MAY

True Father established the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC, or Unification Church) on May 1, 1954. The armistice agreement ending the Korean War was signed in July 1953, and in September True Father moved from Pusan to Seoul. There, with four early followers, True Father established the new association.

According to Dr. David S.C. Kim, who was present, True Father submitted three possible names, two of which “were so complicated that we could not even comprehend the meaning of the Chinese characters.” True Father stated in his autobiography that the group chose HSA-UWC “to signify that we belonged to no denomination, and … had no plans to create a new one.” He said:

“I did not want to place ourselves in this separatist type of category. My hope was for the rise of a church without a denomination. True religion tries to save the nation, even if it has to sacrifice its own religious body to do so. … It was necessary to hang out a church sign, but in my heart I was ready to take it down at any time.”

The small group of believers gathered outside a very modest house in a very unremarkable Seoul neighborhood. Korea itself was barely beginning to recover from the devastation of the Korean War, which had ended in armistice less than ten months earlier. In his autobiography As a Peace Loving Global Citizen, True Father reflected on the ironies of those days:

“People in the neighborhood laughed at our sign. They made fun of us, asking what kind of world unification we dreamt of in that tiny little house that ‘you have to crawl to get into.’ They didn’t try to find out why we had chosen that name. They simply looked at us as if we were crazy.”

Following his encounter with Jesus on April 17, 1935, True Father dedicated himself to solving the fundamental problems of God, humankind, nature and history. The fruit of his investigation is the Divine Principle.

According to Won Pil Kim, True Father kept a notebook with notes about the Divine Principle, which he carried with him into North Korea in 1946. Unfortunately, it was lost during his incarceration in Heungnam Prison. Afterward, on arriving in Pusan, True Father began writing Wolli Wonbon (Original Text of the Divine Principle), which he finished on May 10, 1952.

It circulated as a hand-written manuscript for several years until superseded by Wolli Haesul (Explanation of Divine Principle) in 1957. Wolli Haesul was prepared by Hyo Won Eu, based on Wolli Wonbonand guidance from True Father.

In the early 1960s, True Father directed Rev. Eu to prepare a new text with a more systematic structure and additional content. It was published as Wolli Kangron (Exposition of the Divine Principle) on May 1, 1966. It has served as the authorized version of Divine Principle to the present. Wolli Kangron was translated into English in two official versions, Divine Principle (1973) and Exposition of the Divine Principle (1996). It is one of the “Eight Great Textbooks” that True Father designated as his “last words to humankind.”

True Parents’ Blessing of 22 Japanese couples in holy matrimony on May 1, 1969, in Tokyo was the third of three Blessings that comprise what is known as the 43 Couples Blessing. The first was the Holy Blessing of 13 American couples on February 28, 1969, at Upshur House in Washington, D.C. The second was the Holy Blessing of eight European couples in Essen, Germany, on March 28, 1969. These were all conducted during True Parents’ Second World Tour and came on the foundation of the 430 Couple Holy Blessing conducted in Korea in 1968. They were the first Holy Blessings conducted outside Korea and signified the Unification Church’s expansion to the worldwide level.

On HSA-UWC’s 40th anniversary, May 1, 1994, True Father introduced the “Family Pledge.” It displaced “My Pledge,” which had expressed Unification Church members’ standard of attendance since 1961.  According to Rev. Joong Hyun Pak, continental director of the church in North America at that time, My Pledge represented the individual’s pledge. Family Pledge signified the transition to the family era. True Father stated that reciting Family Pledge “means we have crossed over the barriers and are now on God’s side.” He noted that the fullest exemplification of this was that “all paragraphs of Family Pledge begin with the phrase ‘centered on true love.’”

The opening ceremony of the 2004 World Peace King Cup Fishing Tournament was held at Heung-guk Gymnasium on May 2, 2004. The event, which was hosted by the World Sports Fishing Federation, a providential organization, attracted around 3,000 lovers of angling. The tournament took place in the sea off Yeosu. At the awards ceremony on May 5, True Father said, “When the winners from each country partake in the fishing tournament, win prizes and achieve a pastime satisfaction in which all are happy, a nation on earth can be formed in which all are equal.”

True Father launched an “America the Beautiful” project on May 3, 1976, as part of the “God Bless America” campaign on the occasion of the United States’ 200th anniversary. More than 1,000 Unificationists from across the nation took up brooms and dustpans to clean the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. Dressed in white jumpsuits with the God Bless America Festival logo on the back, they cleaned in their witnessing area every morning from 7 to 8.

The cleanup project was intended to raise awareness for the upcoming “God Bless America Festival” at Yankee Stadium on June 1 at which True Father would deliver an address on “God’s Hope for America.” The Unificationist folk-rock band Sunburst provided free lunch-hour concerts, and hundreds of additional Unificationists arrived for the final push, spearheading street rallies and massive ticket distribution efforts.

On May 1, 2004, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC), or Unification Church, observed the 50th anniversary of its founding. In connection with this observance, True Father made two bold announcements—first, that the Sabbath had been fulfilled and that he was proclaiming Ahn Shi Il, the Day of Attendance of Safe Settlement, to be observed by Unificationists every eighth day.

The first Ahn Shi Il was conducted on May 5. On that day, True Father made the second announcement: that a great transition from “the era before the coming of heaven” to “the era after the coming of heaven” had taken place. The key implication of this providential announcement was that world peace, which had been impossible to achieve during “the era before the coming of heaven,” was now possible. This, in particular, was understood to be the reason why the United Nations, born prior to “the era after the coming of heaven,” had not been able to fulfill its mission.

