Category: Governance

The AU Blog Is Transitioning to a Member-Led Organization

Dear Applied Unificationism Blog readers, contributors and supporters,

As our Editorial Committee posted in its open letter, “We Had a Great Run. And We Thank Our Readers,” Unification Theological Seminary has become the HJ International Graduate School for Peace and Public Leadership and decided that the AU Blog it sponsored since 2013 no longer matches its new mission. Therefore, the Applied Unificationism Blog has a chance to evolve as well.

We have been having meetings among the Editorial Committee seeking to identify the next iteration of the Blog.  HJI President Dr. Thomas Walsh said he is happy to support transitioning the AU Blog to a new home provided we find a responsible steward.  While seeking sponsorship from church-affiliated organs is often the typical path, in this era it seems we should take more initiative.  As the Elder Son Nation and in the Age of Ownership, it seems it is time to try to make it on our own.

I have volunteered to take on the editorial duties for the AU Blog for one year to see if we can transition the AU Blog to a member-led organization that can operate in a collegial fashion while keeping the intellectual, social and academic standards that have made the AU Blog a success for the past 10 years.

Dr. Mark P. Barry, who served as managing editor for the past then years, has agreed to assist with the transition; and I have requested the current Editorial Committee to stay in place, at least for the time being.

I have several offers of donors willing to cover the cost of hosting the site and we will maintain the current standard of publishing for the immediate future to ensure continuity and quality.

However, I would like to see the AU Blog carefully evolve.  Here are some areas I think we could strengthen our appeal and effective outreach:

  1. Broaden our audience. We need to attract younger contributors and readers.  I think that there are many young people at work, especially in the social sciences, who can incorporate Unificationist values and models into their field.  Education, social work, psychology, and health care seem like disciplines that are accessible to Unification thought.
  2. Create a membership structure that includes voting and fundraising.  I like the model of the intellectual societies of Europe during the Enlightenment.  Regardless, it is in our collective interest to develop and model governance structures that are a place for mature Unificationists to thrive.
  3. Experiment with other formats.  Perhaps a short essay section, e.g., op-eds of 800 words, where single topics can be broached and developed.
  4. More dialogue. Give and take creates new ideas, so a moderated forum is envisioned that allows vigorous debate without descending into the rancor and polarization that characterizes much current online discussion elsewhere.

If you would like to be part of this new effort or if you have questions, please email me at AUBlogEditor@gmail.com; if you have overall thoughts of encouragement or suggestions, please post them in a comment below.  I will organize a Zoom call to launch this new effort in coming days.

Our About page has been updated, including revised Applied Unification Blog editorial guidelines.

I look forward to an interesting year and am excited to see what we can build together in that time.

Best Regards,

John Redmond
Executive Editor, Applied Unificationism Blog

Photo at top by Timothy Eberly (courtesy Unsplash)

5

Patient Love Is More Important Than Doctrine

By John Redmond

When I was a shiny new member of our Unification Family, I was completely entranced with the Divine Principle.

I had spent the previous several years seeking an intellectual framework that could bridge the gap between Catholicism and the scientific method.  I flirted with Marxism until I got to know some of the “leadership” of the campus Marxists and was not impressed with their sense of self-importance.

However, I didn’t have any constructive way to respond to the arguments they advanced — until I encountered the Principle.

The second thing that impressed me about this group of fellow seekers, who believed as I did, was we could be a model of the things we were talking about, and together, we could heal God’s broken heart, and significantly improve the world.  Those people, currently both in and out of the various parts of the movement, remain my best and most admired friends.

I still believe that living our ideal is the primary providential responsibility of our rank-and-file members.

I fired out of three weeks of workshops with a conviction that anyone who could hear this new truth would instantly be overwhelmed and brought to the realization that we could indeed, as one elder assured me, “reach perfection in three years if we were sincere.”

I started out as a good fundraiser but frequently would get drawn into long involved discussions with interesting individuals, Christians, communists, rabbis, and drunks, frequently resulting in me missing my pickup time and my captain having to send team members into stops on my run and reminding me about what I was supposed to be focused on.

At evening programs, and in workshops, I was the guy locked in detailed arguments with guests about how “Jesus didn’t come to die” or why dialectical materialism was a limited point of view.

As Jonah Goldberg recently wrote, I was a captive of reification:

 “…’the act of treating something abstract, such as an idea, relation, system, quality, etc., as if it were a concrete object.’ This confusion of words for things is a great peeve of mine. In logic, there’s a reification fallacy, in which we confuse the model for the reality: The map isn’t the territory.”

