A Unification Liberation Theology -- by Anthony J. Guerra

This paper articulates the beginnings of a Unification liberation theology. Section I sets out the eschatological frame of reference of Unification theology which is common to theologies of liberation, and discusses Unificationists' understanding of God as suffering over as well as with humanity. The implications of the Unificationist concept of God as Parent for its understanding of salvation or liberation is drawn. A debunking of the notion of God as Santa Klaus is demanded, as is the consequent revolutionizing of prayer to escape the limitations of a purely passive role for the human in the divine-human relationship. The emphasis on the role of the prayerful revolutionary as comforting the long-suffering Parent renders a spiritual praxis that is complementary/symmetrical with social activism. Reverend Moon is seen as the paradigmatic case for Unificationists who proclaim worldwide social activism as compelled by the longing to end the suffering of both God and humanity.

Sections II and III express some reflections on perhaps the two most well-publicized aspects of the Unification movement, namely its anticommunism and its unique style of marriage.¹ Both of these facets ate responsible in large part for the virulent opposition which the movement has experienced in its now three decades of existence. Anti-communism is sufficient reason to inspire the wrath of much of the political left, and the radical critique and new valuing of the family makes Unificationism, for different reasons, the target of both conservatives and liberals. My decision to concentrate on these two aspects of Unificationism, however, is based on my observation as a member of the movement since 1971, that these two aspects have constituted and are likely to continue to constitute constant and significant emphases of Unificationism as core members understand and experience it.

My comments on communism in Section II will do nothing to win the favor of either the vociferous protectors of vested interests or of those who believe that Unificationism will outgrow its opposition to communism as it is exposed to the more elevated Western spheres of culture and education and thus is separated from its South Korean origins where anti-communism is assumed to be part of the national gene pool. My presentation of Unification anti-communism seeks to subordinate the ideological critique to religious and humanitarian concerns, and thus is a constructive or corrective construal rather than merely a description. I do believe that Unificationism's opposition to communism is consonant with its progressive social teaching and practice.

In the final section, in accord with the eschatological orientation as well as with the norm of creating a theocentric world family, the noncommunist society is found desperately in need of transformation. The Unificationist alternative marriage and family system is understood as a program for transforming selfish and harmful patterns of human society. In Unificationism, the family comes to have a primary soteriological function in the resolution of such problems as racism, nationalism, and poverty.²

The question of the appropriateness of the title "Unification Liberation Theology" should be addressed. The word "liberation" is so much a part of the daily parlance of Unificationists, that while its definition differs somewhat from that of contemporary liberation theologians, it still seems not only justifiable but also necessary to use the term in a Unification context.

Perhaps that point which most strongly identifies the Unificationist with those liberation theologians stemming from Latin America is the emphasis on human responsibility to effect the reign of God. This implies social commitment on all levels of life. The basic difference between the two approaches, however, is in the proposed mode of dealing with the relationship between the rich and the poor. Liberation theologians generally affirm a sociological dualism (Marxist class analysis), which tends to despair of the transformation of the whole of humanity.³ Unificationists, on the other hand, take a different route. According to Reverend Moon:

A new approach must absorb and digest these two ideologies, [communism and democracy]. In this new approach, the upper class should come down and be a servant of the lower class... Christian sympathy with the Communist view often causes them to completely join "the other side" and cut themselves off from the channels by which they could lift the people up... God's way is always unity. God's thought can embrace both the upper and lower classes and elevate the entire society to a higher standard of living.... The Unification Church declares no enemy; it embraces everyone (... The means it uses is love; God's love).⁴

This statement is entirely consonant with the assertion in the introduction of the Divine Principle that the cause of the success of communism is the failure of Christian society to live in accordance with Jesus' ethic of love.⁵