True Father’s proclamation of a new Sabbath and “the era after the coming of heaven” culminated trends in his thought and practice that he had introduced previously, including his declaration that the “providence of salvation” was “over,” that “blessed families” should pray in their own names, that humankind had entered an era “beyond the realm of the Fall,” that a time of “high noon” with “no shadows” had arrived, that the time of “indirect dominion” had passed and that “God is now directly teaching and instructing us.”

The dedication ceremony for the new FFWPU Headquarters building was held on May 5, 2005, with the attendance of True Parents. The headquarters consisted of four floors under ground level and nine floors above ground level. Construction began in June 2003 and took a little over two years. Some 1,000 people gathered for the ceremony.

True Father offered a simple prayer in the lobby before cutting the tape. True Parents then presided over the sprinkling of holy salt to sanctify the new building. True Father wrote calligraphy for the new building: “Mansei for the Kingship of Peace throughout Heaven and Earth” (unofficial translation) and then went up to the 8th floor to participate in the main ceremony.

Prior to Foundation Day 2013, True Mother declared, “Foundation Day is not the end. Until we liberate all humanity and bring back all 6.5 billion people to Heaven, we have to offer our utmost effort.” In line with this commitment, True Mother announced the “2020 Vision,” which launched Unificationists on a new seven-year trajectory. True Mother’s stated intention was to “substantiate” Cheon Il Guk and, in particular, offer Korea “to Heaven” on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of True Father’s birthday in 2020.

The “Joint Worship Service for Victory of Vision 2020” was held at the Cheongshim Peace World Center on May 5. Forty-three students from the Universal Peace Academy entered the stadium holding the flags of the 43 strategic and providential nations which would take the lead this effort.  True Mother asked that all families who had received the Holy Marriage Blessing and all young people born into the Unificationist faith carry on True Parents’ tradition of absolute faith in fulfilling their mission as tribal messiahs and expand the scope of our responsibilities beyond the tribe to the society, nation and world, so that all humankind can become citizens of Cheon Il Guk.

The Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA) was founded by True Father during an assembly of 168 Japanese and Korean professors, to “contribute to the solutions of urgent problems facing our modern civilization and to help resolve the cultural divide between East and West.”

The organization held discussions on healing historical tensions, first in Korea and Japan, then spreading around the world to more than a hundred countries. PWPA sponsored a providentially significant conference on “The Fall of the Soviet Empire” in 1985. PWPA-related scholars wrote important works through Paragon House and published the International Journal on World Peace quarterly. PWPA is a major supporter of the University of Bridgeport.

The Unification Church was embroiled in near-constant litigation from 1975 to 1985. Though this was costly and time consuming, several decisions, won on appeal, gained the Church gradual recognition as a bona fide religion with tax exemption privileges, public solicitation rights and access to missionary visas. In addition, the Church was able to extend constitutional protections to its adherents and successfully press for action against deprogrammers.

By unanimously overturning lower court decisions which had refused to recognize the Unification Church’s religious purposes, the New York Court of Appeals in HSA-UWC v. Tax Commission of New York City [1772], decided on May 6, 1982, held as a matter of law that the Unification Church was a bona fide religion entitled to tax exemption privileges.

Some 2,800 clergy and faithful packed Harlem’s historic Canaan Baptist Church on Tuesday evening, March 8, 2001, to welcome True Parents and a host of national religious leaders. The visit, at the invitation of New York clergy and hosted by civil rights pioneer Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, celebrated the successful interfaith tour of 52 cities in 52 days entitled “We Will Stand.” With the theme “Rebuild the Family, Restore the Community, Renew the Nation and World,” the tour emphasized the need for the faith community to work together beyond race and denomination for the healing and renewal of America. The tour reached over 100,000 people, including 14,000 clergy.

True Father’s keynote address was “God Is Our King and True Parent.” He explained that to establish a new era, all people of faith must follow three immutable laws. First, he said, do not stain your lineage through sexual immorality and infidelity. Second, he said, do not infringe upon or violate human rights, which are based upon the equal value of every human being in the eyes of God. Third, do not steal or abuse money or property selfishly, at the expense of others. His direct and challenging words drew strong applause and repeated shouts of “Amen.”

Twelve hundred guests gathered in the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas to pay tribute to the 50th wedding anniversary of True Parents and participate in the final “Legacy of Peace” program in a series that began at the United Nations in March. Organized by the Universal Peace Federation, the event focused on True Parents’ lifelong vision to establish a global community of nations and religions—an “Abel UN”—guided by the ideal of “one family under God.” It was held during the year of True Father’s 90th birthday and the publication of his autobiography.

The “Legacy of Peace” program honored those recently deceased persons who had contributed to the cause of world peace during their lifetime. Highlights of the program included interfaith prayer by religious leaders, congratulatory remarks by Neil Bush, and True Father’s three-hour speech on “The Establishment of the Abel UN and the Completion of God’s Kingdom of Cheon Il Guk in Korea.”
 

In his autobiography, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen, True Father states that he began writing the original version of Divine Principle (Wolli Wonbon) in a shelter for laborers in Pusan. This was in late April or May 1951. He continued writing it after he moved in August with Won Pil Kim, his first disciple, to a small hut they constructed on a hillside overlooking Pusan Harbor. 

