Tuna-fishing Messiah
David Sexton
The Making of a Moonie: Brainwashing or Choice? Eileen Barker (Basil Blackwell £12) The Moonies are not doing too well at the moment. The Daily Mail has suc- cessfully defended the libel action over its story entitled 'They took my son away and then raped his mind', landing them with £750,000 costs. Mr Moon himself has been serving 18 months, for tax evasion, in Connecticut; Perhaps even more striking- ly, a thousand middle-aged Americans were asked how they felt about a variety of named people, and though only three per Cent had not heard of Reverend Moon, the only person whom a higher percentage Positively did not admire was the ritual killer Charles Manson. Such eminence is not easily achieved. Much of this public hostility is based upon the widely held belief that they brainwash their members. Eileen Barker has set herself the task of answering the question 'Why should — how could — anyone become a Moonie?' to find out if they do. She is a sociologist at the LSE, specialising in new religions, and her book is detached and professional, based upon questionnaires and interviews, not only with members of the Unification Church, but also with those who nearly but not quite became members. She has herself Participated as an observer in a variety of their 'workshops' and 'weekends'. The picture that emerges is less lurid than might be supposed. Moonies are not Otherwise very abnormal. She establishes that two-thirds of them in the West are male, mainly in their twenties, and middle- class. Surprisingly, they do not seem to have become Moonies because of not having had a happy family background; on the contrary, Moonies are, she says 'quite liable to join because of one'. They tend to have experienced a 'dip' ('in happiness, feelings of well-being, self-confidence, etc') later in life than is normal — a delayed adolescence. In a question asking for their ideals in life at the time when they were approached by the Unification Church, the response, most efficiently dis- criminating between Moonies, near- Moonies and non-Moonies, was' "Some- thing" but did not know what', much favoured by the Moonies (as compared to such responses as 'Success in career' or 'Spiritual fulfilment'). These are not alarming results. Moonies are not measurably madder than non- Moonies, nor are they less educated. No factors marking them out as specially suggestible or susceptible emerged force- fully. She says `There were more similar- ities between the British Moonies and the (British) control group than there were between the British and European or American Moonies. In other words, national or cultural differences were often more obvious than Moonie/non-Moonie differences.'
So were these normal people brain- washed into it? Not really, it seems. There are few exciting stories here about their induction — no sex, no violence. Moonies do attempt to influence a potential recruit more subtly, though. Once he has been inveigled into their hands for a weekend, he is smothered with bogus affection, not allowed time or opportunity for reflection, and has important information about the church withheld from him. These are the techniques of every salesman writ large. The Moonies, however, are very thorough the guest is not left alone for a moment, and is bombarded with supposedly confidence-building attentions. (Mrs Bar- ker records 'In Liverpool I was once — uniquely — told I had a beautiful nose. In San Francisco I was presented with a rose as "beautiful person of the weekend".') These methods work a bit, but not very well. Of those who get as far as volunteer- ing for a two-day 'Unification workshop' only ten per cent join for more than a week, and only four per cent are full-time members two years later.
So did these few freely choose? Eileen Barker approaches the crucial question with all the circumspection she can com- mand, for on inspection it turns into the problem of free will versus determinism, the San Andreas Fault of social science. Watching sociologists grappling with the existence of free will is a harmless source of malicious amusement, like watching blind- man's buff, or apple-bobbing. Some cope by spraying the difficulty with pomposity and passive verbs while they scuttle rapidly by on the other side of the road. Mrs Barker, though, resolutely addresses it. 'Is our behaviour caused, and/or do we have our own reasons for actions?', she asks. 'What I would like to do is to sidestep the issue of free will and determinism', she says, heading for 'the more fruitful dicho- tomy of choice and coercion'. This man- oeuvre allows her to grant people enough free will to determine whether or not the Moonies are taking it away. 'People can thus be seen as "clearing houses": in the light of their dispositions and accumulated experiences they can play an active role in "sorting out" • the various alternatives which are presented to them,' she says — a generous concession from one in her line of business. Her final judgment is that 'the answer lies considerably nearer the rational-choice pole of the continuum than it does to the irresistible-brainwashing pole'.
