Reply #47: Son of Moonies founder takes over as church leader [View All]

[Octafish]

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Some 3,600 couples attend a Unification Church ceremony at a gymnasium in Seoul. Photograph: Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty images

Son of Moonies founder takes over as church leader

• Move aimed at broadening appeal of movement

• Harvard man at helm, but father will retain control

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
The Guardian, Saturday April 26 2008

Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification church known globally as the Moonies, has handed over control of the movement to his Harvard-educated youngest son in what is being seen as an attempt to broaden the controversial religious organisation's appeal.

In a ceremony near Seoul last week, 28-year-old Hyung Jin Moon was anointed chairman of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, the name the church has used since the late 1990s. "I hope everyone helps him so that he may fulfil his duty as the successor of the True Parents," Moon, 88, said, in a characteristically immodest reference to himself and his wife.

Moon the younger, who was born in the state of New York, promised to "develop the church and to connect as many people as possible" to his parents. "I will do my best to bring the love of the True Parents and God to every corner of the world."

Experts say Hyung Jin, the youngest of seven sons, who has five children of his own, is being groomed to secure his ageing father's legacy more than 50 years after he founded the Unification church in South Korea, declaring himself the new messiah with the aim of establishing a single world government under his leadership.

The new leader, a philosophy and theology graduate, practised Zen Buddhism and lived in a Catholic monastery, and has been described as the "most spiritual" of Moon's children. In his book, A Bald Head and a Strawberry, he writes: "I was the youngest boy of the family and probably the most nutty."

" has been grooming his three sons for a bigger role for three years," Timothy Read, a spokesman for the church in London, told the Guardian. "The Unification church is not just a church these days, but an international organisation with many interests. Religion is just one aspect of that. The reverend decided a while ago that it would encounter difficulties if it was simply known as a church and decided to broaden its activities."

SNIP...

Experts say Moon's eldest son, Hyo Jin, might have been a more obvious choice as successor but was overlooked after scandals over drugs and extramarital sex. He died of a heart attack last month, at 45.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/26/religion.korea

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