Sun Myung Moon, savior to some, lived out large vision

Rev. Sun Myung Moon has died Sunday at age 92. The controversial founder of the Unification Church was known for attracting young converts in the 1970s and for conducting mass weddings.

Sun Myung Moon and wife Hak Jah Han Moon in Tarrytown, NY in the 1970s.

Sun Myung Moon was born in 1920 to a poor family in what is now North Korea. His life took a dramatic turn on Easter Sunday, 1936, when, he says, Jesus appeared before him. As he told cartoonist and interviewer Al Capp, … “We carried conversation with mind-to-mind, heart-to-heart,” Moon said. …

Moon’s church spread from South Korea to other parts of Asia, and then to the U.S. By the early 1970s, he boasted churches in all 50 states. The growth was fueled by thousands of young people who dropped out of college to follow this new messiah. Phillip Schanker was one of them. …

“Rev. Moon is in a category of a religious innovator, a religious pioneer, a new religious founder. Now, put in that category, I have no problem looking at him next to Buddha, to Confucius, to Jesus,” he says.

Others may bristle at that comparison. But one thing is clear: The poor boy from North Korea lived out a very big dream.

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