I

For both liberation theology and European political theology, eschatology is the central category of reflection.⁶ Eschatology, traditionally, has to do with the final transformation of the cosmos and/or human history, and the contemporary theological appropriation of the category maintains this focus. Unification theology, however, shifts fundamentally the focus of eschatology in its proclamation that it is the liberation of God from God's own suffering which is the central event of the Last Days. Unification theology understands that the eschaton brings an end not only to the suffering of humanity and all creation but also to that of the Creator. More precisely, the mutual suffering is overcome by the reconciliation of God with humanity and humans with each other. From the Unification perspective, liberation theology has not been radical enough in re-interpreting the tradition in order to make this central affirmation that the eschatological task is the liberation of a suffering God. Liberation of God is most radical because it extends human activities to their ultimate limits, to the source and end of life.⁷

Unification theology takes seriously Jesus' address of God as Abba.⁸ God is the Father, the Parent of all people.⁹ God suffers the internal pain of grief because of the frustration experienced in attempting to realize God's ideal for a world of love and goodness,¹⁰ and as well God suffers compassionately in the suffering of God's children. The end of God's suffering will come only with the fulfillment of the divine ideal, i.e., the ideal of perfect love and goodness. The mature believer in God will pray and act with the awareness that his/her parent, God, is suffering in the depths.¹¹

The inner logic of Unification theology lies in the circular statement that God is parent to all humankind and that each person is a child of God. Unification theologizing is the reasoning of the heart of a parent. If with Jesus, I am to affirm God as Abba, then my assertion should entail minimally that God's intentionality vis a vis humankind is commensurate with the intentionality of a human parent who is concerned with the spiritual, intellectual as well as physical wellbeing of his/her child. One may wish to affirm far more than this, but to affirm less than this is to falsify the address to God as parent. Further, implicit in the statement that God is patent of all humankind is the avowal of the now familiar concern of Unificationism for one world family.¹² The double love commandment in Unification theology is in keeping with its familial relational ontology.¹³ The Heart of the parent yearns for both the direct expressions of filial as well as sibling love. The failure to achieve both kinds of love is the chief cause of divine and human suffering.

By proclaiming that the liberation of the suffering God is the first task of theology, Unification theology will not lose its activist orientation. Above all else, the suffering of God must be comprehended, experienced, and felt as the real condition of the living God and not merely as a novel theological construction. The heart of the believer must meet with the heart of the suffering God. In this encounter the birth of the new "revolutionary" will occur. The paradigm case for Unificationism of this religious experience is that of its founder, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who describes his relationship with God during his two and a half year sentence in a North Korean concentration camp:

I never complained; I was never angry at my situation; I never even asked His help, but was always busy comforting Him and telling Him not to worry about me. The Father knows me so well. He already knew my suffering. How could I tell Him about my suffering and cause His heart to grieve still more. I could only tell Him that I would never be defeated by my suffering.¹⁴

The religious experience of the suffering of God is the true ground of motivation for the acts of sacrificial love that liberate God and humanity from their suffering and oppression. The context for the concern and activity of the individual who is in communion with the suffering God is the real world and its oppressed inhabitants. Otherworldly mysticism forgets that God is the Parent whose greatest concern is not for Godself but for God's children. Indeed, the true lover of God must discern where are the people of greatest suffering and oppression and be devoted to their liberation.¹⁵ Thus, for Christians of Nazi Germany or even of the United States or Great Britain to have devoted all of their energies during the time of World War II to the reform of, for example, the dictatorship in Argentina, would have been a serious misunderstanding of the dimensions of the demonic in that historical epoch.¹⁶ Nazism was an historical expression of the demonic which demanded the active opposition from the world religious community.

