I believe most people I bonded
with while growing up have also seen through a lot of the fucked up systems and
teachings of the church. I hope I am able to express and share in this process
with them (or you) and perhaps hope to lend in the processing of others who
still may feel trapped or hesitant or unsure of their own feeling and
conclusions. This article isn't for people
still interested in pursuing the ideals of the church. I’m not trying to
convince anyone of anything but rather hope to convey my experiences in a
healing process. I encourage comments but it is not likely I will respond to
any trolling or useless debate.
While some ex-Moonies may find
exposing Reverend Moon or members of his family for their hypocrisy and
scandals personally vindicating and supporting their decision to leave the
church, I am most interested in elaborating on my personal
experiences—experiences I now view as injustices and direct harm, that I had
growing up as a member of the Unification Church.
Social alienation and censored
upbringing: It taught youth that they were “different” “special” “purified”
people of a different quality and type than people “outside” the church. This leads to an alienation with other people
and a strange in-group out-group mentality that often lends to
superiority-inferiority complexes and judgment of other people’s lives as not
being as valuable as a “purified” person in the church.
Ex-post facto justifications: History
is seen as god’s will as narrated through the teachings of the church, thus the
genocide of native Americans, the holocaust, slavery, etc. are seen as the
proper progression of history, and often is taught along with “moral
justifications” for these events. The violence of Christianity is unexamined (mission
system in the US, anyone?). Systems of oppression, sexism, racism, genocide are
all normalized and rather than the movement being anything resembling a true
critique or shift in these systems, they are replicated implicitly and explicitly
in a myriad of ways.
Explicit homophobia: I heard
people I otherwise respected give the slippery slope argument against gay
marriage (what’s next, marrying animals?), heard Rev. Moon’s translator stumble
over trying to edit homophobic remarks (homosexuals are worse than dogs). I was
encouraged to read a book by Richard Cohen (a “cured” gay member) featuring pseudo
-sciencey case studies pathologizing homosexuality.
Purity culture: Everything is
about sex and the control of sexual desire. By mandating that we not be sexual,
focus on purity, and talking about marriage we are constantly talking about sex
and it is the central discourse of the movement. By teaching young people that
their value is tied to their virginity, many people are put in harms way. Paired with purity culture was abstinence only
sex education, slut-shaming, and rape culture (if she didn’t do something to
deserve it [which she probably did], I bet her ancestors did).
Lineage teaching: The focus on a
pure lineage and “2nd generation” did several harmful things. First,
it gave parents a creepy entitlement to their children’s sexuality and sex
lives, demanding that they follow a strict path of purity and ultimately end up
in church sanctioned unions with a member of the opposite sex. Having
premarital sex is then the dividing line between in-group and out-group, as
once a persona has sex, they are no longer a valued member of their community
and no longer “purified” under the lineage requirements. This is then accounted
for by other ritual and purification processes to allow for a continued
membership, but as a second class or demoted status person within the
organization. Those who had sex before the sanctioned marriage in the church
were designated “special category” and were encouraged to renounce what they
did and get back on a path to purity in the hopes of marrying someone in the
church, now only eligible to marry other “special category” church members.
Consent: Teachings about
relationships and consensual sex are not present. Sex is viewed as the ultimate payoff for purity
and self-denial. Members are encouraged to forgo sex and follow a strict life
of purity as a course to get to a state of sanctioned marriage with another
person of equal purity and once that union is sanctioned and ritually complete,
a relationship of “absolute sex” is permitted and ones partner’s genitals are
seen as one’s own property. This is a problematic teaching as it lends to a
sense of entitlement of another person and ignores issues of consent.
Dualism and Black/White binary thinking:
Strict gender proscriptions and dualism teachings encourage black and white
thinking and mentality about the world. Gender is viewed as inherent and of a
specific type. There are specific ways that masculinity is to be embodied as
well as femininity.
Racist essentializing: The “superiority”
and “inherent purity” of Korean people plays into the myths around Asian women
and supports racial superiority of Korean people. This is harmful to other
races as well as Korean people, who are confined to boxes and put on pedestals
within the movement. Other racist or
nationalist caricatures are supported (black people are entertainers, American
women are individualistic bitches) and a true examination of race and its constructions
and meanings is not attempted or acknowledged. This leaves dominant-submissive
racial and cultural differences between interracial marriages to be navigated
in isolation and leaves children to operate in the world without any real
discussions about race and its impacts.
Misogyny: Rev. Moon only sees women
living in a way he condones to be worthy of respect and safety. He often
compares women to cows, where every piece of her biology has a purpose to serve
others. In one speech her suggests if a woman doesn’t want to use her breasts
to feed a baby it should be cut off. His abusive and withholding beginning of
his marriage with Mrs. Moon is idealized and she is put on a pedestal for her
undying submission to him and for “proving herself” during the first seven
years of their marriage. Strict gender roles are prescribed and their subordinate
status to men is affirmed through the teachings that men are “subject” and
women “object”.
This reflection has helped me
express a fraction of the processing it has taken for me to shift from my
upbringing, where I thought I was a part of a revolutionary group and something
special and transformative to now where I recognize the unification church as a
fringe backlash movement of the 50’s and 60’s of women’s liberation. Far from
being a liberating and uplifting movement, it offers very disturbing explicit
messages about the natural order of male domination and female subservience,
lack of autonomy and control of one’s body and consent, simplistic racial stereotypes,
and explicit statements of violence toward women. These are all problematic and
are not fringe statements of the movement, rather they are the core tenants of
the doctrine that centers on prescriptions around sex.
This reflection is for me, but I
am sharing it in hopes to allow others to process and share in their own
transformations through their upbringing in the Unification Church. I know and
respect many people who I know through the Unification Church, some of which
are still practicing members and this is not meant as an attack on them or
their beliefs (though, if this upsets you a lot, maybe look into some of those
things and work through that). I opted
out from the Unification Church and through that process experienced many
shifts in myself. I write this in hope to give a voice to my experiences and
articulate some of the problematic parts of growing up in the unification
church that negatively impacted my life and put up roadblocks for my
understandings of myself.
*this post is a part of a multigenre project for a class. Feel free to comment and share.
*this post is a part of a multigenre project for a class. Feel free to comment and share.
Painting
fridge magnet poetry
