I have been surprised, slightly, to the extent of the (Rev.) Sun Myung Moon's empire, and have seen it grow steadily as more converts give more money to this crackpot. Yes, I think he is way over the edge, and knowing a Moonie convert, think he and his organization is a very dangerous one.

Come Tuesday this week is a news item that didn't reach the news organizations until bloggers and the Christian press sought it out. The story tells of a bizarre meeting in the Dirksen Senate office building between certain congresspeople invited to what appreared to be a photo op of a peace-loving organization. What they found, and more importantly, what happened then is the bizarre part. Quoting Tony Norman in the Post Gazette:

On March 23 at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, Moon declared himself the messiah. Of the dozens of politicians who were on the guest list and reportedly in attendance, including Pennsylvania's Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., of the 7th Congressional District, no one rushed to denounce Moon's act of spiritual chutzpah. Modest to a fault, Moon told the audience, which believed it had gathered to honor "community peacemakers" from districts around the country, that the founders of the world's greatest religions had already agreed to acknowledge his pre-eminence as the "King of Peace."

There's more. He was wearing a velvet robe and was crowned! The King of Peace and God on Earth! This is blasphemous, and the fact that the "crowning" has happened before that Moon is orchestrating a plan to envelop Washington with his dangerous nonsense.

John Gorenfield's blog has been keeping track of Moon sightings and has been very busy this past week with the news. He wrote of a Moon initative back in 1996 called "Free Teens," ostenibly to provide the concept of abstinence to teens. As Gorenfield reports, having sex before marriage in the Moon view means certain death to the participants. Since 1996, the initiative has been quietely dropped in certain areas once the Moon ties were learned. But its message continues to be strengthened today, and is seen as a thinly veiled recruitment tactict.

Moon bears watching, if only to see how easy it is to win friends and influence people for a cult of vast proportions. Check out the links for the senators and congresspeople who have been a part of this nonsense. Most have tried to distance themselves, but the base message has been embraced by more than our current congress. President George Bush (the former) spoke before an audience of Moonies while he was in office. And the current President appointed a Moon official to the VISTA program in 2002. Gorenfield writes:

And Moon has also made impressive headway into the current Bush White House. Other administration officials have attended Moon events, including then-incoming Attorney General John Ashcroft, who attended Moon's Inaugural Prayer Luncheon for Unity and Renewal, just before George W. Bush took office. And perhaps more important, other former and current members of his Unification faithful have ascended to high levels of the Bush administration.

Stay tuned.

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