As I came to understand, no matter how clever the argument, how powerfully and clearly stated, no one could “hear” the Principle until they were understood and accepted it as a person.  A few precepts come to mind:  “Actions speak louder than words,” “I can’t hear what you are saying because of what you are doing,” and “Always be witnessing, and sometimes use words.”

A second round of this understanding was deepened by my children.  I came to understand that “free will” is not a political concept, but the primary spiritual gift from God to all His/Her children — including mine.  Our family is now on the 400-year plan to create unity.  It may take less time but it won’t be because I explained about the Principle one more time to anyone.

As a family, we have decided that love is more important than doctrine, and that a successful defense of God is through a lifelong example rather than clever lectures.

This same lesson is now coming to our Unification Family.  The Divine Principle explains that objects grow vertically through three stages of growth and make horizontal progress through Origin, Division, Union action.

Continue reading “Patient Love Is More Important Than Doctrine” →

21

We Had a Great Run. And We Thank Our Readers

The Applied Unificationism Blog went live on May 1, 2013, sponsored by Unification Theological Seminary (UTS). Over more than ten years, the AU Blog has explored the application of Unificationism to the wider world.

Since that time, the AU Blog has posted 400 articles and over 4,500 comments. We have received over 472,000 page views from 228,000 unique visitors in 215 countries and territories around the world. Since 2015, 80 of our articles have been re-posted on a sister site, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification international headquarters website in Korea, which has greatly increased our visibility.

We deeply appreciate our loyal readers, whether you followed Applied Unificationism since the beginning a decade ago or only discovered us this year.

Unification Theological Seminary has decided to conclude its sponsorship of the Applied Unificationism Blog at the end of its fiscal year on June 30. On July 1, UTS will adopt a new institutional name. In addition, UTS will be initiating some new projects that may include a new journal and a conference series.

The Applied Unificationism Blog will remain live as a site through the end of 2023 and at least into early 2024. Comments submitted to any article after June 30 may continue to be posted after moderation. However, the AU Blog will no longer be accepting new article submissions for publication after that date. This could change if a new sponsor is found.

We invite you to express your thoughts and reflections about the Applied Unificationism Blog in the comments section below.

In closing, we express our appreciation to UTS for its generous support of Applied Unificationism over the years.

Sincerely and with gratitude,

The editorial committee of Applied Unificationism:

Mark P. Barry, Managing Editor
Michael Mickler
Keisuke Noda
Andrew Wilson
Kathy Winings

 

Photo at top: By Melissa Cassar (courtesy Unsplash)

14

What Can Be Done About Violence in Society?

By Alice Fleisher

There have been 23 school shootings this year that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to a recent Education Week analysis. There have been 167 such shootings since 2018.

It’s very alarming that such incidents are becoming increasingly prevalent. How are we to understand violence in society and, more importantly, to correct this disturbing trend?

Certainly, an approach must be immediate and include responses by those tasked with public safety — law enforcement, legislators, nonprofit civic action groups, and those in the judicial branch.

But tackling social problems through those venues will not result in the longer term and more comprehensive solutions we need. Such a strategy could be likened to EMTs, paramedics, and emergency room staff treating superficial wounds while ignoring underlying organ or other bodily system damage.

Surely efforts must be made to identify underlying factors that contribute to this troubling social trend weakening our societies. Those factors include, but are not limited to, the perpetration of violence upon the innocent and vulnerable, the venting of frustration and anger through violence, and the inability of people to curb their destructive impulses. Even more deadly are the bullying and dominance of individuals, groups, and larger levels of society based on a perceived division between them and us that is rampant within society.

This article has been informed by the works of scholars I encountered as part of my current graduate degree pursuit at UTS. I present my own views at the conclusion.

One scholar, Wolfhart Pannenberg (1996), notes that currently the religious and spiritual dimension of human beings has been marginalized in the public sphere. He traces this to the thinking behind and actions of the French Revolution, which, among other revolutionary initiatives, included the beheading of those in the monarchy and aristocracy who could not flee the wrath poured upon them, pitted reason against faith, and scapegoated religious institutions (generally the Catholic Church) as sources of repression and injustice, enacting a strict separation of church and state.

In this scenario, the church and religion were seen as the source of problems, not solutions. The separation of church and state in the United States is not as contentious as in many European nations, since the U.S. doesn’t have the antagonistic backstory found in Europe. In the U.S., while religion and government are separated by the Constitution, religion is still considered a potential source of social help and beneficial public service.

