflection that "We must not repeat such historical mistakes anymore." For example, during the 16th and 17th centuries when Puritans began to rise in England, after Henry VIII who established the "Act of Supremacy", the problem of beliefs got involved in the struggle for the right of succession to the throne, and among royal families, each group of Catholic, Protestant and the middle-of-the-roader (the Church of England), centering on royal families, had a heated battle over leadership.
Especially, the "Massacre of Smithfield" against Protestant leaders which broke out under Mary I (1553-58) was a ghastly incident.
And, when we turn our eyes on the European continent, in Germany a lot of people's lives were sacrificed during the "Thirty Years' War" which was fought between Catholics and Protestants, and the number of the population there was reduced from 16 million to 6 million. ("The History of Christianity No. 3: The Reformation", written by Walker, Page 202). In France, the country went to ruin in the "Huguenot War" which suppressed Huguenot (a Calvinist), and it is said that about 10,000 people were slaughtered in the "Massacre on St. Bartholomew Holiday" in August 1572.
Those who were pushed to the corner due to the religious oppression that accompanied an orthodox/ heterodoxy controversy fled to Switzerland, Netherland and the United Kingdom, etc., searching for religious freedom. But these places were not ones where they could live in peace. Soon among them, a group of people emigrating to a new continent of America appeared.
The most prominent ones were the Pilgrim Fathers of the Mayflower. Besides them, there were various groups that emigrated to America, seeking religious freedom from various places in Europe. Beside Protestants being oppressed by Catholics, conversely, Catholics were oppressed by Protestants as well, and various kinds of religious groups such as Methodists, Baptists, Quakers, Mennonites, Jewish, etc., emigrated to America. She became a melting pot of religions. Nevertheless, even though they emigrated to America, searching for religious freedom, again another tragic incident broke out. That was the "Witch Hunt of Salem" in the 17th century.
Within just 3 months, 20 people and 2 dogs were executed as witches at the height of the witch hunt in 1692 when the witch hunt was most severely practiced. ("American Church History" written by Akihiko Sone Page 69)
It is good if we could trust and respect each other in true love, but if only the doctrine side precedes, then there will be an ugly fight among religions, and it will become like an inquisition and a witch hunt.
Therefore, in order to avoid a fight even among relatives due to the differences of thoughts and religious beliefs, and to protect the right of the minorities, the Constitutional Amendment Article 1 was established
As Jesus said, "For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. (Luke 12: 52-53), in the belief of Christianity, the fight and confrontation can happen among relatives over right or wrong. We should learn from history, and in order to avoid similar tragedies, we should clarify the point that it is an unforgivable act to abduct and confine for apostasy purpose even among relatives and we should take a proper step to the right direction.
Even though there are over 4,000 victims within the nation of Japan herself, she continues to ignore the problem. Surely this will cause Japan to be seen with doubting eyes as the least of the leading nations in the international society.