If You Believe in Jesus, You Should Also Believe in Moon

Korean cult worship isn't just for the North Koreans, South Koreans also have their own quirky side.

The Unification Church, a South Korean church that now has a global following, is the brainchild of Sun Myung Moon, who has made himself an enduring icon over the past half-century by:

• declaring himself Messiah
• calling his followers 'Moonies'
• serving 18 months in federal US prison for tax fraud
• defending Richard Nixon with full-page advertisements during the Watergate scandal
• starting the Garden of Eden in Brazil
• leading mass weddings 
  
• owning the Washington Times

The Unification Church is suspiciously influential, generally feared (registration of unification churches is required in Russia), and very financially odd (aside from ownership in the Washington Times, the church also runs an automobile factory in Pyongyang).

But cults have had a long standing place in human history.  Wars have been fought over cult beliefs more than anything else, and as much as I'd like to scoff at the strange beliefs of Moonies or other religious followers, I can't deny their power.

What's odd about religion is that many Christians will chuckle at the strange rites of Islam (kissing a meteorite, etc.), but then repulse allegations that god didn't turn people to salt or that Noah didn't build an arky-arky. And when all the major religions get together, it's very easy to take a few Moonies and Scientologists and, for lack of a better term, persecute them for their even more peculiar beliefs.

It's odd that Mormonism and Scientology and the litany of new religions these days, are held up to closer inspection than Judaism or Islam or Christianity (or Buddhism or Hindi).  Was it because we have more accurate reports of what they're doing?  Is it because the Associated Press has yet to report a miracle out of Seoul thus far?  I suppose mysticism is a by-product of time, so maybe that's it.  Old faiths are the product of a two-thousand-year-old game of telephone. 

If we went ahead in time another two thousand years, what would the story of Scientology look like?  Would those DC-8s flying into volcanoes become angels falling into the fiery pits of Hades?  What about Moonies?  Would Moon's prison time for tax fraud start to sound like religious persecution by Imperial America?  Does Richard Nixon become Pontious Pilat?

I suppose making those predictions is really a matter of faith.  But if history is written by the victor, then the most financially well-off religions with the most zealous followers stand to gain the most as time passes, and that's a matter of fact.