Although at any given moment in history the believer may decide to stand with one nation or bloc of nations against another nation or bloc of nations as e.g. in WWII, it should be acknowledged forthrightly that in history no nation has yet fully represented the Heart and Will of God. Unification theology asserts that the present eschatological time (see Section III) allows for the emergence of one inwardly renewed individual and then stage by stage, a family, clan, tribe, nation, and world whose members repeat this authentic religious experience.¹⁷ This authentic religious experience is the existential encounter with the suffering God who becomes known as the Patent of all people, including one's historical enemies. The true revolutionary should represent the theology and praxis that all people are brothers and sisters; God's ideal is the realization of one world family centered on God's love. Then, who is the historical enemy of such a person? The enemy, the demonic in history, is constituted by those who profess and practice the extermination of a race or class of the human family. Nazism and Communism are manifestations of the demonic in history. From the perspective of the true revolutionary, although such an enemy must be prevented from realizing its will, this enemy must nonetheless be restored in time to the family of God.

II

It is well known that Unificationism promotes anti-communism. In this regard, my exposition of Unificationism is radical and no doubt will evoke the displeasure of both ideological communists as well as ideological anti-communists, for I maintain that opposition to communism is mandated firstly by religious and humanitarian concerns, and then by ideological concerns.¹⁸ My own commitment to oppose communism is intimately related to personal experiences and friendships with several refugees of various communist states. My initial encounter was with refugees of Cuban extraction; I was greatly troubled by the testimonies of two men who had fought with Castro against Batista and then were imprisoned when they objected to the totalitarian Marxist regime which Castro abruptly imposed on Cuba after winning the revolution.¹⁹ Subsequent encounters with Latvian, Polish, Vietnamese, and Afghan refugees have deepened the conviction that the toll of human misery demands a response.

Unification theology would agree with Karl Barth that the Kingdom of Heaven can be identified with no existing earthly national sovereignty, and yet nevertheless that religious people are not exempted from the responsibility of either supporting or opposing respectively the relatively good or evil temporal powers. Unlike his stance against Nazism, Batth refused to oppose communist Russia.²⁰ Today, however, the voice of human suffering has spoken against communist statehood in its more than sixty years of history. Mere ideological critiques of Marxism-Leninism may serve only to anesthetize further an already lethargic social conscience of the West. Since the Soviet and Polish regimes' scorning of Poland's union often million workers as the Trojan horse of capitalist imperialism, the hypocrisy of the Soviet type systems ostensibly dedicated to the salvation of the proletariat class has become apparent to even the most "liberal" circles in the West.²¹ This same hypocrisy has been exposed in the Castro regime with the latest arrival of 120,000 Cuban refugees (from April to August 1980)²² Castro himself described these refugees as the scum of his society, and the majority of the new arrivals represented the lower class of Cuban society. Yet the rhetoric of communist revolution promised liberation to precisely this class of people. Such rhetoric is the justification for the bloodshed in the period of revolution and throughout the time of "re-organization" subsequent to the success of the revolution.²³ Further, the barbaric cruelty of the Vietnam Communist government was broadcast to the world most dramatically in the plight of the "boat people" in 1979,²⁴ and even more alarming reports of extensive use of chemical warfare perpetrated by this regime throughout South East Asia²⁵ as well as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan²⁶ has brought at long last the final stage of the demythologization of communism in liberal Christian circles. It should be noted that these current reports of oppression are no less savage than those acts against the Baltic peoples in 1941, or against the Hungarian people 25 years ago who were violently suppressed in their quest for self-determination.²⁷ Now, the pattern of violent oppression expressed by the Soviet and related national communist movements is so extreme as to warrant fully the theological category attributed earlier in this century to Nazism, namely of the demonic in history.