True Father spent much of his time writing on top of a large rock. He would write several pages a day and have Won Pil Kim read them back to him at night. Sometimes True Father worked by the light of a lantern in their hut. Won Pil Kim recounts that True Father woke him once in the middle of the night and dictated an entire section which Won Pil Kim recorded non-stop.

True Father noted that on the day he finished writing Wolli Wonbon, he put his pencil down and prayed, “The moment has come for me to evangelize. Please send me the saints to whom I may give witness.” That very day, Hyun Shil Kang, a young female theological student, visited the hut to evangelize and became a follower. Copies of Wolli Wonbon circulated as hand-written manuscripts for several years until superseded by Wolli Haesul (Explanation of Divine Principle) in 1957.

In August 1954, David Sang Cheol Kim went to Wales as the first Unificationist overseas missionary. In June 1963, Peter Koch arrived in Germany as the first Unificationist missionary to the European mainland. However, the European Unification Movement considers True Father’s visit to Europe in July 1965, as part of his first worldwide tour through 40 countries, to be its true beginning. At that time, True Father dedicated 19 Holy Grounds in Europe, planting Korean soil and stones in various cities such as Amsterdam, Brussels, Luxembourg, Paris, Geneva, Vaduz, Vienna, Rome and Athens.

In a series of events from May 9 to 15, 2015, the European movement celebrated its 50th anniversary. The major event was in Vienna, Austria, on May 10, when True Mother spoke to a gathering of over 2,400 friends and members from all over Europe in Vienna’s largest conference hall. True Mother said, “I came here today with a fluttering heart—with the heart a parent experiences when visiting a daughter after sending her off to marriage fifty years earlier, the heart felt when visiting a son that had left home.” She noted that “Christianity and Christian culture bloomed centered on Europe” and called on Unificationists to “awaken European Christians, who are unaware that the returning Messiah … has emerged as the True Parents and that for fifty years they have accomplished amazing things.”

Ewha Womans University expelled students for the simple reason of their attending the Unification Church. This case represents the religious oppression that occurred just a year after the founding of the Unification Church. The school, which has a Christian background, had fired five professors the previous March for the same reason. Later, these expelled students transferred to Sookmyung Women’s University and other universities to complete their studies. (Materials provided by the FFWPU History Compilation Committee.)

On May 11, 1985, Shaw University Divinity School in Raleigh, North Carolina, awarded True Father an honorary doctorate of divinity. The award was especially meaningful in that Shaw made the award while True Father was incarcerated in the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Connecticut.

Dr. Joseph Paige, Shaw University’s executive vice president, later declared, “It was the first time that a major institution in America had been bold enough and honest enough and serious enough to honor this great leader.” He said True Father was being awarded for “his Christian leadership, his strong fight against communism and communist aggression, and his outstanding contribution in support of religious liberty, world peace, racial, economic and social justice, ecumenism and, more specifically, the unity of world Christianity.”

True Mother accepted the award for True Father and delivered the acceptance speech. She stated that True Father shared with Shaw University and the Divinity School a commitment to international, interreligious and interracial harmony. 

On April 25, 2015, a major earthquake killed over 8,000 people and injured more than 21,000 in Nepal. It was the worst disaster in that country since 1934. It also triggered a landslide on Mount Everest that killed 21 people. Hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless, with entire villages flattened across many districts of the country. Centuries-old buildings were destroyed at UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Kathmandu Valley.

In response, the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU) and True Mother designated a donation of US $1 million to Nepal to be used as relief for the victims. Of this amount, $500,000 went to the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund, while the other half went to FFWPU-Nepal for distribution.

Ek Nath Dhakal, chairman of UPF Nepal, said, “These funds will be utilized to provide relief and recovery to the earthquake victims.” Prime Minister Sushil Koirala was quoted as saying: “We clearly remember all the great work of Father and Mother Moon to Nepal. For that reason, Nepal has a high regard for Father and Mother Moon.” The Nepalese had received True Parents very well at the national level on numerous occasions.

At the height of the Second Intifada (2000-2005) and the beginning of the second Iraq War, True Parents launched what was to become the Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI), a project initially of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace and later of its successor, the Universal Peace Federation (UPF). The MEPI concept was based upon True Father’s vision of interreligious peacemaking and his conviction that the resolution of conflict, particularly in Israel, was integral to world peace. This was especially true for the Middle East.

True Father believed that Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders needed to resolve their differences as a condition for the cessation of violence. This lay behind his call for Christian clergy to “take down the cross” and undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to be reconciled with their Jewish brethren.

The first of the MEPI pilgrimages took place from May 12 to 19, 2003, and included 131 clergy. They traveled first to Rome, and then to Israel. They visited holy and historical sites at both locations. However, their main purposes were to bury the cross and reconcile, at least symbolically, with Jewish brethren, both of which they accomplished. Thousands of interreligious peacemakers traveled to the Holy Land under MEPI auspices between 2003 and 2014. MEPI events have included peace missions and fact-finding tours, service and youth activities, cultural programs, and conferences.

The Unification Church purchased the New Yorker Hotel at Eighth Avenue and 34th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan on May 13, 1976.

The 43-story, 1,083-room hotel, which first opened in 1930, is near Pennsylvania Station, Madison Square Garden, Times Square and the Empire State Building. Much like its contemporaries the Empire State Building (1931) and the Chrysler Building (1930), the New Yorker was designed in the Art Deco style popular at the time.

