Listen to John Gorenfeld discuss his new book Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created The Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom on "The Spirit of Things" with Rachel Kohn.Also, here is a YouTube video of a segment of the Canadian television program Test of Faith with Valerie Pringle. The subject of the program is new religious movements. The Reverend Phillip Schanker is on the panel representing the Unification Church. Stephen Kent, a sociology professor at the University of Alberta, discusses how Sun Myung Moon has been less than a "perfect" parent and has enriched himself at the expense of his followers. Schanker's retort compares Moon to Mahatma Gandhi and he extols Moon's "sacrificial and committed life." Schanker also discusses his own marriage that was arranged by Moon.
2 comments:
Schanker produces propaganda for the Moon organization. He was quoted by the AP as saying Moon did know about the shark poaching Moon preacher's activities even though there is audio of the preacher telling his congregation he told Moon about the operation. The poaching preacher, Kevin Thompson, now teaches at Moon's UTS theological seminary.
You can hear Thompson describing the shark operation and how he told Moon about it here.
He says Moon wanted to put "20 boats" into the effort. IMO, it is pretty obvious to anyone but a Moon follower - by how he describes the conversation with moon - that he let Moon know it was not a legal activity.
It is true that Mohandas Gandhi's eldest son, Harilal Gandhi, died of liver disease and may well have blamed his father for his alcoholism. Schanker is probably trying to draw a parallel to Moon's eldest son Hyo Jin Moon, who recently died at age 45 and was for a time a severe cocaine abuser. But there the parallel ends. When Mohandas Gandhi (often called the "Mahatma") died, he owned only a very few possessions. He had no estates in Paraguay, no vast mansions, no newspapers, no fishing fleets. He died serving his vision of India. Moon will die serving his vision of self-glorification. To compare the two men is repugnant and transparently false.
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