I have presented my humanitarian concerns first because too often many self-serving anti-communists casually slide over the toll of human misery caused by communist governments and inveigh against the atheistic materialism or the new elitism inherent in the class conflict theory of Marxism-Leninism. Such critiques often fail to take seriously enough the fact that we are speaking of individuals, peoples, and nations whose suffering must be accounted as the suffering of our own brothers and sisters. The religious basis of Unification anti-communism is essentially of the same nature as the humanitarian basis -- that is, it stems from the motivation to alleviate suffering, the suffering of God. The Unification theologian must take seriously the suffering of God, our Parent, which is increased by regimes that indoctrinate all citizens in a state philosophy which explicitly ridicules belief in God. As the heart or feeling of a human parent images the intense heart of love which God bears for each human person, one can approach an affective appreciation of God's pain analogically. One of the most distressing of human experiences is that of parents' rejection by their children. It is too monstrous to imagine parents enduring a state that would separate them from their newborn children and then proceed to tell the children in their formative years that they were born as a result of test tube experiments.²⁸ Constant and decided reflection upon the heart of the suffering God is required if the committed believer, especially one assuming the task of the articulation of the symbols of belief, is not to fall into a practical atheism. Kierkegaard's critique of Hegelianism is always instructive in recalling that the all-important existential dimension of the God-human relationship can be easily edged out of even the most self-consciously religious philosophical system. This temptation I have here endeavored overcome.

The communist states' utter disrespect of individuals' rights and life is buttressed by an ideology which sustains the believer in executing the most heinous acts against others for the sake of a greater good yet to come. Whereas some traditions of Christian theology have rightly been critiqued by Marxism for an otherworldly emphasis which distracts the individual from the hope and concern for change in the here and now, Marxism-Leninism itself has offered the delayed parousia of the perfect communist society, and this concept functions similarly to that of the religious concept of a heavenly reward in the afterlife.

While it must be acknowledged that Christianity has functioned to legitimize oppression, particularly in South America, the all-important difference between the theistic worldview and that of communism is the practical reality that the critique of oppression comes from within the theistic faith, whereas there is no possibility within Marxist ideology to critique murder. For this reason, an ideological critique of communism is required.

In the case of Marxism-Leninism, current injustice and inhumanity is condoned for the sake of a future earthly workers' paradise. The distinctive sin of communist ideology is that it teaches the extermination of a designated "enemy class" of people; it advocates a type of eschatological social dualism. The congruence between this basic tenet of Marxism and its accumulated history of violence and slaughter must be considered seriously. In the Last Days, the evil class-capitalists and reactionaries are to be eliminated by the righteous working class. The historical returns from this guiding ideological tenet, however adapted, of communist governments, are now painfully obvious. In the final analysis, the new ruling classes of the national communist regimes have used this dualistic concept in order to justify any whimsical expression of the will to absolute power. The new language of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism has been employed to rationalize the violence against old antagonistic factions. Communism has failed to transform world history, but rather has exacerbated the resentments among peoples of this unregenerate human history.

III

The gravity of the communist threat to civilization is surely as great as that of Nazism in the previous epoch. Yet, it would be unconscionable to engage in an all-out war against communism, especially in light of the dreadful uniqueness of the weapons now available to us. When we contemplate the historical fact that men have consistently employed fully the weapons at their disposal (be it spear, bow and arrow, musket, cannon, etc.) to destroy each other, we would conclude now either to doomsday or posit a radical departure from the spirit and conduct of past humanity.²⁹ Simply put, the eschaton in the age of nuclear weapons is in sight of both believer and non-believer. Further, although we can critique communism for betraying the Geist of this age which is directing the hearts and minds of people towards world liberation, we cannot easily affirm the so-called free world or democratic world. This latter system offers no basis for the hope to end the suffering of God and humanity. Indeed, the callous self-centeredness of western culture has spawned despair and resentment, and may be the single major reason for the success of communism around the world. At best, the democratic system, acknowledges the principles of religious freedom in particular and civil rights and liberties in general. In such an atmosphere, it is possible for an eschatological movement initiated by the true revolutionary (see Section I) to be born and grow within its midst.

Reverend Moon is seen by Unificationists as this true revolutionary. His eschatological movement began with the vision of one person who encounters the suffering of God and takes as his purpose to comfort God. This movement will in turn be motivated by the desire to comfort God and humanity -- the children of God.

