Author: Julian Borger in Washington
Publication: The Guardian
Date: June 24, 2004
Republicans and Democrats attend
cult blessing ceremony
The US Senate was used for a bizarre
ritual in which the Rev Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification church,
was "crowned" and declared himself the messiah in the presence of more
than a dozen Republican and Democratic members of Congress, it was reported
yesterday.
"Emperors, kings and presidents
... have declared to all heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon
is none other than humanity's saviour, messiah, returning Lord and true
parent," the 85-year-old Korean "Moonie" cult leader told several hundred
guests at the meeting in one of the Senate's office buildings on March
23, according to the Washington Post.
He also claimed endorsement from
Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, who had all been reformed and reborn through
his church's teachings - an idiosyncratic version of Christianity which
rejects the use of the cross as a symbol and denounces homosexuals as "dirty
dung-eating dogs".
An account of the ceremony was first
published by a Washington investigative journalist, John Gorenfeld.
According to a transcript of the
event, Mr Moon declared: "I am God's ambassador, sent to Earth with his
full authority. I am sent to accomplish his command to save the world's
six billion people, restoring them to Heaven with the original goodness
in which they were created."
The glittering event in the Senate's
Dirksen building reflected Mr Moon's extraordinary influence in US politics.
He owns the conservative newspaper the Washington Times and the US news
agency United Press International.
His fiercely conservative attitudes
towards homosexuality and pre-marital sex have won him the endorsement
of leading Republicans, including the president's father, George Bush,
and John Ashcroft, the attorney general, who participated in one of Mr
Moon's "prayer luncheons" days before the president's inauguration in January
2001.
Leading black Democrats also played
a prominent role in the March ceremony.
An Illinois congressman, Danny Davis,
wore white gloves and carried a purple cushion bearing a medieval-style
"international crown of peace", which was placed on Mr Moon's head, at
an event at which 100 Americans from 50 states were also given lesser "national"
and "state" peace awards.
The event was an "innocent ceremony,"
Mr Davis told the Guardian. "It was a banquet to give out awards. I didn't
have any way of knowing Reverend Moon would say he was the messiah, or
whatever he said."
Mr Davis acknowledged that "three
or four individuals directly related to Rev Moon" took part in a fund-raiser
for his primary campaign in Illinois earlier this year, but said small
sums of money were involved.
Other members of Congress who attended
the event said they had been fooled into going by being told only that
people from their constituencies would be honoured at the ceremony.
A spokeswoman for a Democratic senator
from Minnesota, Mark Dayton, said: "We fell victim to it. We were duped."
It was unclear who gave permission
for the Senate office building to be used.
During the ceremony Mr Moon invoked
the blessing of all America's past presidents. He also claimed to have
communed with other big names in history.
He told his audience: "The five
great saints and other leaders in the spirit world, including communist
leaders such as Marx and Lenin, who committed all manner of barbarity,
and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings,
mended their ways and been reborn as new persons."
It is not the first time he has
claimed posthumous backing. His followers recently took out a two-page
advertisement in the Washington Times to run a testimonial to him, quoting
36 former presidents "from the vantage point of heaven".
