Cain & Abel, Church & State

There's an old joke that the difference between "crazy" and "eccentric" is a million dollars.

After reading (via Atrios) John Gorenfield's Gadflyer report on the waxing influence of the Rev. Moon, we can revise that upward: the difference between stark raving bonkers and eccentric seems to be a billion dollars, liberally shared with sympathetic politicians:

Should Americans be concerned that on March 23rd a bipartisan group of Congressmen attended a coronation at which a billionaire, pro-theocracy newspaper owner was declared to be the Messiah — with royal robes, a crown, the works? Or that this imperial ceremony took place not in a makeshift basement church or a backwoods campsite, but in a Senate office building?

What's that bit about a crown?

… Cut to the ritual. Eyes downcast, a man identified as Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) is bringing a crown, atop a velvety purple cushion, to a figure who stands waiting austerely with his wife. Now Moon is wearing robes that Louis XIV would have appreciated. All of this has quickly been spliced into a promo reel by Moon's movement, which implies to its followers that the U.S. Congress itself has crowned the Washington Times owner.

Gaah!

Gorenfield notes that this coronation was attended by several members of Congress, including: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) and Davis. Also attending was my own representative, Curt Weldon (R-Pa.).

Again, Gaaah!

This goes way beyond humoring a wealthy supporter — this man is massively delusional and presents a real danger to himself and to others. Gorenfield provides some highlights to illustrate Moon's world view:

* He has claimed the endorsement of Jesus, Confucius, Buddha and Muhammad, as well as of every dead American president and of the late tyrants Hitler and Stalin, whom he says have repented after their deaths.

* He calls on rabbis to "repent for betraying Christ" and "said Hitler killed six million Jews as a penalty for this rejection."

* He says that homosexuals — whom he calls "dogs" — and non-"repentant" Jews will be destroyed by God in an event he says "will be greater than the communist purge but at God's orders."

So he's an anti-Semitic, homophobic cheerleader for genocide. But there's more. Consider Moon's views on church and state:

… he's frank about calling for democracy and the U.S. Constitution to be replaced by religious government that he calls "Godism," calling the church-state separation the work of Satan. "The church and the state must become one as Cain and Abel," he said in the same sermon.

It's hard to make any sense out of that comment about Cain and Abel "becoming one." And I don't understand how the story of Cain and Abel is supposed to refute the idea of "church-state separation."

Cain, you'll recall, killed Abel. The idea of the separation of church and state arose precisely because, if they are not kept strictly separate, one will destroy the other. It matters little which is the last one standing, the end result will be tyranny, an abomination that brings desolation. This tyranny is Moon's goal.

Moon's most pernicious recent activity involves his attempt to infiltrate and buy off black churches. He earns an extra measure of my contempt by misappropriating one of my favorite hymns for this effort:

… now that he's forged unbreakable ties with conservative Christians, Moon has moved on to African-American ministers, and, through them, allies in the Democratic Party. This has been below the radar of the press, but not for lack of outlandishness. Moon celebrated Easter Sunday, 2003 by launching a coast to coast series of "tear down the cross/Who is Rev. Moon?" events, targeting pastors in poor neighborhoods. From the Bronx to L.A., Moon's people were convincing pastors to pull the crosses off their walls and replace them with his Family Federation flag. An old hymn was invoked: "I'll trade the old cross for a crown."

That old hymn would seem to be "The Old Rugged Cross, the chorus of which says:

So I'll cherish the old rugged cross
'til my trophies at last I lay down
I will cling to that old rugged cross
and exchange it someday for a crown.

(Here's a RealAudio snippet of Jerry Lee Lewis singing that chorus.)

Moon is asking black congregations to stop clinging to that old rugged cross, to exchange it today for a crown — a crown he will wear as Emperor Messiah.

I'm not worried that Moon's insane quest to be Emperor Messiah of the world will succeed. But short of that he is still capable of doing real damage.

I think I've been a bit too dismissive of Rev. Moon up until this point — thinking his views were so outlandishly insane that he couldn't possibly have as much real influence as he does. But as I've learned in the case of others, just because someone's views are ridiculous and heretical doesn't mean they can't end up having real influence on otherwise reasonable people and shaping the world all of us have to live in.