world at large, American influence, centering on faith in God, was supreme. When we ask how was it possible for any country to rise to such power and influence in so short a time, there can, in my opinion, be only one answer: God made it possible. He did so because He wanted America to play a central role in the fulfillment of His will throughout the world. Regrettably, in recent years, large sectors of American society have turned away from God. They have forgotten the spirit of her Founding Fathers. The seriousness of America's predicament has been compounded day by day and hour by hour. We behold the spread of crime, the decline of rectitude, rampant child abuse, broken families, large scale drug abuse, impersonal education with declining standards, pornography and immorality. All these things are tragically far from the will of God. Such a situation in a country of so much promise breaks the very heart of God. I know that God cannot proceed with His providential design if America remains is. Without repentance America will decline. History teaches us that America is not different than any other of the so-called "great civilizations" that were called to repentance by prophets, saints and sages. A spiritual awakening must occur. America must survive and prosper not for her own sake alone but for the entire world. It is imperative that America repent and renew her convenant with God and her commitment to the world. as it I testify to you today that God has sent me to America. I came here as a messenger of God's blessing and love for this country. I must also testify that I have been sent to warn America that she must fulfill her global, providential mission. Like a fireman or a surgeon, I have come to heal not to harm, to find a solution to an emergency situation that threatens not only America but the world that depends upon her. This is the purpose of the Unification Movement America. in Many young people have experienced a dramatic change as a result of their encounter with this movement and its teachings. It is natural that a change accompanies the experience of religious conversion. When egoism is replaced by a loving concern for others, is there not a profound change? When chastity replaces promiscuity, is there not a deep change? When a young man or woman without the gift of religious faith receives that gift, is there not a significant transformation? What could make such things possible? The answer is really simple and has been known to religious men and women throughout the generations: God has the power to transform us and give us spiritual rebirth. A teaching ultimately centered on God can make possible many things thought to be unbelievable in ordinary experience. One has but to open one's heart to God! As I have stated, my mission is one of both words and deeds. Without the foundation of His word, God's Kingdom cannot be established, but words are not enough. Since coming to America, I have initiated many activities, movements and institutions for the purpose of a new spiritual revolution in America. Inspired by this ideal, I have endeavored to lay the spiritual foundations for America's return through deep and often tearful prayer. Guided by God's spirit, I have sought to educate people through sermons, counseling, lectures, prayer meetings and revival meetings. Moreover, I myself have sought to live the ideals which I have taught. Mr. Chairman, at this point, I would like to offer the committee and the people of America an account of my activities with special reference to those which I have initiated since my coming to America. I began my preaching mission in June 1946 in Pyongyang, currently the capital of communist North Korea but known then as the "Jerusalem of the East." I was twenty-six years old at the time and progress was slow, difficult and painful. In February 1948 the communist authorities arrested me on absurd political charges and sent me to a prison camp in Hungnam. I endured two years and eight months of bitter and brutal incarceration in that camp. Conditions there were so poor that most other prisoners died within a few months, but I never lost my faith in God nor my resolve to fulfill the mission He had bestowed upon me. On October 14, 1950 I was liberated from prison by United Nations forces and later made my way on foot to Pusan, six hundred miles to the South. I was accompanied by two disciples, one of whom was unable to walk because of a broken leg. This companion rode on a bicycle which I pushed along, sometimes carrying him on my back when we had to cross rivers or walk through the sea. We were among the last people to be able to leave the North before the Red Chinese overwhelmed almost the entire country. In Pusan my church and shelter was a hut which we constructed out of mud and U.S. Army ration boxes in the summer of 1951. I supported the early church activities by working as a dock laborer. It was from these beginnings that the Unification Church has grown. On May 1, 1954, I established in Seoul, Korea, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity which has become known as the Unification Church. Four years later our first missionary went abroad to our nearest neighbor, Japan. The following year, 1959, Dr. Young Oon Kim went to the United States to begin our mission in America. By 1966 there were missionaries in 40 different countries. Today our missionaries are to be found in more than 130 