Defending the Moonies
Sir: Ferdinand Mount does well to put his question (4 July): 'But is there really a distinction in kind between the Moonies' methods of indoctrination and conversion and the methods of recognised religions?', and he might well have thrown in a mention of the various proselytising sects of that great secular Islam, Marxism-Leninism.
Like most of those who have attended academic conferences organised and financed by the Moonie cultural foundation I myself have received many letters of private protest. To every one I have replied with an assertion and a question: the assertion, that the conferences which I have attended were all conducted with absolute academic propriety; and the question, what scandalous and peculiar methods of persuasion employed by the Moonies are being denounced as trainwashing'?No correspondent has ever given me any clear and definite answer on the basis of this accusation, an accusation which was also made in court by Lord Rawlinson as counsel for the Daily Mail. Nor did I get any better answer when I raised the same question at a recent forum on the Unification Church organised by the Oxford Union Society.
Finally, as regards charitable status. In so far as the charge is that the Unification Church is too politically involved to be allowed to retain this status, where are the moves to delete from that privileged list such political propagandising organisations as Shelter and War on Want — or, for that matter, the World Council of Churches or its British affiliates?
Antony Flew Department of Philosophy, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading
Previous page
