The Words of the Durst Family
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The Words of the Durst Family |
Dr.
Durst at a "Good Morning, America" TV interview, 1982.
Kristina Morrison Seher joined our movement in 1970 in Booneville, CA, and worked with Onni Durst in the Oakland Family on the witnessing team. She now serves as Head of School at The Principled Academy in San Leandro, CA.
Dr Mose Durst was appointed president of the Unification Church in 1980. A former professor of English Literature at Laney College in Oakland, California, he was first introduced to the Unification Church through his Korean wife, Onni.
Kristina Morrison Seher: Dr. Durst, you were president of the Unification Church in America when the Unification News was founded. Do you recall what events led to its founding?
Mose Durst: When I became President in 1980, there was the basic challenge of communicating regularly with leaders and members in the 50 states. We needed some vehicle to communicate the various activities of the True Family and various other events in the country and around the world. That was the original purpose of the Unification News.
When I first became President, I went around to all 50 states and tried to meet with all the leaders on a regular basis, but there was no central way of communicating with everyone. Therefore the need for the Unification News. I also instituted a weekly news video for a few years in an effort to keep everyone "in the loop." Richard Lewis deserves all the credit for maintaining the Unification News all these years by himself.
Question: Did Reverend Moon give you any insight about his reason for wanting to found the Unification News?
Answer: Well, just that he urged me to develop ways to communicate about certain religious liberty issues, for instance, I appeared on television and was interviewed on radio and by newspaper reporters in all the 50 states. I was president from 1980 to 1989. In 1980, almost immediately when I arrived in New York from California, True Father already had been involved with a lawsuit and needed support. The Unification News and my basic public affairs work were conducted to educate the American public about our church and True Father's position with respect to the lawsuit.
Question: I understand you served as Editor in Chief for the Unification News for its first year, back in 1982. Do you remember who helped you as newspaper staff, or what parts they played? And how did you put the paper together in those early days?
Answer: Well, again I have to attribute all that to Richard Lewis. He really has done the yeoman's work. I basically was a support person to him. As Editor in Chief, I reviewed the work he did. I tried to make suggestions and editorial comments but Richard was a wonderful person and took on that great mission himself. As I say, he deserves all the credit.
Question: Did you give Richard any directions when he took over? Do you remember what you told him to do?
Answer: Well, I told Richard to identify all the key activities in our movement on a global as well as a national level, and especially to focus on the True Family. Then try to enlist various people around the country to send in articles, photographs, and so forth so that the entire church movement in America could at least be aware of what was happening throughout the country. And that was the main purpose. Richard was doing that well. Then, as I say, for a year or two I was doing the video unification news with a similar purpose at the same time.
Question: So it sounds like you imagined the Unification News as communicating primarily with members so that they would have a common understanding and foundation. Was there any effort to use the Unification News as a way to communicate with non-members?
Answer: Not really at that time. As I said, I went around to every state and had interviews on every morning television show, on radio shows, and also newspaper interviews. Eventually I wrote the book, To Bigotry No Sanction, which was published by a legitimate publisher and got into the bookstores.
My purpose in writing it was to educate America about our movement because they knew nothing at all about us. I tried to answer the twelve basic questions that most people had when I went on radio or TV. Most interviewers would ask the same questions.
So largely, the Unification News was for Unification members. The interviews and articles that we got going around the country, along with my book tour for To Bigotry No Sanction, were largely to educate the American public. I literally got on every talk show from "Good Morning, America" to "Goodnight, America" because at that time there was a great deal of notoriety surrounding our movement. People were fascinated or just upset or hostile or just questioning what was going on. So my main purpose was to go around the country and really to educate people through the larger public media.
Question: I think during the seventies the deprogramming was at its height, at least here in California. What year was the lawsuit where the conservatorship law was finally struck out? Was that 1977?
Answer: 1977.
Question: So the deprogramming kind of peaked in the late seventies. When you became President of the church in 1980, what was it that many Americans thought about our movement at that point?
Answer: Well, they certainly didn't understand what was happening. Their children would go to a workshop and would not communicate. As Unificationists, we could have done much better in communicating to parents and to others and perhaps there was too much pressure put on young people to not communicate. Therefore, there was a great deal of hysteria on the part of family members and parents. In order to address this problem, we sponsored a number of parents' workshops both here in California and in New York to try to educate parents. However, ours was just such a strange movement for Americans.