While the U.S. is at its core a religious (essentially a Christian) nation (see Himmelfarb, 2004), religion’s presence in the public sphere is noticeably missing. Pannenberg claims that in societies where religion has been reduced in prominence, a profound and debilitating loss of meaning can be found, which he ties to the presence of personal and social violence.

In the last two or three decades, however, it has become evident that secularization (or, as some prefer, progressive modernization) faces severe problems. The thoroughly secularized social order gives rise to feelings of meaninglessness: there is a vacuum in the public square of political and cultural life, and this invites violent outbreaks of dissatisfaction.

Continue reading “What Can Be Done About Violence in Society?” →

17

Passion and Grit: A Spiritual Odyssey

By Gordon L. Anderson

The autobiography of Hugh D. Spurgin, Passion and Grit: A Spiritual Odyssey, is the story of an early follower of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in America. It reveals the impact of the power of a higher truth on a conscientious and idealistic person who seeks to live the most meaningful life possible.

In the 1960s and 1970s, material prosperity in the United States was high, but traditional religious doctrines had lost their power to explain the nature of reality and human happiness in a scientific world. The baby boomers were coming of age in a world of confused and conflicting values. Some accepted the establishment, others rebelled against it, but still others, like Hugh, sought constructive ways to move forward, discerning what was of value in our traditions, and what needed to change.

Rev. Moon’s teachings put Hugh on a life journey, not only a spiritual path, but as a member of a new community in which he raised his family and became a leader of a worldwide movement that has now reached millions of people. This book is both a chronicle of Hugh’s life and the development of the Unification Church, now the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), and how Americans worked to bring Rev. Moon’s teachings of a higher culture and more peaceful world.

A Seeker of Truth

Hugh was born in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1945 and grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana. The family attended a Presbyterian Church and his dad was a chiropractor. Hugh liked sports and outdoor activities. After graduating from high school in 1963, he went to Indiana State University and excelled in social sciences, and went on for a master’s degree in public administration at the Maxwell Graduate School in Syracuse, New York. This landed Hugh an internship, and later a full-time administration job with the U.S. Navy in Washington, DC. He had a top-secret clearance and secure employment in the federal government.

Hugh was not content to simply pursue this career. He was always seeking answers to historical and religious problems and ways to make the world better. While studying the Baha’i faith, he was invited to hear several lectures based on Rev. Moon’s teachings at the Unified Family center in a Victorian mansion on Upshur Street. Hugh heard clear answers to some of his questions about evil, God, Jesus, and salvation. It was an eye-opening, comprehensive historical perspective on human history and civilization. It also presented principles about peacefully advancing human society. He decided to join this small group and help transform the world.

When Rev. and Mrs. Moon came to Washington, DC in 1969, they moved into Upshur House for 40 days, spending quality and personal time with Hugh and the other members who lived or gathered there. Hugh was amazed by Moon’s interracial and intercultural approach to marriage, breaking down traditional religious and ethnic boundaries with the goal of creating one world family under God.

Continue reading “Passion and Grit: A Spiritual Odyssey” →

0

The Next Great Awakening Through the Convergence of Science and Religion

By John Redmond

Students of human history are very aware of patterns and cycles that define our intergenerational experiences. The hope is that by discovering the systemic causes of failures in the past we can prevent or reduce the consequences of failures in the current age.

Karl Marx hypothesized that the important cycles of history were the ones defined by the conflict dialectic and that the arc of history is bending toward worldwide socialism, where material wealth is uniformly distributed.

In the Divine Principle, history moves by the Principles of Restoration in cycles, but the length of the cycles is dependent on the providential response of the central figure and chosen people of an age.  The arc of providential history creates a society spiraling upward in increasing beauty, truth and goodness, in addition to the abundance of material prosperity.

The last 400 years of human history have been a golden age of prosperity by any historical measure.  There is widespread anxiety that the scientific forces unleashed by the Enlightenment will cause humanity to end in disaster as previous golden ages have. Elon Musk said he’s determined to create another populated planet in case humans render earth uninhabitable.  The Dark Ages, which followed the Roman Empire and birth of Jesus, led to 1,000 years of dystopia.

Recent political polarization, exacerbated by Internet information algorithms, have created toxic levels of political discourse in America.  This was predicted by Marx, who thought that escalating conflict created conditions for a revolution that would destroy an old structure so that it could be replaced.

The Divine Principle also predicts that conflict can clarify roles of a subject and object, but that in cases where the opponents can be reconciled to a higher truth, a system of higher complexity, unity and effectiveness can be created.

