Reaction and Criticism
Members of some churches have expressed concerns that people of their churches taking part in Blessing ceremonies might join the Unification Church. In 1998 journalist Peter Maass reported that some Unification Church members were dismayed and grumbled when Moon extended the Blessing to non-members because they had not gone through the same course that members had.
The Blessing ceremony figured in the plot of Don DeLillo's 1991 novel Mao II. In 2007 the British television network Channel 4 aired a documentary film, My Big Fat Moonie Wedding, about some of the participants in the 1982 Blessing ceremony of over 2,000 couples which took place in Madison Square Garden. In in his 2009 autobiography, Tahoe Boy: A Journey Back Home, Pat Hickey, a state representative in Nevada and former Unification Church member who took part in the same ceremony, wrote about his experience of being matched to his future wife by Moon. In 2012 British producer Firecracker Films produced a television documentary on second generation church couples who attended a Blessing ceremony in Korea entitled "Married to the Moonies." It was broadcast on Channel 4 and later on TLC in the United States under the title "Mass Moon Wedding."
Read more about this topic: Blessing Ceremony Of The Unification Church
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