When the 1 million-square-foot hotel opened, it contained 2,500 rooms, making it the city’s largest for many years and one of the most fashionable during the 1940s and 1950s. A pronounced decline in New York’s fortunes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, coupled with the construction of new, more modern hotels, caused the New Yorker to become unprofitable, and it was vacant for several years before being purchased by the church for a reported $5.6 million.

It served as the Unification Church’s World Mission Center from 1976 to 1994. In 1994, the church converted a portion of the building to use as a hotel again. The New Yorker joined the Ramada chain in 2000 and the Wyndham chain in 2014. The New Yorker served as a staging area for the 1982 Holy Blessing of 2,075 Couples in Madison Square Garden and for many of True Parents’ speeches and providential activities.

On January 10, 1993, True Father announced the transition that day “to the Completed Testament Era.” Three months later, on April 10, the Unification Church published a statement, “True Parents and the Completed Testament Age,” in the newspapers of 160 nations. The next month, on May 13, True Parents began a speaking tour of 33 U.S. cities under the same theme.

True Father spoke in the first 12 cities from May 13 to 24. True Mother then covered 21 cities from May 26 to June 28. The tour was extended to include 23 additional cities during July, thereby covering all fifty states. True Mother delivered the address at the U.S. Capitol and the United Nations, which was a springboard to the world tour. She conducted 25 rallies in Japan, 40 in Korea, and another 40 in countries throughout the world.

The speech testified to “the establishment of the first True Family.” True Father declared: “My wife and I, together with our thirteen children and twenty-four grandchildren, are absolutely dedicated to serving God and humanity. With three generations in one family, we have achieved on the family level the central root, the central trunk and the central bud of the ‘Tree of Life’ mentioned in the Bible. It is our sincere hope that you will symbolically graft into this lineage by joining us in our efforts to create an ideal nation and world. This marks the beginning of the Completed Testament Age.”

In his book Inquisition, The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carlton Sherwood argued that True Father’s 1981 conviction on tax evasion charges was the result of “the most intensive and expensive criminal tax investigation of any religious figure in U.S. history.”

However, the conviction had the effect of generating broad-based public support for True Father.  By April 1984, forty groups and individuals representing more than 120 million Americans had filed amicus curiae briefs in support of his appeal, including the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Conference of Black Mayors, the National Bar Association, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the attorneys general of Hawaii, Oregon and Rhode Island, Eugene McCarthy and Clare Boothe Luce. 

The Supreme Court’s refusal on May 14, 1984, to review True Father’s petition, despite this groundswell of support, set off a series of “Rallies for Religious Freedom.” Even The Washington Post, no friend of the church or the competing Washington Times, editorialized that “the case deserves attention and full Supreme Court review.” Ironically, the church emerged from True Father’s conviction on more solid ground than it had been before.

True Parents conducted the 33 Couple Holy Blessing in the Chungpa-Dong Church Headquarters on May 15, 1961. Together with the Three Couples whom True Parents blessed on April 16, 1960, they comprise the 36 Couple Blessing group.

True Father called them the “ancestors” of all the blessed couples to come after them. He also regarded them as “the representatives of all types of people on earth” and viewed them as being needed to “pave the way to the Kingdom of Heaven and act as guides for others.” True Father explained that the 36 Couples consisted of three groups of 12, symbolizing the Old Testament, New Testament and Completed Testament ages. They also were wedded in three phases: the first at dawn, the second during the day, and the third at night.

True Father recalled that the 33 Couple Blessing Ceremony was held “amid great confusion and chaos.” He noted, “The parents of the 33 Couples came swarming about the place, shouting all kinds of insults at us and creating a continuous uproar. Some went so far as to send dozens of anonymous letters to the court of justice, demanding I be sent to jail; as a result, I had to appear in court on several occasions.” According to True Father, the parents were upset that he “brought together other people’s children and married them at my own discretion, without discussing it with the parents at all.” He recalled, “We finally had to have someone stand guard at the door before we could go through with the ceremony.”

The Unification movement hoped to reap a harvest of new members as a result of True Father’s 7-City, 21-City and 32-City Day of Hope tours from 1972 to 1974. To facilitate this, the movement launched a Sun Myung Moon Christian Crusade (SMCC) 10-city “Celebration of Life” tour that evangelized in each of the ten regions of the country. Beginning in the Bay Area, the itinerary included stops in Seattle; St. Paul, Minnesota; Austin, Texas; New Orleans; Miami; Columbus, Ohio; Louisville, Kentucky; Boston; and Rochester, New York.

Billed as “A 21st Century Experience,” programs included an hour and fifteen minutes of entertainment—songs, solos, skits, dances and testimonials—followed by forty-five minutes of inspiration from “God’s Colonel” Bo Hi Pak, on key points of the Unification Principle. Week long stops in each city featured a Celebration of Life weekend workshop.

As a result of tour innovations, advance preparation and media coverage, the Celebration of Life drew substantial crowds. SMCC’s “World Premiere” from May 15 to 17, 1974, at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California, drew 2,600 guests and 34 participants for a weekend workshop in the Santa Cruz Mountains. By Boston, the three-day total was up to 7,562. Equally important was the emergence of the New Hope Singers International and the Korean Folk Ballet. Both would make signal contributions to the culminating eight-city Day of Hope tour, scheduled to begin in September 1974 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

True Father inaugurated the Citizens Federation for the Unification of the Fatherland (CFUF) at the Little Angels Performing Arts Center in Seoul, Korea, on May 15, 1987. Its purpose was to facilitate the long-cherished hope and desire of the Korean people for the unification of their homeland. However, True Father viewed the re-unification of Korea in larger terms: “Korea’s problems are a smaller version of the world’s problems, and the solution of the world’s problems is essentially linked with Korea’s problems.” In particular, he saw the division of Korea as a manifestation of a global confrontation between theism and atheism. The solution to the problem was Godism and “Head-wing” thought which transcended the “ego-centered or power-oriented” thought of left- and right-wing movements.

