Political commentary

But the greatest of these?

Ferdinand Mount

It is hard to warm to the Rev Sun Myung Moon. Persons who accumulate large quantities of the folding stuff and sizeable chunks of New York real estate by claiming to be an improvement on Jesus Christ do not stir instant sympathy. One keeps the bottle-top firmly on the milk of human kindness. I notice that I am joined in this lack of rapport with the Unification Church by the last Archbishop of Canterbury, the editor of the Daily Mail, the Catholic Herald, the Methodists, the US National Council of Churches, 190 or so Members of Parliament, and now by Sir Michael Havers, the Attorney-General. Everyone hates the Moonies.

It is at this point that a certain guardedness enters into one's attitude. Sir Michael has just gratified the MPs by asking the Charity Commissioners to remove the Moonies from the list of charities. The Charity Commissioners have already refused to comply once — after the jury in the Daily Mail libel case at the end of March had added a rider asserting that the Moonies were a political organisation and that their charitable status should be reexamined. If the Charity Commissioners continue to hold this view, then the Attorney-General can take them and the Moonies to the High Court — which has been grappling with the question of what is a charity ever since Elizabethan times. I advert here to that invaluable work, Picarda on the Law and Practice Relating to Charities. The courts in general do not concern themselves overmuch with the details of religious doctrine. In the great case of Thornton v. Howe (1862), Sir John Romilly, the Master of the Rolls, held, after wading through the works of Joanna Southcott, that a trust to publish them was a valid charity. Southcott, J. it will be recalled, claimed that she was pregnant by the Holy Ghost and and would give birth to the Messiah and left a box containing the panacea of all the world's ills to be opened in the presence of 24 bishops. In short, a fruitcake, albeit an unworldly fruitcake, and an encouraging precedent for the Moonies. True, the English High Court until recently has shown a certain anti-Papist trend. Until the Emancipation Acts of the 19th century, trusts to promote the Roman Catholic, Unitarian and Jewish faiths were regularly held to be uncharitable. While Irish courts have regarded the saying of Masses and the perpetual adoration of the Holy Sacrament as charitable activities, the House of Lords as late as 1949 ruled in Gilmour v. Coats that the upkeep of an enclosed convent of Carmelite nuns was not a charitable purpose. The prioress stoutly asserted (1) that the Roman Catholic Church teaching is that intercessory prayers bring benefit to mankind, (2) that the pious lives of the nuns are a source of edification to other Catholics, and (3) that it was a public benefit because any Catholic woman with a vocation could join. The House of Lords turned her down, on the grounds that the value of intercessory prayers was incapable of proof, ditto the value of pious lives and that, if the nuns might be wasting their time, there was no public benefit in them being open to more recruits.

This highly Protestant judgment, I think, is a hang-over and these days, I opine (bolstered here by Picarda) the case might be or ought to be decided the other way. For example, only last February, Mr Justice Walton held that the Exclusive Brethren were a charitable purpose because their meetings were open to outsiders.

So far, I cannot see any reason to strike off the Unification Church. It is clearly a monotheistic religion which contains a public element, for its enthusiasts are keen to spread the word and make as many converts as they can.

The remaining criterion is that laid down by Mr Justice Plowman in Re Watson (1973) that the only way of disproving public benefit is to show that the doctrines inculcated are 'adverse to the very foundations of all religion and that they are subversive of all morality.' In other words, what has to be proved here is not that the Unification Church is a dud or crackpot sect, but that it is wicked. Ban This Evil Cult is the line.

The Attorney-General and the MPs direct our attention to the evidence given in the Daily Mail libel case. Lord Rawlinson, for the Mail, said that the newspaper had indeed contended that the Moonies were a sinister and materialistic sect; and this contention was justified, he argued, because the Moonies broke up families, brainwashed its recruits and deliberately altered personalities. The jury apparently agreed, found for the Daily Mail and ordered the Moonies to pay costs of over £500,000.

But is there really a distinction of kind between the Moonies' methods of indoctrination and conversion and the methods of recognised religions? Ignore, as the law must, the question of whether the Moonie religion is true, and consider only its social consequences.

Are the Moonies substantially harder to escape from than, say, an enclosed monastic order? Research suggests that the Moonies do not have among their devotees an unusually high proportion of vulnerable or disturbed young people, from broken homes, for example, or suffering from drink or drugs. Moreover, a far greater number of vulnerable young people who were approached by the Moonies found them perfectly easy to resist. The technique of love-bombing' may be repulsive, but it is hardly an exact replica of the physically brutal methods of brainwashing practised during the Korean war — from which it is alleged that the Rev Sun Myung Moon learnt his tricks.

How far can we be sure of distinguishing between the 'zombie-like' manner of Moonies and the 'serene' other-worldliness of nuns and hermits?

The Rev Sun Myung Moon sounds ghastly. So does the ineffable L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of scientology. So do a great number of popes and ministers. Moon is not the first prelate to live like a prince. Nor is he alone in being like St Paul to the extent that if he hath not charity, it profiteth him nothing.

You may think too that what you have read of scientology or Moonie-ism is a concoctibn of devious hogwash. Yet many orthodox Christian doctrines are denounced as devious hogwash— by Christians belonging to other recognised churches. The non-conformists, say, are not exactly tolerant of the view that the bread and wine are physically transformed into the body and blood of Christ during the Mass.

Free speech naturally includes this right to denounce any religion as devious hogwash, just as it also includes the right of the Dail Mail to denounce the Moonies' methods as 'sinister brainwashing'. The jury's verdict on the libel suit was entirely correct. As a Methodist spokesman sensibly commented, every religion has to accustom itself to abuse. The Moonies do not seem to be too hot on blessing those that persecute them. But the jury's suggestion that the Unification Church should be struck off the charity list is not a perpetuation of that principle of free speech but its contradiction.

Perhaps the Moonies are worse, madder, more manipulative than other sects. But it is not the duty of the civil state to distinguish in these matters. If adult people choose to live in a community of zombies, that is their right. If it can be proved that the Unification Church breaks the civil law — for example, if the frequent charges of tax evasion can be proved — or if it can be proved that it employs illegal methods on its recruits amounting to torture, that would be different. The anguish of parents separated from their grown-up children by religion is a terrible thing; but it is not confined to the Moonies; nor should the state interfere.

The leaders of other churches might be wise to be a little more circumspect in calling for the Moonies to be outlawed. The right of non-established churches to be treated like the Church of England is extremely frail and recent. I should have thought that it was in the interests of all Churches — and of liberal humanists too — to stick up for the civil rights of the Moor:.