In the remainder of this paper, I will discuss how a central social teaching and practice of Unificationism, i.e. "blessed marriages", addresses some of the problems liberation theology speaks to. Several scholars have noted the similarity in the patterns of oppression brought to light in sexism, racism, and classism.³⁰ There are several Unification feminists who have pointed to the compatibility of Unification theology with the feminist claim that the "root of sin is sexism".³¹ Two aspects of blessed marriages should be discussed: 1) the basic teaching concerning the problem of the male/female relationship and the mode of relatedness expressed in the Unification movement, and 2) the significance of the mass marriages and in particular of the large number of mixed marriages.

At the heart of the Unification social teaching and practice is the understanding that the proper male/female relationship has not been realized in human society. The central theologoumena is that men and women, having failed to ground their mutual love in the love of God, create a disordered love in which one of the couple becomes the idol (i.e. surrogate for the transcendent) and the other the idolater. In the first three years after a Unification engagement, the couple focuses almost exclusively on mission as the foundation for their life together. During this time in particular (at other times as well) women and men undertake roles of public service resulting in the fact that the husband is helped to recognize that his wife is capable of carrying out responsibilities beyond the domestic sphere. (Often this is a new insight for the woman as well). When the Unification couple begins to live and function as a social unit, they understand their responsibility to create a "Home Church" community wherein they actually seek to serve 360 homes in the immediate neighborhood. This service ranges from activities such as babysitting and grocery-shopping for shut-ins to marriage counseling and the holding of prayer meetings. The theology of Home Church is that the "blessed family" (family of couples blessed in marriage) create a family of service to other families.³² Thus the divine telos under which both members of the couple live serves to help overcome idolatrous impulses.

It is well known that Rev. and Mrs. Moon conduct mass wedding ceremonies, but the self-understanding of Unificationists regarding the significance of these ceremonies has generally been ignored.³³ For each such wedding ceremony (including those of 36, 72, 120, 210, 430, 777, 1800, 2035, and 5,837 couples and others), specific social objectives were envisioned which were to expand Unification programs to national and global levels.

Rev. Moon believes that a representative number of people in this age should volunteer to marry across racial and national divides. In the 1960s, while working primarily in Asia, he encouraged Korean and Japanese members of his movement to intermarry. The two nations are extremely homogenous and further have deep seated animosities towards each other. These animosities were intensified through a nearly forty year period of Japanese colonization of Korea, ending only in 1945, during which time the Japanese required Koreans to learn the Japanese language and to worship at Shinto shrines.³⁴ When, beginning in the early 1970s, Rev. Moon pursued his ministry in the United States, he likewise encouraged Unification members in the West to marry across racial boundaries. As a result, the majority of marriages since 1975 have been interracial and/or international.³⁵ Rev. Moon believes that the historical resentment between races and nations will not simply vanish, but must be reversed by a representative number of women and men taking up the historical challenge to reverse the tradition of hatred between faces and nations. Thus, a central part of Rev. Moon's mission has been to encourage people to create a tradition of inter-racial and international couples who love each other more intensely than their ancestors hated each other. In a not rare poetic moment, Rev. Moon expressed the thought that when a white woman holds her black baby in her arms, a baby born of the love between members of the two races, the tears of resentment arising out of racial oppression will be wiped away. Unificationists hold that there will be no magical, instantaneous resolutions of deep seated human problems, but that there can be a slow, steady historical process of righting wrong relationships. From the Unification perspective, these marriages signify the beginning of an era of love between races and nations and are necessary for the internal renewal of humanity.

