When Unification leaders wanted to buy the University of Bridgeport, they found out that no one can own UB. No one can own UTS. No one can own America. Each of these exists as a corporate person that involves, but outlives, individual persons. No one can own a person.

Each can also be seen as a process. The process is described in Divine Principle as give and take action centering on a shared purpose the origin of which is God. America is a place where this process is sovereign.

In the ideal, anyone can enter into this process. The American government disbursed land for free on the condition that the person who claimed it improved it. Improvement therefore is an important word in America. To improve it you had to invest in it, so investment is important. In order to improve it on the frontier, which is where the land was, you had to figure out by yourself how to solve problems, so innovation is an important word. Innovation meant that there was not a high degree of respect for tradition. Everything was susceptible to testing, so experimentation is also a positive word, and assessment and evaluation. Also you had to work with others, wagon trains, barn raising, fund raising, church raising; so cooperation is an important word. One could not blame others for ones difficulties, so self-reliance was an important word. To create larger institutions, such as churches, schools, banks or factories, people had to incorporate, that is, many had to act as one person, a corporation, and develop publicly-known rules and laws for their shared action. So law and clear contracts are important.

This environment creates Americans out of people from the world over. My ancestors came from several countries: England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and France and perhaps Holland. They kept moving west and by the 1870s had arrived in the upper Sacramento Valley of northern California, my fathers side coming via the American south around the border of Kentucky and Tennessee, and my mothers side from Ontario, Canada. Both branches arrived in Red Bluff around the same time, and my mothers side were cattlemen living in the countryside and my fathers side were town dwellers, carpenters and craftsmen.

Both sides of the family were Presbyterian. My fathers side kept the Sabbath strictly when he was a boy, attending church and reading the Bible all day every Sunday, and nothing else. There arose in my father a dislike for religion, a contempt for hypocrisy. My mother's character was softer. She grew up with Chinese workers on the ranch; she rode horses, shot snakes and tended chickens and geese. Her relationship with Jesus was of the heart. She was the one to bring me to Sunday school and teach me the Lords Prayer. She taught me that there are good and bad people in every race, every religion and every nation.

When my father was in his late forties he grew frustrated with working for other men; he wanted to work for himself. He wanted ownership of his own business, of his own life. Then his mistakes would be his, and his successes his. He moved his family back to his hometown and built a milk plant where he could bottle and sell the milk and dairy products at one location, a drive-in dairy. And he worked twice as hard as he did for any other man. For 15 years, from age 50 to 65, he took off only three days a year. This is one reason America is incredibly productive. As the Pilgrims discovered by 1623, there is no lazy man except for the one who is working for someone else.

I worked for him there one year before heading off to college, ever so glad to escape because I was searching for something further west. My sister married a young motorcycle rider who dropped out of college to become a skin-diver. The young man had good character and intelligence, and when he became too old to dive for an oilrig maintenance company in Louisiana, he moved into the office and eventually became the company's president. When he retired at age 46 he was a multi-millionaire. He and my sister are investing their money in children's hospitals and experimental technologies in the energy field.

Who owns America? True Parents say that no one owns America and we can see the truth in this statement, because who can own a process? Who can own a river? We have the opportunity to participate in that process and thereby increase America's greatness. To say that no one owns America also is to say that everyone owns America.

But those who want to claim ownership of America must needs beware. Americans question authority. The American attitude toward authority, political or religious is summed up nicely by Henry David Thoreau in his essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.

It is excellent, we must all allow; yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

The Old Testament writers reveal that God was also chary about the power of kings. In Deut. 17:14-20 he lays down the way for kings, and in Mark 10:42-44 Jesus shares the same message. In 1 Sam 10:17-19, we see God unwillingly granted Israel its desire for a king, seeing it as a sign of their lack of faith in God. This is also part of the American mentality: In God We Trust, not human kings. As Father repeats in his current speech, human-based efforts to create peace always fail. I am edified that Father has chosen Geneva as the location of the second Cheon Jeong Goong, on the basis of its importance in this development of the proper relationship between the spiritual and secular realms. This distinction can be due to nothing other than the ministry in that city of John Calvin, who was sensitive to the tendency even in the best to abuse power, including himself.

American culture is popular culture. It is low culture. It is crude and often crass. It is not refined; it is in your face. Part of the reason is that Americans reacted against aristocratic culture. We dislike pretension, position-mongering, putting on airs. We glory in the simple and homespun. Look at pre-washed blue jeans; we prefer beat up old looking clothes and so manufacture beat up jeans with holes. We are happy to wear shoes indoors. In an incident recorded shortly after the end of WWII, American soldiers took off their shoes out of respect for a Japanese grandmother. Out of respect for Americans, please leave your shoes on. Paul ate unsanctified food with non-Jews and sanctified food with Jews. This Christian ethos allows America to absorb the world's people, to welcome the younger sons as Rev Muanda put it last week.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, Three decades ago, in 1973, 78 percent of the students attending the nations public schools were white and 22 percent were minorities, [in 2004] 57 percent of all public school students were white, while 43 percent were minorities.

