September 3, 2012, here on slacktivist: Right-wing ‘Messiah,’ ex-con Sun Myung Moon dies at 92
Today, there are many easier paths to the same goals — more respectable and potentially more lucrative means to the same ends.
Consider Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ken Ham or Ralph Reed. They’re chasing the same dreams as Moon chased — money, power, deference. But they’ve found a way to do it that doesn’t result in their being shunned by the powerful people they long to cozy up to. They have carved out a niche that lets them exploit their followers and still maintain the veneer of respectability that let’s them have their pictures taken with presidents and governors.
Moon declared himself a god and a Messiah, but it’s far easier just to recast God and the Messiah in your own image and then go from there. It takes too much work to recruit tens of thousands of followers who will give you every penny they earn. It’s far easier just to maintain a database of tens of millions of “supporters” who can be relied on to send small checks to help you stop the Satanic baby-killers, the godless evolutionists, the Gay menace, and the socialist agenda of the Antichrist’s coming one-world government.
No need to start a new religion when you can just piggy-back onto an existing one and change it to meet your needs, serving your quest for money, power and deference.
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