From the start, then, the Unification couple expresses concerns which reach beyond the family level. A large number of those married in the 1800 couple blessing (1975) were sent as missionaries to over 120 countries.³⁶ As an expression of the international harmony which is to be achieved through the blessing, missionary teams were composed primarily of a Japanese, European and American member, who were to overcome barriers of language and culture among themselves and then, together, work to establish unity with the country to which they were sent. A further example of the same type of thinking can be found in the International One World Crusade (IOWC).³⁷ The international composition of each of these teams has been insisted upon by Rev. Moon even in face of arguments put forth by Unification leaders in the 1978 IOWC campaign in England and in some American campaigns that evangelism would be more successful were this practice abandoned. Rev. Moon's priority of fostering international and interracial cooperation within Unificationism, however, is definitely not reversible for pragmatic arguments. In the short term, the arguments ate probably correct, but as the long term goal of the movement is to create a world consciousness in Unification members, Rev. Moon has not succumbed to this reasoning.

The Unification ideal of the family, then, should not be understood to mean simply the traditional nuclear family. Such a family, however strong religiously, may of itself contradict the will of God for a global family by asserting its will over against the wider society. The love of God cannot be expressed by a family which simply claims itself pious or by sacramental guarantees, however traditionally sanctioned or innovatively created. God's love is expressed by travelling the path of sacrificially loving; by opening the self up to the family, the family to the society, the society to the nation, and finally, by willingness to go beyond the nation and embrace the world. For the Unificationist who undertakes this training course of love, this formula, which could be an easy platitude, translates into voluntary periods of separation from spouse and children to work for movement goals, into a church policy which allocates an overwhelming percentage of its hard earned resources to national and ecumenical projects rather than its own maintenance, and into the pattern of leaders of national Unification projects spending several years working in foreign lands (usually seven or more years.)

In the final analysis, I believe that there is nothing cheaply sentimental about the love of God espoused by Unificationism. Indeed, I suspect the reader is cringing over the conjured image of a church militant which marches relentlessly to its goal, but I prefer you to cringe over the reality of Unification fife and not the fabrications of the media. Unificationists voluntarily practice a rigorous disciplining of the heart and, in Unificationism's understanding, the goal of this praxis is to mirror (incarnate) God's own inclusive love for humanity. This is no sentimental universalism wherein loving all humanity may mean to love no one in particular. I choose to use the word "sacrifice" in spite of some problems of connotation because it best expresses the situation of the Unificationist who chooses to care for the other rather than the one which she/he may feel more naturally inclined to love, i.e. the neighbor before the family or the foreigner before the compatriot. In order to reverse the historical pattern of the "inbreeding" of love, a painful volitional loving of the other, which one might be prone to ignore or even hate, is demanded.

Footnotes

1. The term used in the Unification Church is "blessed marriage", or "the Blessing", which denotes the theocentric understanding of the married state as a way of realizing the God-given human potential for experiencing love,

2. Frederick Sontag points out similarities and contrasts between the Marxist and Unificationist understanding of the family as a vehicle for social change in "Marriage and the Family in the Unification Church", The Family and the Unification Church, ed. Gene G. James, Conference Series No. 15, (Unification Theological Seminary, 1983) pp. 217-234.

3. An example of this despairing attitude toward the possessor of wealth can be found in Enrique Dussel's Ethics and the Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1978), pp. 36-37: Historically, to pass from one order to another, it has been necessary tor the subjugators to cease subjugating; without their wealth, they could even stop sinning. But before being dispossessed the subjugators would rather give up their lives, so identified are they with the devil."

4. Notes taken from an unpublished speech given by Reverend Moon to church members at his home, April 27, 1980.

5. Divine Principle. 5th ed. (N.Y.: HSA-UWC, 1977), pp. 6-7.

6. The centrality of eschatology in the teaching of Jesus was noted by Johannes Weiss in Die Predigt Vom Reiche Gottes. tr. R. H. Hiers and D. L. Hollard (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 197 1). Several decades later both liberation theologians and theologians of hope are among the first to confront head on the implications of this discovery of N. T. scholarship for systematic theology. So see, e.g. Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1978), and Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, trans. James Leitch (N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1967.)

7. The interrelation of the suffering and liberation of God and humanity has its ontological foundation in the four position foundation of Unification Theology. See Divine Principle, 3 Iff.