True Father launched CFUF at a propitious time. He noted that the movement of international communism was “coming to its final phase” and that Korea was about to emerge on the world stage through the 1988 Seoul Olympics. This opened the way for the founding of the Segye Times newspaper, True Parents’ eventual meeting with North Korean President Kim Il Sung and activities promoting peaceful reunification that followed. CFUF, as a grassroots and high-level educational movement, played a significant role in these developments.

True Father believed that the unity of North and South America was a providential necessity that would set a condition for the unification of North and South Korea. To that end, he launched CAUSA activities in Latin America during the 1980s and began investing directly in South America during the 1990s. Beginning on May 16, 1995, True Father undertook an ambitious speaking tour of 17 Latin American nations, which included audiences with eight heads of state.

In these speeches and meetings he emphasized the region’s “stunning, and abundant, potential.” As he put it: “There are seemingly unlimited natural resources, and the human energies have hardly begun to be tapped. Latin America is a rich, peaceful, natural paradise of grandiose mountains and virgin lands. The mountains, rivers and jungles [hark] back to the original state of creation, the Garden of Eden.” Contemplating “the glory-filled days that await Latin America in the 21st century,” he counseled leaders to “not follow the footsteps of the developed nations,” blindly repeating “environmental errors” and falling into selfish materialism.

True Father hoped to persuade the governments of the Mercosur customs union (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile) to donate contiguous lands for development “as a model for an ideal, international and interracial nation and world.” However, when they did not step forward sufficiently, Unificationists businesses began purchasing vast tracts of land in the South American interior. The assumption was that if the leaders of North and South America, or elsewhere, could not respond to True Father’s vision of unification, they would have to be shown a working model. Thus began the South American providence to which substantial resources were dedicated in the late 1990s.

The Washington Times, a daily newspaper, published its first issue on May 17, 1982. Publishing tens of thousands of papers every morning and having a headquarters located in Washington, D.C., it became the second largest newspaper in the nation’s capital after The Washington Post.

True Father spoke of the significance behind the establishment of The Washington Times, saying that he had started a newspaper, a business that even affluent people were giving up on, to save the United States and what was then known as the Free World. (Materials provided by the FFWPU History Compilation Committee)

Under the theme “A Quarter Century of Dedication and Distinction,” The Washington Times observed its 25th anniversary with a gala event at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. More than 1,100 leading figures in politics, culture, and journalism representing 82 nations took part in the celebration. U.S. President George W. Bush, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, Lady Margaret Thatcher, Polish Prime Minister Jarosaw Kaczynski, and Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa were among those who sent messages of congratulations.

Former President George H.W. Bush delivered the keynote address complementing the Times for challenging “what many of us felt was a prevailing liberal bias” and thanked True Father “for his vision in launching this newspaper,” reminding the audience that “without him, there would be no Washington Times.”

True Father delivered the Founder’s Address, “A Providential View of the Pacific Rim Era in Light of God’s Will,” which he had originally delivered in Hawaii and, now with True Mother, was delivering worldwide. He noted, “The development of human civilization has completed a circuit of the entire globe and has arrived at the Pacific sphere.” Human history, he declared, “has come to a point in time in the providence at which it should reach completion and fruition through the Pacific Rim region.”

Rev. Paul Werner, his wife, Christel, and their son, Klaus, were among a group of German Unificationists who joined in the San Francisco Bay area under Dr. Young Oon Kim during the early 1960s. In April 1964, the Werners returned to Germany, where they joined Peter Koch who had returned the previous year.

On May 18, 1965, Rev. Werner left for Austria, becoming the first missionary going out from Germany. He traveled there alone in a Volkswagen van, which was his “center” for the next half-year. Rev. Werner wrote, “I prayed day and night and fasted most of the time.” With Rev. Werner as driver, his VW van also served to transport True Father across Europe during True Father’s first world tour in 1965. Over time, Rev. Werner won members, established centers and founded the Austrian church. On May 18, 1969, four years to the day after Rev. Werner’s arrival in Austria, True Father asked him to lead the German movement and for Peter Koch to take over leadership of the movement in Austria.

The Unification Church won a series of court cases in 1982. After several years of struggle, it gained unambiguous legal recognition as a bona fide religion with full tax-emption privileges, public solicitation rights, and access to missionary visas. It also was able to extend civil rights protections to members and successfully press for damages against deprogrammers. However, the church lost the one case that was the most highly publicized, most costly, and that mattered to it the most; this was The United States v. Sun Myung Moon.

Tax convictions have been a time-honored way to root out undesirables, and although the review process makes this more difficult to do within the American legal system, there has been a tendency for the politically ambitious to go after unpopular figures. In True Father case, a letter from U.S. Senator Robert Dole to the IRS Commissioner, which called for an audit of the church, led to what Carlton Sherwood termed “the most intensive and extensive criminal tax investigation of any religious figure in U.S. history.”

