UNIFICATION CHURCH:
a highly controversial Korean NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT which gained
much publicity in the 1970s. The full name of the movement is The Holy Spirit Association
for The Unification of World Christianity, and was founded in 1954 by an engineer Sun
Myung MOON. The principle document is The Divine Principle which lays out its
fundamental teachings. The THEOLOGY of the CHURCH is one of the most comprehensive found
in any of the New Religious Movements. It consists of a systematic attempt to interpret
the BIBLE from the perspective of Korean thought based on CONFUCIAN and BUDDHIST
PHILOSOPHY with insights gained from Korean SHAMANISM. The result is one of the most
comprehensive efforts yet to produce an intellectually defensible non-Western theological
system based on the BIBLE. Among the many ideas generated by this theology, which
are likely to influence similar non-Western theologies in the future, are Indemnity, the
Fourfold Position, the idea of the Principle, and the Lord of the Second Advent.