8. See e.g. Joachim Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament (N.Y.: Scribner's Sons, 1965), pp. 9-30.

9. Note that Unificationism allows equal force to the metaphor of Mother as well as Father for God. See Young Oon Kim, Unification Theology (N.Y.: HSA-UWC, 1980), pp. 53-54. I favor the inclusive term Parent.

10. The concern expressed by some theologians that a suffering God cannot be efficacious enough to provide hope for the transformation of the world can be met with the realization that tears of compassion are more likely to bring results than are violence and threats of eternal damnation.

11. See S. H. Lee, Explaining Unification Thought (N.Y. Unification Thought Institute, 1981), pp. 222-223. Lee speaks of three "moments" of the Heart of God: 1) "the Heart of joy and expectation" as the Creator; 2) "the Heart of grief and sorrow" at the sight of fallen humanity; and 3) "the Heart of pain and suffering" during the providence of restoration. In this paper, I refer primarily to the third moment of the Heart or God, although it should be obvious that these are distinguishable but not separable moments of God in relation to the creation and human history.

12. Social dualism is particularly destructive in the hands of ideologues, be they religious fundamentalists, Nazis, or Marxists. The concept of God as parent leads to theological and practical universalism. See below in text.

13. See Herbert Richardson's insightful exposition of the four position foundation as the ontological grounding of the double love commandment in the New Era Newsletter, Vol. Ill, No. 2, 1983.

14. Official Biography of Sun Myung Moon (N.Y.: HSA-UWC). Reports from inmates concerning his behavior in this barbaric prison include Rev. Moon's sharing of his limited food with other prisoners -- all of whom were kept on starvation diets. Similar reports of his concern for others are provided by inmates of Rev. Moon during his present incarceration in Danbury, Connecticut. See Ed Farmer, "Rev. Moon was One of Us", Unification News, Vol. 4, No. 3, March, 1985, p. 5-6.

15. On the other hand, the authentic religious encounter with the suffering God should not be reduced to social activism. In Unificationism, there is seen to be a necessary interrelation between spiritual praxis and social activism.

16. My use of the term "the demonic" is close to Jewish and early Christian apocalypticism and indicates an extra-human power which impacts the historical realm such that human responsibility is fully affirmed but nevertheless the historical effects may exceed the intentionality and power of human agency.

17. Strictly speaking, from the point of view of members of the Unification movement, the eschatological event which completes the work of Jesus is the marriage between this individual fulfilling the role of "returning Christ" at the parousia, and a woman who fulfills the role of God's true daughter. Together they create the "true family". This true family makes possible the reconciliation of families, and stage by stage all levels of human societies including national and global communities. In Unification theology, Jesus Christ reconciles all individuals qua individuals to God, and this work does not need to be repeated. It is the reconciliation of the family qua family to God which is the eschatological event which makes possible the realization of the Kingdom of God. This theological understanding should be kept in mind by the reader, especially in light of section III of this article. (Cf. my comments on justification and sanctification in Unification understanding in Evangelical-Unification Dialogue, eds. Richard Quebedeaux and Rodney Sawatsky (N.Y.: Rose of Sharon, 1979), 301.

18. Ideology is the rational expression or the fundamental life-values and concerns of the human person/community. At times in this paper, however, it will be obvious that I have used the adjective "ideological" to refer to a rationalistic justification of self-interest. Nevertheless, my fundamental view is that the religious, humanitarian, and ideological aspects are interdependent and ultimately grounded in human nature.

19. I invited one of these gentleman who, as a result of prison torture, walks about with the aid of crutches, to speak at Harvard in April, 1981.

20. The World Council of Churches has followed this lead resulting in an almost solid liberal Protestant aversion to anti-communism -- an aversion further enhanced in the U.S. by the paranoid investigations of McCarthy et. al. For Barth's discussion, see Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), pp. 355-57.