The odd thing about True Father’s case was that it continued to move forward in the face of so many obstacles. First, the audit of his tax returns for 1973–1975 showed a total liability of $7,300, less than the $2,500 per year required by IRS guidelines for criminal prosecution. Second, three career attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department questioned whether there was any liability at all and signed off on a written memorandum that prosecution was not warranted. Third, the prosecuting attorney had to convene three grand juries before gaining the necessary indictments. Fourth, jury members who, according to the trial judge, met the criteria of  being people who “don’t read much, don’t talk much, and don’t know much” had to sift through over 2,000 documentary exhibits and technical argumentation that glazed the eyes of even trained legal observers over.

In the end, neither True Father nor the movement was able to stem the government’s determination to gain a conviction. The trial began on April 1, 1982 and lasted approximately six weeks. On May 18, 1982, the jury returned its verdict against True Father.

May 18, 2003, was a momentous day of the first Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI) Holy Land Peace Pilgrimage. U.S. clergy awoke early and left their hotel in busses at 5:30 a.m. to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It was fortunate they left at this time because at 6:00 a.m. a suicide bomber set off a blast two blocks from the hotel, killing seven people and injuring 22. All traffic was stopped and had the clergy left any later, they would not have been able to pass. From there, they offered a 30-minute service at the site of Golgotha and then traveled a mile or so to the Potter’s Field, also referred to as the Field of Blood, which, according to Matthew 27, the chief priests purchased with the 30 pieces of silver Judas got for betraying Jesus.

Pastors lifted a wooden cross, about six feet high, as they marched down a winding road to the Potter’s Field. At the site, ministers placed the cross in a hole previously dug to its exact dimensions by Israeli FFWPU members. They placed a FFWPU flag, “dated and signed by representative leaders,” on top. The ceremony concluded with participants putting “soil on the cross one-by-one, repenting for the false faith” that was “preventing Christianity and Judaism from achieving reconciliation.”

On that foundation, the 135 U.S. clergy met with a similar number of Israeli rabbis as well as ten imams for a day-long “Conference for Jewish and Christian Reconciliation and Harmony.” The highlight of this was the Jerusalem Declaration in which the clergy and rabbis repented “for the dark parts of our past” and sought “a bright future together.”

In reality, it was not easy to obtain the signatures. According to one report, “the main rabbi strongly rejected…signing his name.” In addition, “Some rabbis were upset that the declaration would even be considered.” However, in an unscripted moment, a key rabbi stated, “I will sign it if my Moslem brother will sign it with me.” A leading sheik marched forward and “the three brothers collapsed into an embrace.” One observer recounted, “This opened the floodgates and everyone rushed to the front to sign.”

True Father initiated the Il Jeung (“One Heart”) prayer association on May 19, 1984. He declared that the sovereignty of God’s true love finally had moved from the individual, family, and national levels to the worldwide level. In order for them to inherit God’s love, he called on Unificationists to establish a tradition of offering prayer conditions.

He invited each member of the worldwide Unification Church, according to his or her individual schedule, to offer a prayer vigil from midnight to 4:00 a.m. once each forty days. He also asked each member to make a one-day (or at least one-meal) fasting condition once every forty days and to establish an Il Jeung Fund. These conditions were especially important in maintaining movement solidarity during the period in which True Father was imprisoned at Danbury.

After being arrested for the second time in North Korea on February 22, 1948, True Father was charged with being a spy for the South and for disturbing the social order. Some 80 Christian ministers who had lost members to True Father’s group precipitated this action by writing letters to the police.

True Father was once again tortured and wrote later, “My body still carries several scars that I received then.” He went on trial on April 7 and was convicted. He wrote in his autobiography, “Many of the most famous ministers in North Korea came to the courtroom and accused me of all manner of crimes.” That day he was taken to Pyongyang Prison where he remained until  he was transported to Heungnam on May 20, nearly three months following his arrest. True Father wrote, “I felt indignation and also shamed before heaven. I was tied to a thief so I could not escape. We were taken by a vehicle on a route that took 17 hours. As I looked out the window a powerful feeling of grief welled up inside me. It seemed incredible to me that I would have to travel this winding road along rivers and through valleys as a prisoner.”

At 12:54 a.m. on May 16, 1984, True Parents established the Day of the Love of God and created Ae Chun (“Love of God”) candles. This was two days after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review True Father’s petition that his 1981 conviction on tax evasion charges be overturned. On May 20, True Parents declared the day to Unificationists and also bequeathed Ae Chun candles to them.

The Ae Chun candles exist as a pair. One is referred to as a “Father” candle and the other, a “Mother” candle. As they represent the harmony and love of the True Parents, the candles are always to be burned together. It was understood that Ae Chun candles should be burned during prayer for a high-level purpose—i.e., national, world or cosmic level. In his prayer to God, True Father said, “Wherever this candle burns, may the family be united, and may that family have peace, connecting with the sovereignty of Your love through this light.”

On May 21, 1978, in London, True Father with Ye Jin Moon (representing True Mother) blessed 118 couples in holy matrimony. Of the 118 couples, 106 were international; only 12 couples were matched with the same nationality. Most of the Germans present were matched with their age-old enemies, the French. The blessing served to launch International One World Crusade activities in Europe. More than 1200 members gathered in London and, soon after, were augmented by two classes of Unification Theological Seminary students who were pioneering Home Church.

On May 21, 2004, the Rally for the Declaration of Absolute Values for the Sake of Harmony and Unification occurred at Blue Sea (Cheonghae) Garden, Yeosu, in South Jeolla Province.

