Moon Seeks to Be Wedded to American Life

WASHINGTON —  With a flourish of trumpets, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon blessed a flower-scented sea of kneeling couples at a stadium Saturday, climaxing a weeklong festival aimed at winning greater mainstream acceptance for his Unification Church.

Flanked by religious men of six other faiths, the messianic leader sprinkled holy water and intoned a blessing--carried on live closed-circuit television around the world--stressing the faiths’ common emphasis on traditional family values.

“We want to create God-centered families that will serve as examples of true love,” Moon said.

Unlike past Unification Church gatherings in the United States, the audience for this marital “rededication” was composed primarily of people outside the church, signaling a new direction for the group. Twenty-six years after it burst onto the U.S. scene, the church is facing stagnating membership and an uncertain future as its Korean-born leader approaches his 78th birthday.

Moon’s strategy has been used by other new religions whose expansion has slowed after an initial burst of growth: He hopes to edge the church further into the mainstream by stressing his creed’s common ground with others, even as he plays down some aspects of the faith that have generated controversy.

“A lot of religions tend to run out of steam when the newness wears off,” said Hugh P. Whitt, a scholar of religion at the University of Nebraska. “What [the Unification Church] is trying to do in this country is become respectable.”

According to the church, about 28,000 couples took part in Saturday’s event; most were already married, an estimated 2,500 had been newly matched. The field of Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, former home of the Washington Redskins, was blanketed with women in traditional flowing white wedding gowns and men in dark suits.

“I can’t think of a better way to be married,” said Luis Guzman, a native of Ecuador now living in New York who was matched by Moon with his wife. “Rev. Moon talks to me directly.”

Couples united by Moon must take their vows elsewhere later to have their marriages recognized by the civil authorities.

But “for us, this is our marriage,” said Jennifer Perry, 25, a Los Angeles native who was betrothed by Moon to Sebastien Jean, 24, himself the son of a Moon-united couple.

Moon and his wife, known as the “true parents” of the church, descended a staircase to the platform wearing floor-length gold-and-white-tasseled robes and gold-and-white crowns.

Sharing the stage with Moon were officials of the Roman Catholic, Sikh, Russian Orthodox, Buddhist and Hindu religions, as well as Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. Some swaddled in long robes, some with wispy gray beards and others with shaved heads, they prayed for strong families in their native languages or English.

The audience, which filled about two-thirds of the 55,000-seat stadium, was heavily sprinkled with clergy and parishioners from other U.S. denominations. Some of them were bused hundreds of miles to attend the event. Others were enlisted in a publicity effort that included advertisements and a door-to-door campaign that charged up to $70 a ticket from those who could pay and gave away others tickets.

Last week, the church also sponsored a series of music, culture and sports events in Washington.

The church has long held mass weddings for U.S. members, including many ceremonies for marriages arranged by Moon. But while this event included some recently betrothed couples, it was designed as a “blessing” to encourage thousands of nonmember married couples to join in. Church aides emphasized to outsiders that they could take part without abandoning their faiths.

“We are all alike in so many ways,” said Michelle Myers, a 23-year-old student and Unification Church member from Reno Valley, Calif., who, following the recommendation of Moon, is planning to marry a 23-year-old Russian security guard.

Despite the effort to bring in Americans of other faiths, the great majority of the couples appeared to be from Korea or other Asian countries.

Church officials said the event was broadcast to 3.9 million couples throughout the world, although aides were unable to identify where these gatherings were.

While Moon has not altered the fundamental tenets of his religion as he has sought to join the mainstream, he has eased up on some of the practices that have generated controversy, experts say.

The U.S. church no longer pressures members to accept arranged weddings but only recommends them. Nor does the church recruit young people in the United States with the kind of hard-sell tactics that, in the church’s high-growth years of the 1970s, caused critics to accuse it of brainwashing, says David Bromley, a sociology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

While Moon remains confident in his preaching, he and other church leaders have backed off some of the “apocalyptic tone” they took in the 1970s, Bromley said. “They’re moving closer to the center and settling down.”

Outside experts usually put the church’s U.S. membership at 5,000 to 10,000. Tens of thousands more are in Asia, where the church has a stronger organization and collects most of its ample funds.

Controversy still clings to the church, as Moon has acknowledged.

Camelia Anwar Sadat, daughter of late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, canceled her scheduled keynote appearance at a women’s event held in conjunction with the festival, saying she did not know the meeting was sponsored by the Unification Church.

Pop diva Whitney Houston, who had top billing in a concert--for a reported $1 million--after Saturday’s blessing ceremony, canceled at the last minute, citing sudden illness. Earlier in the week, she said she had also initially been unaware the event was sponsored by the Unification Church. Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed were also last-minute cancellations.

Some religious experts say it may prove difficult for the Unification Church to persuade people from conservative Christian backgrounds to switch to the Unification creed.

Moon’s brand of Christianity grows from the view that Jesus did not finish the job of reuniting humans and God because he didn’t get married and build a family himself.

“Their view is that Jesus botched it, and Rev. Moon had to be sent to get the job done,” said Whitt of the University of Nebraska. “That’s offensive to many conservative Christians.”

Rev. Ron Facy, a Pentecostal minister from Philadelphia who was among those bused in to the event, shook his head in admiration as he watched Moon at the stadium. “He really knows how to do it,” Facy said, watching as event staff ladled out free cream of corn soup at the stadium.

Yet, Facy acknowledged that Moon’s religious views “don’t add up to me. What’s he trying to say?”

Some of Moon’s adherents say they read him perfectly.

Myers, the Reno Valley native, says she still holds true to some tenets of her original Catholic faith yet “never found a lot of answers” through that church. Moon “really helped me understand how God is working in my life.”

Such was her confidence in Moon that after dating around, she asked him to pair her with a man, based on a two-page questionnaire that she filled out. She will be united soon with her husband-to-be, she said, though he couldn’t get a visa to attend the mass blessing.

“This is the best way to have a successful marriage and family,” she said.