21. See Susan Sontag, "Communism and the Left" (address, Feb. 6, 1982), Nation 234: 229-32, Feb. 27, 1982.

22. See Lorrin Philipson and Rafael Llerena, Freedom Flights (N.Y.: Random House, 1980), wherein reports of interviews from the various phases of Cuban refugee exodus since 1961 are provided.

23. Cyril E. Black in The Anatomy of Communist Takeovers, ed. Thomas T. Hammond (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975) xiv states: "It is significant that, of the 90-100 countries that have undergone revolutionary transformation since 1917 -- some 10 in Europe, 8 or 10 in Latin America, 25-30 in Asia, and as many as 45 in Africa -- no more than 7 have been successful spontaneous Communist revolutions. The imposed Communist governments were successful as takeovers and had revolutionary consequences, but they belong in the category of power politics or imperialism rather than of domestic revolutions."

24. See Anthony Lewis' article which quotes a Red Cross official's estimate that up to 70% of the boat people have died at sea. The Vietnamese Government forced out of the country people of Chinese extraction. New York Times, June 14, 1979, 29:1.

25. See New York Times, Nov. A, 15 and Dec. 12 and 13, 1979.

26. See New York Times. Dec. 31, 1979, 5:2.

27. See Ferenc A. Vali, Rift and Revolt in Hungary, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 265-79.

28. It should be mentioned that to the extent that communist states allow freedom of religion, religion is defined as a privatistic phenomenon and the legitimacy of religion's prophetic or social conscience role is denied.

29. The advocacy of unilateral nuclear disarmament is highly irresponsible, for this position contradicts one lesson of history on the matter, which is that the U.S. employed these weapons when it was their sole possessor. The unilateral possessor can employ the weapon in moderate measure to attain political, economic, and territorial objectives without the enormous risk of self-destruction which the present situation entails. Mutual total disarmament, which is the only rational solution, still cannot prevent retrogression, which is a constant option now that the secret of the atom has been unlocked. In the end, there are no failsafe technical resolutions, but only a spiritual, i.e. a truly human resolution of this man-made problem.

30. It is significant that the laws devised for the treatment of slaves brought to America during the 17th century were patterned on the laws which pertained to women and children. See Mary Ryan, Womanhood in America (New York: Watts, 1975), pp. 4-25.

31. See Patricia Gleason, "Die Miterlosenschaft der Frau im Heilsverstandnis der Vereinigungskirche", paper delivered at the 1982 Herbstkonferenz; "Schaffen neue Religionen eine neue Welt?", Marburg, West Germany; also, Sarah E. Petersen, "Feminist Speculation on Unification Theology", paper delivered at conference on "Feminist Perspectives in Theology and Philosophy", Nassau, the Bahamas. March 15-18, 1984.

32. Cf. Joseph H. Fichter, "Home Church: Alternative Parish", in Alternatives to American Mainline Churches, ed. Joseph H. Fichter (N.Y.: Rose of Sharon, 1983), pp. 179-199.

33. Gordon Melton's article, "What's Behind the Moonie Mass Marriages?", Christianity Today, Dec. 16, vol. 27, no. 19, pp. 28-31, is a good example of how misleading "objective scholarship" can be, for in failing to represent the Unificationist's self-understanding regarding the Blessing, it conveys a false image.

34. As a result, some of the most hostile opponents of the Unification Church in Asia were the embittered parents of members married across Japanese and Korean lines, as well as critics sympathetic to the parents' view.

35. Openness to interracial and international marriage is generally assumed for all Unificationists, even for those for whom spouses of the same nationality were suggested.

36. In 1975, Unificationism expanded from a primarily Far East Asian, North American, and Western European movement to a truly global movement.

37. The International One World Crusade (IOWC) was initiated in the USA by Rev. Moon in 1972. These first international teams were comprised of Europeans and North Americans. By 1973, Japanese Unification members arrived in the USA to join teams. In 1974, members from the several international teams in the States were selected to travel in Japan and Korea where they were joined by members from the national movements.