Moon, Sun Myung

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Moon, Sun Myung (b. 1920). Founder of the Unification Church, whose members are popularly known as Moonies. He was born in N. Korea, and when he was 10, his family converted to Christianity. On Easter Day 1936, Moon experienced a vision of Jesus Christ who commissioned him to particular work. For the next nine years, he prepared for this, communicating with other religious leaders, such as the Buddha and Moses. The revelations which he received form the basis of Unification theology. He founded his Church after the Second World War, and after much opposition and persecution from the Communists, he established the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity in 1954. The Divine Principle teaches that the Fall was the result of Eve having a spiritual relationship with Lucifer before a sexual one with Adam, with the result that their children and descendants have been born with defective natures. By his own marriage in 1960, Moon has begun to effect a more complete redemption, transmitted through mass wedding ceremonies, as a consequence of which the children of participants are born without fallen natures.

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