countries. It is our custom to send out missionaries in teams of three: one from Europe, one from America, and one from the Orient. We do this to set an example of 'international cooperation. same year, I came to the United States in 1972. In that I founded the International One World Crusade (IOWC) to hear witness to God and to the providential mission of America. Church members travel throughout America seeking to inspire men and women of every age with a new vision of the future and a new hope. One goal of the IOWC is to revitalize the American spirit of idealism and the traditional American commitment to hard work. With a primary focus on ecumenical work, IOWC teams lead inspirational rallies, speak on college campuses, sponsor cleanup campaigns, and make frequent radio and TV appearances. As a result of the IOWC, many religious revivals have taken place. Members of each IOWC team consist of a unique group of men and women of North American, European, Asian, African, and Latin American background. their labor and their very composition, our teams demonstrate the love, unity and hope that can be realized when people of different origins join together as one family under God. By The work of our missionaries throughout the world and of the IOWC in the United States corresponds to the traditional forms of evangelical outreach sponsored by most Christian churches. In addition to these traditional projects, and inspired by the Unification teaching that God-centered individuals must enter into every area of human existence to work for the Kingdom, the members of the Unification Church have initiated many activities and institutions which go far beyond the boundaries of traditional church work. These activities have included the following: I. The International Cultural Foundation (ICF) The ICF is dedicated to promoting academic, scientific, cultural and religious interchange among the peoples of the world. Among its many activities are: a. The International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS): This year the twelfth annual meeting of ICUS will be held in America's capital city. Since the first ICUS in 1972, these conferences have annually brought together hundreds of scientists and scholars, including an uncommonly large number of Nobel Laureates, from every area of study and research, to discuss the mutual interactions of their research and to seek ways to apply their findings to the solution of the problems confronting the contemporary world. Of special importance to the work of ICUS are the discussions concerning the relationship of science and morality. Although the scholars and scientists invited to ICUS represent every responsible point of view, it is my belief that science cannot be indifferent to values and that it is God's will that science be dedicated to human betterment. The goal of ICUS is the clarification of absolute values and the redirection of contemporary technology for the good of humanity. Many of the papers presented at ICUS have been published as scholarly and scientific papers and books and have been very favorably received by the scholarly community. The convening of a conference such as ICUS with invited participants from every part of the globe is, of necessity, an exceedingly expensive enterprise. It has been made even more expensive recently by our decision to bring together those invited to write papers for two preliminary sessions to review each other's draft presentations and to sharpen their own work through the dialogue that takes place at these meetings. We have willingly spent over $2,000,000 a year on this project. It is my conviction that the Kingdom of God requires the wholehearted cooperation of men and women of faith, science and scholarship. b. Paragon House Publishers: As ICUS accumulated a wealth of valuable scholarly research that merited presentation to a larger scholarly and scientific audience, we began to publish proceedings, papers and larger works under the ICUS imprint. Several years ago, we realized that the task, required an independent institution which would not only publish the papers and books presented at ICUS and other scholarly and scientific gatherings sponsored by organizations supported by the Unification Movement, but would publish other books of enduring worth as well. Consequently, I have founded Paragon House Publishers with a fully professional staff and offices in New York. Paragon House will publish annually at least on one hundred scholarly, scientific and theological books written by the finest minds from every corner of the earth. In addition, Paragon House will also republish classics of enduring worth in the humanities and pure science. To assure that we maintain our high standards, we have invited academicians from Oxford, Harvard, Columbia, the University of Chicago and many distinguished European and Asian universities to serve as an international board of editorial advisors. Although this is our first full year of operation, we expect to publish thirty books this year and one hundred next year. have set aside an initial budget of $1,000,000 for the operation of Paragon House. We Here again, the work of Paragon House must be seen in its relation to my ministry. It has been said, "Of the making of books, there is no end." There would be no reason for me to establish yet another publishing house as a profit-making venture. Paragon House exists specifically to encourage