A good example of this success is the creation of the United States.  The mounting conflict of the American colonies with England from the 1770s could have resulted in some representation in England, lower taxes, or a humiliating loss.  However, the Founding Fathers and Mothers of America were moved to create something new and higher than a simple political win, and indeed, America has been the indispensable nation for the last 100 years.

It seems that human history may be at a turning point from both the materialist and spiritual points of view.  What are the forces that affect that turning point and how can we influence the course of history to create an upward spiral rather than a 1,000 year decline?

History has some precedents for how society has been shaped by spiritual and religious movements.

This response from ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, was to the question: “What were the Great Awakenings and what were the consequences for America?”

“The First Great Awakening took place in the 1730s and 1740s. It was sparked by preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, who emphasized the importance of personal conversion and a direct relationship with God. The movement had a profound impact on colonial society, as it challenged traditional religious authority and hierarchical structures. It led to the growth of new religious denominations, such as the Baptists and Methodists, and promoted ideas of equality and individualism.

Continue reading “The Next Great Awakening Through the Convergence of Science and Religion” →

14

Enlarged Freedom for a Safer World: A Unificationist Approach toward Human Security

By Laurent Ladouce and Carolyn Handschin-Moser

After the end of the Cold War, many hoped the 21st century would be one of lasting peace. It actually started well with the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World.

During this period, Rev. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon launched the Universal Peace Federation (UPF). With its network of Ambassadors for Peace worldwide, it has an impressive record of peace initiatives. Hopefully, the emergence of a graduate school for peace and public leadership in the Unification movement will also bring innovative and creative ideas to the philosophy of peace studies.

Regrettably, peace studies often stop at conflict resolution or conflict transformation. We need more “positive peace studies.” We keep viewing peace as pacification, the return of tranquility after a period of conflict. According to Heraclitus, the founder of dialectics, “Polemos (war) is both the king and father of all.” We still live in a culture where there is only a truce between two wars. The term “irenology” (from the Greek irene, meaning peace) exists, but is rarely used.

The Genesis of Human Security

Peace is more than the absence of war, we say. But what should be present when war is absent? The revolution of Satyagraha, launched by Gandhi, went far beyond the Home Rule movement which had blossomed in India in 1916-18 and was to end the British colonial occupation. Satyagraha literally means that truth has an element of love and an element of energy within itself. Gandhi added:

“Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, i.e., the Force which is born of Truth and Love, and gave up the use of the phrase “passive resistance” in connection with it.”

Gandhi wanted to make Indians the actors of their own destiny, free to build a peaceful and good society. He noted:

“I would like to see India free and strong so that she may offer herself as a willing, pure sacrifice for the betterment of the world. The self, being pure, sacrifices himself for the family, the latter for the village, the village for the district, the district for the province, the province for the nation, the nation for all.”

We often chant “study war no more” (see Isaiah Wall photo below), but study what, then? Indeed, we accumulate valuable knowledge to gradually change from a very violent to a less violent world, and ultimately to a world with zero violence. But what stands above the zero? Unificationism states that Cain and Abel should reconcile and settle their disputes, then live together. In practice, most Unificationists still seek a roadmap for a feasible universal concord. The Unificationist community, not unlike most religious organizations, believes in some form of utopian universal concord. A proper understanding of human security may be an eye-opener to arrive at something more concrete.

Continue reading “Enlarged Freedom for a Safer World: A Unificationist Approach toward Human Security” →

4

After 70 Years, Peace Treaty Needed to End Korean War


Note: This article is being re-posted from May 4, 2013, due to its continuing relevance today. Although some events cited in the article are a decade old, we see a repetition of events in 2023, only at a more dangerous level. Some experts concur that the threat of nuclear war over the Korean Peninsula never has been greater. Nonetheless, only this article’s title has been changed to “After 70 Years” rather than “After 60 Years.”

By Mark P. Barry

“The Korean peninsula was divided into north and south, not because our people wanted it, but because of the influence of the surrounding powerful nations….We have to transform the existing situation, where the United States, [Russia], China, and Japan play a leading role in the international order as they keep our nation divided….[W]e should develop the proactive influence of our people and of Korea so the neighboring superpowers can cooperate in the reunification of the Korean peninsula instead of obstructing it.”

— Sun Myung Moon, Cheon Seong Gyeong, 231-8, 1992.5.11

While Korea is the fatherland of our faith, Unificationists should remember that the peninsula continues to live under an uneasy truce signed [70] years ago this year. It’s also easy to forget that for 35 (in effect 40) years, it lived under oppressive Japanese colonialism, and that from 1895, two wars (Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese) were largely fought over it. We overlook that Korea has experienced [128] years of turbulence, captivity, division, and conflict.