True Father spoke under the title “The Purpose of True Love, Harmony and Unity Is the Perfection of the Absolute Values of True Families” in front of 13,000 people at the Blue Sea Garden plaza, revealing that a family attains perfection through the absolute values of true love. On this day, 450 participants from seven nations established sisterhood relationships with 450 Korean participants, and those present determined to carry out peace endeavors for harmony and unity through a sibling love transcending nationality and race. (Materials provided by the FFWPU History Compilation Committee)

True Father conducted his final world tour, a World Peace Tour of ten nations in 28 days, traveling 28,000 miles at age 91. He spoke in Seoul, Korea; Madrid, Spain; Rome, Italy; Oslo, Norway; Athens, Greece; Istanbul, Turkey; London, England; Geneva, Switzerland; and Berlin, Germany.

His final and only U.S. stop was in Las Vegas on May 21. There, he told an international audience of over 3,000 in the Aria City Center that God had great expectations for the long-notorious gaming capital of the world, that it will soon gain a new reputation as a “city of giving.” In support of that, True Parents sponsored a charity slot tournament at the Aria Resort the morning of the event for 300 participants with proceeds from the $500 entry fee going to local charities. True Father envisioned each stop of the tour as an interreligious assembly and representatives of faith bodies were prominent participants.

Peter Koch immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1957. In 1959, he began engineering studies in San Francisco where he met and joined the Unification Church in January 1962. He was concerned to reach other foreign students and spent much of September and October 1962 hand-signing letters to 1,900 foreign students at the University of California, Berkeley.

He subsequently “felt responsible for my people at home” and determined “to bring the Principle to Europe.” He departed by ship on May 22, 1963, arrived in Holland on June 13, printed 80 copies of the Divine Principle in German, and decided to begin his mission work in Heidelberg, some 225 miles from where he had been staying.

He determined to walk rather than take a train, as a condition. However, within 25 miles he developed severe blisters due to defective boots. By the fourth day, blisters extended to his ankles, and all the skin pulled off the flesh of his feet. Wrapping his feet and refusing to stop, he later wrote, “That was certainly my worst experience. I did a 40-day fast once, but it was nothing compared to that 21-day trip to Heidelberg on raw feet. I’ll never forget that. That was my foundation for starting the mission in Germany.”

He was a successful missionary, leading the church in Germany until 1969, and in Austria after that. Starting in 1980, he dispatched missionaries to the Soviet Union, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, East Germany, and Albania—all communist countries—as chronicled in the book, Mission Butterfly.

The American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC) was established on May 22, 2000, when 120 clergy from seventeen denominations traveled to Seoul, Korea, for the inaugural conference. Their trips to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), where they released 150 doves of peace, and to the movement’s Cheongpyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center were particularly significant. At Cheongpyeong, ministers witnessed “a rainbow around the sun,” which many interpreted as a sign that True Father was from God.

ACLC clergy later played a central role in True Father’s 2001 “We Will Stand in Oneness” 50-state speaking tour. Sixty ACLC clergy and their spouses took part in True Parents’ inaugural Interfaith Marriage Blessing in 2001. ACLC clergy also were major players in launching True Parents’ Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI) and pilgrimages to the Holy Land in 2003. ACLC remains active as a committed core of clergy who understand Rev. and Mrs. Moon’s identity as the “True Parents of Humankind.”
 

The Universal Ballet was established by True Parents in May 1984 as the first private ballet company of Korea. It began in a practice room in the back of the Sunhwa (Little Angels) Arts School. At that time, male ballet dancers in Korea were so rare that the company had employees from the print shop dancing on stage.

Under the direction of Adrienne Dellas, Kirov Ballet Director Oleg Vinogradov and prima ballerina Julia (Hoon Sook) Moon, the company developed a national and international reputation. Julia Moon noted: “We pioneered ballet in Korea when it was very primitive. … We were the first to bring choreographers, teachers, costume and set designers and dancers from the West to Korea. We have been and still are a leader in the field of ballet in Korea.”

True Father gave the motto Ye Cheon Mi Ji (Heavenly Art Creating a World of Beauty). He said, “Ballet is truly a heavenly art form. The dancers stretch themselves upward to the ultimate degree to reach God in heaven. Ballet uses the entire body as an instrument to express humans’ aspiration toward God. In this sense, it is the ultimate expression of artistic beauty.”
 

The Middle East Peace Initiative by woman leaders took place in Jerusalem, Israel, over four days beginning on May 24, 2004. The Women’s Federation for World Peace International and the Interreligious and International Peace Council co-hosted the programs, which included a seminar on religious harmony, followed by a ceremony to bring harmony and peace in the Middle East and a peace march. The participating women have maintained connections with one another through continuous meetings. (Materials provided by the FFWPU History Compilation Committee)

The American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC) was established in May 2000 when 120 clergy from 17 denominations traveled to Korea for the inaugural meeting. With ACLC support, True Father undertook a 50-state “We Will Stand in Oneness” revival tour in early 2001. During that tour, which emphasized the sanctity of marriage, individual clergy began to seek True Parents’ blessing on their marriages.

This snowballed and, in the end, more than 60 “ministers, imams, and clerics: Pentecostals and Baptists, Lutherans and Muslims, Native Americans, Sufis, and more” participated in an Interfaith Clergy Marriage Blessing Ceremony in the Cotillion Room of the Hilton Hotel in New York City on May 27, 2001.