Even True Father's rallies were difficult for the average American; Father's speaking the Korean language was very difficult for many Americans. To many of them, it just seemed like someone whom they could not understand and a movement that they couldn't understand. This caused great hostility. Again, as I wrote in To Bigotry No Sanction, the anti-religious movement in America is a very old movement, whether it be anti-Catholic, anti-Mormon, anti-Semitic, or anti-Unificationist. There's a patterned stereotype that the group will deceive you, take advantage of you, give you the "evil eye," or "they're only out for money."
These are the same stereotypes; it just happened we were the latest target.
Question: So did the Unification News contribute in any way to how the movement was being received by the public during this time?
Answer: I think the Unification News helped family members understand what was going on. As I say, it took an enormous effort for nine years. I literally went around the country over and over and over again doing interviews. If you Google my name, it comes up about 181,000 times related to the 80s because I took upon myself to educate the American public about our movement and deal with our legal affairs.
We had to deal with legal cases in headquarters. I had to strengthen the legal department so the people in the legal department could go out and fight various unjust kinds of activities against us and the American public had to be educated about who we were. That was my main purpose.
Question: Before we move on, I wanted to mention that I remember being part of the inter-religious group in the Bay Area that parents could call if they had concerns about an adult child who joined what they might have considered a cult. There was a Catholic priest, the psychiatrist Joel Fort, Dr. Durwood Foster from the Graduate Theological Union, and others.
The point was that we wanted families to know they could call this interfaith group if they had a concern and the interfaith group would then help mediate and meet with them and their child. So part of your work was reaching out to people in other faiths, and that seems to me like it was a big part. Once True Father's case was actually brought to court, you took the lead in trying to get amicus briefs (that is, "friend of the court" briefs) from leaders in other faiths. Can you mention something about that?
Answer: Well, that was the other dimension that I worked on. I went around the country with Lawrence Tribe, a well-regarded Constitutional lawyer from Harvard, and Dean Kelley, a central figure of the Protestant faiths associated with the National Council of Churches. We went around literally to every major church in America. Professor Tribe would explain Father's situation, that it was unjust. Then Dean Kelley would explain that, indeed, holding money on behalf of a church was a common occurrence in other religions. So we got 40 amicus briefs, "friend of the court" briefs, on behalf of Father.
It took a long time to do that but, again, it was a way to educate the larger public as to what we were about. Every time I talked about the legal case with those two gentlemen, I could then explain a little bit more about the religious component of our church and help educate people in that way. It was very significant to get 40 religious groups supporting Father in his case. I also tried to set up a national "hotline" which I mentioned to anybody who was concerned: "Please call headquarters. I will identify whomever it is you're looking for and bring about mediation."
In several cases that happened, but not enough. The deprogrammers were making a lot of money by kidnapping people, shocking parents by telling them all kinds of things. There are literally some people who dedicate themselves to destroying religion; as we know, there's a whole movement now which is anti God. It was the same thing back then except anti religion. There's always been that movement in America but it's been a minor movement, thank God, but it's always there. Some people are always looking to make money off of something that they could present as a scandal.
Question: One of the tasks that you wanted headquarters to perform was to check the newspapers and to respond to allegations about our movement, as well as go places and represent our movement in positive ways. Was there a public affairs office before you became President or was this a special outreach that you initiated?
Answer: To be honest with you, I was the public affairs office! We would pay a clipping service each month to get all these articles from around the country about our movement. So many of them were negative articles. The smartest thing I ever did was cancel the clipping service because we could not respond to all these things, so I had to rely largely on myself.
Basically, it was Richard Lewis doing the Unification News, our attorneys doing things, and some public affairs work in California. In the majority of states there were too few seasoned Unificationists to do anything in terms of effective public affairs work. Even when I went around the country and tried to guide the State Leaders in terms of building relationships with the media, the leadership would change so often and the information would disappear.
In another interview I can explain the responsibility of our own church and being a good member of the religious community. We do have some problems on that level and it's very hard to look at ourselves. I think, unfortunately, there was not enough of that self-criticism and honest reflection on how are we, the Unification movement, behaving in the religious community.
Question: Since this is the conclusion of the Unification News as a print publication, is there anything else you would like to say to commemorate your effort as the President during its founding?
Answer: I wish Richard Lewis well. Our ideals are so high that unless we make attempts to communicate honestly what we are about, it only causes confusion. I think, as Hans Kung has said, "Without unity of world religions, there is no peace in the world." True Father has also said that and so it is important to honestly communicate and try to reflect both on ourselves and how we're reaching out to others.
Question: Thank you very much.