Unification Church Neologisms - Early History

Early History

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Unification Church missionaries were sent from South Korea and Japan to the United States in order to establish the church there. Among them were Young Oon Kim, Sang Ik-Choi, Bo Hi Pak, David S. C. Kim, and Yun Soo Lim. Missionary work took place in Washington D.C., New York, Oregon, and California. The church first came to public notice in the United States after sociologist John Lofland studied Young Oon Kim's group and published his findings as a doctoral thesis entitled: The World Savers: A Field Study of Cult Processes, which was published in 1966 in book form by Prentice-Hall as Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith. This book is considered to be one of the most important and widely cited studies of the process of religious conversion, and one of the first modern sociological studies of a new religious movement.

By 1971 the Unification Church of the United States had about 500 members. In the next few years it expanded to several thousand members, with most of them being in their early 20s. Some commentators have noted that this period of Unification Church growth in the United States took place just as the "hippie" era of the late 1960s and early 1970s was ending, when many American young people were looking for a sense of higher purpose or community in their lives. After the 1970s American Unification Church membership has remained at about the same number, roughly 5,000 adult members.

Sun Myung Moon visited the United States in 1965 and 1969 and decided to move there in 1971. He then asked church members to help him in a series of outreach campaigns in which he spoke to public audiences in all 50 states, ending with a 1976 rally in Washington D.C. in which he spoke on the grounds of the Washington Monument to around 300,000 people. During this time many church members left school and careers to devote their full time to church work. Mobile fundraising teams were set up to raise money for church projects, often giving candy or flowers in exchange for donations. Moon also brought members from Europe and Japan to work in the United States. Church buildings were purchased around the nation. In New York State the Belvedere Estate, the Unification Theological Seminary, and the New Yorker Hotel were purchased. The national headquarters of the church was established in New York City. In Washington D.C. the church purchased a church building from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and in Seattle the historic Rolland Denny house for $175,000 in 1977.

In 1980, Craig Sheffer, before becoming a Hollywood actor, under some inconvenient circumstances in his life, "slept under the marble staircase in Grand Central Terminal for weeks while living off Unification Church spaghetti dinners."