If trends continue as they have for 30 years, minority students appear likely to outnumber white students within a decade or so. In six states California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas they already do.

The nation's public schools also brought together an extraordinary mix of students in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when they first earned their reputation as melting pots, said William J. Reese, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin.

Early in the last century, [a Senate] commission found that in the few dozen largest cities, 42 percent of students were native-born, while 58 percent were foreign-born

Thuy Nguyen, a 16-year-old junior at Park View High School in Sterling, VA, has watched the recent transformation. She moved with her family to Virginia from Vietnam when she was 9 years old, and recalls that most of her fifth-grade classmates were white.

I was new, afraid, and I didn't speak very well English, Ms. Nguyen said. I didn't talk to anybody. Six years later she says making friends is easier.

What I like about a diverse school is that you don't feel intimidated if there are other races, she said. I'm jumping around, talking to the Caucasian clique and the Middle Eastern clique. I have friends from El Salvador, Mexico, Peru one girl is half Korean and half Puerto Rican, she's cool and from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

There's a girl from Bangladesh; we tell each other everything. I also knew a Swedish guy. So I talk to all the different groups. I don't want it to be, like, You're just in the Asian clique.

Kathy Hackney is Ms. Nguyen's tennis coach. My team looks like the League of Nations, Ms. Hackney said. (Sam Dillon, In Schools Across U.S., the Melting Pot Overflows, August 27, 2006)

Why do we come from the world over to America? Because America is a place where people can aspire, create, experiment, cooperate, and strive to achieve their dreams. At its best, it brings out the best in people and gives people hope that their children will have a better life.

This works when the people are moral, and the basis of morality is the spiritual life, mostly embodied in religion. The American founders allowed religion free rein. As a result, religion in America manifests in every size, shape, color and creed. Its high, low, left, right, black, white, green, pinko and stars and stripes, mosque, minaret, missal, menorah and mall, cathedral, campus and cabin, altar, altered and alternative, active, passive, boring, persuasive and everything in-between. This is why almost all Americans believe in God, and even Americans who don't believe in God are afraid of ghosts.

To move America, we definitely should begin from a spiritual foundation. If we want to bring Holy Spirit unity and universal peace to this culture, this spiritual foundation has to be very simple. This is why Fathers constitution of Cheon Il Guk is very simple and has in it nothing about religion.

The traditional Christian church is defined as a community in which the Word is spoken and the sacraments given. That's all. In the Unification context, this means that the lead pastor gives the Word and the Blessing. If he or she does this effectively, this will empower the people to carry out the will of God in their lives.

So a simple church combines four things:

1. God (the Word and Blessing)
2. Members pursuit of their passions and gifts (God in the individual)
3. Commitment to family life (God in the family)
4. A totally great worship experience (God in the community)

In terms of education, the lead pastors Sunday message can well be the core content of the congregation's education. It is provided in a format that members can take with them, study and apply throughout the week in the context of individual, family and community life.

The message liberates the people to discover and pursue gifts-based personal ministry. Gift refers to the spiritual gifts that God gives each of us. Personal means that it is from deep within and expressive of oneself. Ministry is the resultant whole purpose activity. Personal ministry can take place anywhere on the spectrum from deeply in the church to deeply in the public sphere.

Deepest in-church: administration, bookkeeping, maintenance, leadership Mildly in-church: music ministry, drama, tech support, Sunday school teaching, youth and young adult ministry Middle position: special interest classes and study groups, workshops, visitation, counseling and recovery ministries Mildly public: evangelism, spirituality and healing, sports and recreation, women's activities, youth activities, interfaith activism, service projects, civic activism Deepest public: join other organizations to do all these things

And everyone has at least one personal ministry: their own marriage and family life.

The church is nothing more than the sum total of everyone's personal ministries, keeping in mind that the lead pastors work is also a personal ministry. Sunday school, young adult ministry, youth ministry, social action, ecumenism these all are personal ministries. The philosophy is that God will send to you the people you need to create the church He intends you to have. If no one wants to lead Sunday school, perhaps God wants you to create a church in which the parents teach their own children in the family setting.

The job of the lead pastor, by preaching, teaching and modeling, is to create a great worship experience, strengthen family life, and inspire people to discover their gift and passion and develop personal ministry. That is his or her personal ministry.

How would one define membership in a simple church? To be a member is to develop a living relationship with God in community worship, family life and personal ministry. How would the church assimilate new people? There are three gates into the community: community worship, personal ministry and family life.

In conclusion, I likened America to a river. A river is like a bloodstream. Lineage is a bloodstream, a river of life. Through an effective ministry in America, we can imbue this river of life, this process that is America at its best, with Gods Word and Seed of the Blessing and make God the owner of America.

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