The Blessing included a “providential participant,” Zambian Roman Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, 71, who wed Maria Sung, 43, a Korean acupuncturist. While acknowledging that “the priestly vow of celibacy has a profound meaning in the providence of God,” he stated, “the sacrifice of celibate life has fulfilled its purpose.” He insisted he had not changed his faith but affirmed True Parents’ “special ministry to build loving, God-centered families amongst people of all faiths, in the capacity of True Parents.” This sparked worldwide publicity, surfacing the issue of clerical celibacy at the highest levels of the Vatican hierarchy.

On May 29, 1999, True Mother held the Rally to Globalize True Families at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. Her speech that day was titled, “The Path of Life for All Humankind.” In it, she said, “There must be some common content that will be pleasing to God, to the angels, to the rest of creation and to human beings themselves.” She went on to say that this common content is “true love.” This was the final rally that True Mother held in her 80-nation speaking tour, which had begun on April 12. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal on May 14, 1984, to review True Father’s petition to overturn his conviction on tax evasion charges set off a series of “Rallies for Religious Freedom.” The first of these, in Washington, D.C., on May 30, 1984, brought together more than 300 clergy from over 60 denominations and some 200 laypersons, including civil liberties leaders and political figures, to denounce the threat to religious liberties posed by True Father’s conviction.

The event was organized by the co-chairmen of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Freedom, Dr. Timothy LaHaye, chairman of the Moral Majority of California, and Dr. Joseph Lowery, chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The rally ended with Dr. La Haye challenging all present to stand with him and “say, as one individual, ‘I believe in religious freedom so much I am willing, if necessary and allowed, to spend one week of those eighteen months with Reverend Moon.’” Participants afterward signed a Religious Liberty Proclamation, and on the back of the document signed their commitment to go to prison with True Father. 

On May 30, 1992, the Board of Trustees of the University of Bridgeport reached an agreement with the Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA) whereby PWPA donated $50.5 million to the university, enabling it to stay open and maintain its accreditation. In exchange, PWPA had the right to nominate 60 percent of candidates for Board of Trustees vacancies and the university agreed to adopt an educational philosophy based on an international perspective.

Including the initial loan, PWPA provided $110 million to the university over the next ten years. The UB-PWPA partnership was controversial because of PWPA’s ties to True Father and the Unification Church. However, the university prospered in subsequent years. In 2003, UB declared its financial independence and from that point on has been self-supporting, ending each year in the black, maintaining its accreditation and non-sectarian charter.

The Unification movement observed the 1,000th day since True Father’s ascension in a service of Jeongseong (“devotional offering”) at the International Peace Education Center (IPEC) in Las Vegas. It was the first major event to be held at the magnificent structure. Special emissaries, regional leaders, current and former U.S. elected officials, Las Vegas commerce and industry leaders, and veterans—one thousand persons in all—participated, as well as 350 participants from Japan. The event also included an award ceremony to present special prizes to forty remarkable individuals from North America, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Middle East who had demonstrated exemplary efforts in faith and peace activities.

True Mother stated, “True Father is here with us, and he is looking at all of you with a very happy heart, and he is wishing that all of you can fulfill your blessed responsibility and will, without fail, be centered on Heavenly Parent and together realize one world centering on Heavenly Parent.”

The world launch ceremony for Peace Road 2015 took place at the International Peace Education Center (IPEC) in Las Vegas, on the afternoon of May 30, 2015. Peace Road 2015 was a project dedicated to resolving the racial, religious and national conflicts occurring in different regions of the world, and uniting the collective will of the people of the world for peace.

The route extended from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa to Santiago, Chile. Participants in 127 countries walked or rode bicycles or other means of transportation. A thousand people attended the world launch ceremony, at which twenty young people on bicycles rode around Las Vegas, starting the world race. Simultaneous launching ceremonies occurred in Santiago, Chile, and the Cape of Good Hope. The Peace Road 2015 World Tour continued for 93 days (May 30 to August 30) in commemoration of True Father’s 93 years of life. Participants displayed flags and banners with the tour’s theme, “Peace Road, toward a World of Peace!”

True Father and four disciples founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) in May 1954. However, the church did not achieve legal recognition until May 31, 1963 when it was officially registered as a charitable organization.

Prior to that, the Unification Church was essentially an underground church. Widely vilified in Korean society, registration followed intensive pioneer witnessing in Korean villages. Legal recognition of the church in Korea followed the incorporation of HSA-UWC in the United States on September 18, 1961 and preceded legalization of the church in Japan in 1964.

True Father convened the First Summit Council for World Peace at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul, Korea on May 31, 1987. It was an outgrowth of the Summit Club which he established in 1981. The Council was conceived as a forum where world leaders, particularly former heads of state, prime ministers, and senior government officials, can utilize the best of their creative energies, knowledge, wisdom, experience, and statesmanship for the sake of world peace and development.

In his Founder’s Address, “Challenges and Opportunities for World Peace,” True Father stated that the reason why it has been impossible to achieve world peace is that “the internal struggle that goes on within each individual has not yet been resolved.” World conflict, he said, “is nothing other than the manifestation of the inner conflict of individuals.” He argued it was necessary first to find peace with God, then peace with people through true love and on that foundation a world community of nations could be “substantially established” centered upon a common value system and eternal principles.

Nine former Presidents, 9 former Prime Ministers, 12 former ministers of government, 17 nobility, 5 former ambassadors, 3 current ambassadors, one university president and 6 others attended the first Summit Council meeting. The Council played a significant role in True Parent’s meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and relations with North Korea.