I met the Unification Church through a mimeographed flyer left on my college campus in Los Angeles, California. The flyer said, "Faith is for the blind and ignorant." I first saw it in the hand of a Christian who was trying to convert me to Christianity and the United Church of Christ. When I asked him about the pamphlet, he told me it was some free-love commune, and that he and some other Christians were going to witness to them. I accompanied 12 Christians on their visit to the free love commune, which was called the Unified Family. There were seven members of the commune. They gave a night-club-like musical performance in a dimly lit room. Then there was an introduction to the Unified Family. After the introduction most of the Unified Family members went outside to smoke. Everyone was invited to come back, on another night, for more lectures.
Only one Christian came back, and he only came for one other lecture. I was the only person to finish the entire lecture series. Many of the members smoked before joining the Unified Family. They told me that it was bad for spiritual growth to smoke and that they were trying to stop smoking. (All but one succeeded within a year.)
Being Jewish
At the time, Jews were not considered potential members in the Unified Family in Los Angeles. It was believed that Judaism was the Formation Stage religion, Christianity was the Growth Stage religion, and the Unified Family was the Perfection Stage religion. The Unified Family, as the Perfection Stage religion, had no Jewish members because before entering the Perfection Stage, one had to go through the Growth Stage, i.e., become a Christian. Of course no one told me this at the time. However, the result of this belief was that I became the object of lecture practice for the members, since no one expected me to join. Every member presented at least one lecture, with me as the audience.
What’s His Name?
As I was hearing the conclusion lecture, all the members were praying for me in another room. When I heard that the Marriage of the Lamb had taken place in 1960, I immediately believed it. I asked what the Messiah’s name was and was told that "we call him Master or Leader." It was several months after I became a member before I was considered worthy to hear Leader’s name, Sun Myung Moon. This was due to something that Father said during his 1965 visit: "It is all right to say Sun Myung Moon has been here, but don’t say who he is." ["The Master Speaks on the Lord of the Second Advent," Sun Myung Moon, March and April 1965]
We later learned that Father meant that we shouldn’t be going around saying, "Christ is here, he is a Korean named Sun Myung Moon," without giving a foundation of understanding the Divine Principle first. A few months after learning Leader’s name, I was honored with being able to see his picture. It was his 1960 wedding photo. After passing a Divine Principle knowledge test, I received my own copy of this photo, which I still treasure today. I don’t think that I saw a photo of Mother (his wife) before I met her in 1969. Only one Unified Family member in L. A., the center leader, Jon Schuhart, had ever seen Father, and that was before Jon became a member.
Jon, the oldest member, having been a member for two years, was the center leader. We were led by prayer, the Divine Principle, Rev. Moon’s 1965 speeches, and Jon’s charisma. (There had been elders leading the Unified Family; however, they left about a year before I joined -- upset that they were not blessed [married] during Father’s 1965 visit, disagreeing with Father over who should be the national leader, or due to insurmountable sexual problems.) I joined the Unified Family because I received revelations and the love of my spiritual parents, Jon and Sandy Schuhart.