| INTERNATIONAL
MARRIAGES
FOR PEACE |
In addition to physical
borders, other more internal borders
divide nations and ethnic groups.borders
of race, culture and nationality.
To overcome these boundaries,
Reverend Moon champions international,
interracial and interreligious
marriage. The family has often
been a conservative institution,
maintaining ingrained prejudices.
But Reverend Moon teaches that
the family can and should become
the foundation for world peace,
with godly love between husband
and wife capable of overcoming
any boundary.
The International Marriage
Blessing ceremony is designed
with this end in mind. They are
rallies affirming the sanctity
of marriage in a context that
is interreligious, inter-cultural,
international and interracial.
They celebrate a new vision of
peace in which the world is united
as one global family.
Reverend Moon encourages
his followers who participate
in these Blessings to form interracial
and international unions. Their
families would encapsulate.and
overcome.ethnic and racial divides
through the healing heat of marital
love. In the 1988 Blessing of
6500 couples, almost all the couples
were Korean-Japanese. They have
regarded it as their mission to
heal the bitter resentments and
historical pain of these two
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enemy
nations and knit their countries
together in a new spirit of peace.
The children they are creating
are citizens of both nations and
heralds of a harmonious future.
International, interracial
and even interreligious marriage,
joined in a godly ceremony with
the blessing of leaders of many
faiths.this is the formula for
tearing down once and for all
the seemingly immovable barriers
to peace in places such as the
Middle East or Northern Ireland.
It is Reverend Moon's ultimate
method for constructing a world
without borders.
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Reverend
Moon has been speaking out for the cause
of peace over more than 50 years. To
date over 300 volumes of his sermons
have been published. Moreover, in his
way of life, he has consistently practiced
the peace of which he preaches.
Reverend Moon teaches that we
should love our enemies and not take
revenge on those who have harmed us.
As a Korean who suffered imprisonment
and torture at the hands of the Japanese
occupying forces in November 1944, he
had good reason to grasp the opportunity
for revenge in August 1945 at the moment
Japan's defeat. Yet one of the first
things he did at the end of the war
was to help the local Japanese policemen
to escape. He likewise counseled his
friends not to take revenge, saying
that it was best to leave such matters
in God's hands.
Throughout his ministry, Reverend
Moon suffered from the calumnies and
persecution of other Christian ministers,
yet he never attacked their churches
in return. Instead, he worked for religious
reconciliation with Christian ministers.
Reverend Moon was twice imprisoned
by North Korea, and that country's intelligence
services hatched plots against his life
through the 1980s. Yet Reverend Moon
took the first opportunity to meet with
Premier Kim Il Sung and engage North
Korea in positive |
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steps towards reconciliation with the
South. Moreover, Reverend Moon languished
in an American prison for over a year
on trumped-up charges of tax evasion,
so he could have good reason to complain
against the American government's mistreatment
of minorities. Instead, he spent his
days thinking of how he would change
America for the better. While in prison
he began publishing the Washington
Times and
launched a major outreach to American
clergy. The consistency with which Reverend
Moon has throughout his life practiced
love and forgiveness towards his enemies
has earned him respect and admiration.
Reverend Moon believes fervently
in education in the ways of peace as
the chief means to achieve peace. If
people only understood that the only
effective strategy for peace is to love
their enemies instead of taking |
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