and promote God-centered scholarly work. c. The Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy: Building the Kingdom of Cod requires the solution of the real problems confronting us in this age of international interdependence and high technology. These can only be solved by disciplined research undertaken by the finest experts in each field relevant to public-policy decision-making. To that end, I have established a public-policy research institution, a "think-tank," in the city of Washington. The Institute is an independent corporation with a board of trustees consisting of distinguished Americans. Although the Institute is only two years old, it has commissioned research into such areas as the peaceful use of nuclear energy, disarmament, America's relations with the nations of the Orient, Federal fiscal and budgetary policy, the crisis in Central America, the future of America's relations with its NATO allies and the Soviet Union, and the problems of constitutional law. A number of the findings of the Institute's experts have already been published and have had an excellent reception among the decision-makers who constitute the Institute's target audience. It is expected that the book-length monographs of scholars and other experts commissioned by the Institute will be published jointly by Paragon House and the Washington Institute Press. Although the Institute is an independent institution with the same tradition of academic freedom to be found at most of the academic and research centers established by America's religious institutions, we have committed ourselves to support its program in the amount of $2,000,000 for the current year. d. The Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA): PWPA is an interdisciplinary fellowship of scholars who are concerned with the crisis of modern civilization and who meet regularly to formulate new ideas and to suggest new methods of realizing the ideal of world peace. PWPA had its beginnings in a friendship meeting between professors in Korea and Japan in 1972. The purpose of the meeting was to establish a basis for scholarly and intellectual cooperation between the scholars of these two neighboring nations which have had SO bitter a history of national hostility but whose cooperation is indispensible to world peace. As a result of this highly successful meeting, PWPA-Korea was founded in May, 1973 and PWPA-Japan in September 1974. PWPA-USA was founded in 1978. Today thousands of academics throughout the world are active in PWPA. PWPA has grown into an international organization with chapters in North America, Asia, Furope, Africa, Oceania, Latin America and the Middle East. In December 1983, representatives of PWPA chapters in seventy-two nations met in Seoul. PWPA is truly an international network of scholars dedicated to world peace. As with ICUS and the Washington Institute, members of PWPA have addressed the problems confronting the international order in their full complexity and in complete academic freedom. The findings of these scholars have already resulted in the publication of many highly-praised volumes in English, German, Japanese, Korean, French and other languages. e. Financial support for research institutions: In addition to providing for the financial support of the above institutions, our movement has provided the funds to support research undertaken at such institutions as Stanford University, the University of Connecticut, the Institute for Energy Analysis at Oak Ridge, Tennessee and the Rutgers University Law School. f. Seminars for professionals: The International Cultural Foundation has also promoted seminars for attorneys and other professionals for the promotion of human values and human rights, domestic and worldwide, as well as sponsoring seminars for leaders in the world of business and finance in order to promote a humane, moral and God-centered economic order. To date, there have been three seminars for lawyers and three for business leaders respectively. II. The International Religious Foundation (IRF) It has been an important part of my mission to foster world peace through religious dialogue among leaders of the world's religions. It is God's will that unity of purpose and spirit replace discord in the relations of the religions of the world. To that end I have established the International Religious Foundation. Among its projects are the following: was founded These a. New Ecumenical Research Association: New ERA - Eastern, Perhaps the most important series of conferences sponsored by New ERA are the annual international conferences on "God: The Contemporary Discussion" which were initiated in 1981. Each year several hundred scholars representing all of the major religious traditions of the world are invited to present papers on every aspect of the meaning and consequences of the belief in God. It is doubtful that anywhere else in the world do scholars representing all of the major religions come together on a regular basis for the purpose of religious scholarship and mutual understanding. A number of books have already been published as a result of the conference. Since every participant is required to submit an original paper and the scholars are of preeminent international standing, it is expected that a large number of highly significant scholarly works in the field of religion will be published for New ERA by Paragon House Publishers in the future. |