With the 24-hour news cycle, Americans understandably fixate on North Korea’s latest threats, but the underlying cause of the problem of North Korea is the absence of a peace treaty following the 1953 Armistice that halted the Korean War.

Because there has been no permanent peace, the Korean Peninsula is inherently unstable in a neighborhood, as Rev. Moon’s words above attest, where the interests converge of four major powers: China, Russia, Japan, and the United States.

The world media’s obsession with North Korea’s bizarre behavior and larger-than-life threats ignores the fact the North has remained a festering problem in international relations for decades. Since 1990, the almost exclusive focus has been on Pyongyang’s nuclear program. The North’s nuclear capability is extremely important and cannot be ignored, but the nuclear issue won’t be solved by focusing on it alone.

The only lasting way to solve the problems presented by North Korea is to bring about a permanent peace agreement for a peninsula still in a state of war that will also lay the basis for eventual reunification. In the process, the nuclear issue will be resolved as part of comprehensive mutual security arrangements.

The absence of permanent peace in Korea not only gets short shrift in the media, it is a reality shunned by policymakers, who merely recalibrate U.S. policy toward the “Norks,” as former Obama Asia official Kurt Campbell dubbed the North, and excuse the lack of wise use of American power and diplomacy on Korea being the “land of lousy options.” But as analyst John Delury said, “everything that Washington and Seoul are doing is reactive….We need to break that cycle and essentially…go on the offensive, not with weaponry, but with diplomacy.”

Continue reading “After 70 Years, Peace Treaty Needed to End Korean War” →

1

Russia, Crimea, Ukraine and Beyond

VOA-Crimea-Simferopol-airport

Note: This article, originally published on April 14, 2014, is being re-posted on Applied Unificationism due to its relevance on the first anniversary of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

by David Stewart

David Stewart_edited-1In a sermon I gave in Kiev in late 1991, I warned that the Israelites, upon escaping slavery in Egypt, still had to endure 40 years of suffering in the desert. So it has been for the Ukraine since the break-up of the Soviet Union. I had arrived there as a missionary a few months before and would stay in Kiev until the end of 1994, when my family moved to Moscow.

Warning of a potentially troubled future, I was reminded of the words of Leon Trotsky: “The Ukrainian question, which many…have tried to forget or to relegate to the deep strongbox of history…is destined in the immediate future to play an enormous role in the life of Europe.” Despite its own desires, Ukraine remains caught between two powers far greater than itself – Europe and Russia.

In December 1991, I witnessed Lenin’s massive head finally separated from his shoulders, hanging motionless from a crane above us at October Square (now Independence Square) in Kiev. The wildly cheering crowd was bursting with hope this would be the beginning of the end of Lenin’s communist legacy and the start of real freedom and a brighter future.

Ukraine had suffered the horrors of Stalin’s “dekulakization,” forced famine, the Holodomor (1932-33 extermination by hunger, with up to 10 million dead), “Russification,” the horrors of World War II (up to seven million Ukrainian dead), and life after the war under the heel of Moscow. It just wanted to be free and decide its own future.

This dismantling of Lenin’s giant statue followed the referendum on the Act of Declaration of Independence, supported by over 92% of the Ukrainian population with a voter turnout of almost 85%. Ominously for today, the lowest figures came from the Crimea – 54% of a 60% turnout – and throughout Ukraine only 55% of ethnic Russians voted “yes.” Ukraine’s decision effectively ended the Soviet Union, which was formally dissolved a week later with the signing of the Belavezha Accords by Russia, Ukraine and Belorussia (now Belarus), two of whose leaders, Mikhail Gorbachev and Stanislav Shushkevich, became friends of Reverend Moon.

In the recent ousting of President Yanukovych’s pro-Russian regime by the seemingly pro-European opposition, the choice of December 8, 2013 for the destruction of one of Kiev’s remaining Lenin statues was not haphazard. It symbolized the continuing desire of many Ukrainians to shake off the long shadow from the north. But how to accomplish this with a Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who declared in 2005 that the collapse of the Soviet empire “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century,” and that Russia’s “place in the modern world will be defined only by how successful and strong we are”?

In 2008, Russia annexed 20% of Georgia, with significant casualties, but with few diplomatic repercussions. The pro-European president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was ousted, and Georgia returned to Russia’s sphere of influence. Vice President Dick Cheney threatened that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community.”

Continue reading “Russia, Crimea, Ukraine and Beyond” →

11

Website Built with WordPress.com.

Up ↑