One reason why we may be prepared to accept this is that she reveals that there are now only about 2,000 full-time Moonies in America, and 500-odd in Britain. It could be argued that one might be able, with enough application, to recruit 2,000 Amer- icans to almost anything, without resorting to force. Indeed, it seems that it was almost anything that some of them joined: 18 per cent of American Moonies admitted that they had not realised it was the Reverend Moon's Unification Church they had joined until after they had joined it. This was sly of the Church, but what are we to say of the people?
So perhaps we are not to despise the Moonies for brainwashing people, because they only do it a bit. What we may despise them for are the foolish things they say and do, once recruited. These rather more interesting areas are not covered at all by Eileen Barker, who professionally sticks to her chosen subject. This is canny, for sociology as such cannot make moral judg- ments or evaluate the content of beliefs, only measure behaviour. It has no grounds for value-judgments other than its own foundations, (and in fact they go deep: by pursuing a career as a sociologist, one has already decided important questions, de- cided that groups are more significant than individuals, that the individual soul is not the centre of value. These beliefs are arguable to say the least, and are rapidly revealed as such when confronted by other contradictory fundamental propositions. So confrontation is not courted.) Once in the Unification Church, Moonies surrender their lives to it, work- ing on fund-raising (in Mobile Fundraising Teams, selling peanuts, candles, flowers and dried-flower arrangements) and get- ting new recruits. They have few other acts of worship, and soon display the gormless cheer and graceless stance familiar on the streets, and visible in this book's photo-
graphs. (If you have a moment in a bookshop, a short view of what being a Moonie means can be supplied by consult- ing the picture on page 109, captioned 'A Christmas entertainment'. It shows six Moonies, their heads thrust through holes in cardboard figures of Santa Claus and the Snowman. Even here their faces are trans- fixed by a rigor mortis of fatuous bonhomie.) This way of life is justified by what they believe, and what Moonies believe defies belief. Unification theology is comprehen- sive; it re-writes all history according to the Divine Principle composed by Moon. Adam and Eve need not have fallen — but Eve was physically seduced by Lucifer and copulated with Adam in an attempt to cleanse herself, transferring the evil. This was the Fall. Jesus was supposed to restore man to physical perfection by getting mar- ried and having perfect children, but John the Baptist had not done his job properly so He was crucified by mistake. The key to all this is that Moon himself is the new Messiah, Lord of the Second Advent, perfection on Earth. Moon does not quite call himself this — he tells his followers that LSA was born in Korea in 1920, and then tells them to think on. His followers therefore owe him complete allegiance. 'I am your brain. What I wish must be your wish,' he has charmlessly told them.
Moon also claims to have been success- fully interviewed for the post by God in the spirit-world, in the presence of Satan and Jesus, and to have held a banquet in Heaven for the departed founders of the world's great religions, at which they unanimously ceded superiority over their own particular truths to him. Before his imprisonment, Mr Moon, who holds a qualification in electrical engineering, in- dulged his hobby of tuna-fishing. His char- isma was such that he didn't need to bait his hook there either.
The Making of a Moonie efficiently dismisses some popular misconceptions, but has no larger aim. The sociologist stands detached, looking in, and discover- ing, as she says in a wonderful phrase, that 'most religions have some skeletons in their cupboards'. The Church of England, for example, hasn't got much else. Mrs Barker justly comments that C of E 'tends to be rather a vague label which frequently implies more of a cultural than a religious commitment', (and she has a footnote about a vicar who told her ping-pong was the thing for youth). Essentially the 'Uni- fication Church' is a grotesque heresy, but we have lost the means of knowing this.
The lasting impression the book leaves is of the spiritual aridity of our time, the Moonies mattering most as a sign of it. At least the current decline in their fortunes can be welcomed. With any luck Reverend Moon's most durable monument in the West will be his entry in the Guinness Book of Records, for having married 5,837 couples, (paired by him), at one go, in the Chamsil Gymnasium, Seoul, on 14 Octo- ber, 1982.
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