Happy 58th Anniversary of the Founding of the Unification Church!

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, pictured above with early followers of the church, said: “From the point of view of God’s overall will, the fact that our church was established amidst trials and suffering is sad. However, if we look back at it from the point of view of historical tradition, the establishment of the church under such difficult circumstances is all the more impressive.”

More than half a century ago, on May 1, 1954, Rev. Sun Myung Moon founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) with a handful of his closest followers in Seoul, Korea. That humble yet providentially significant beginning has been memorialized as a holiday called Foundation Day, and the UC Newsletter therefore wishes Unificationists all around the world a happy Foundation Day!

Rev. Cotter said: “We want to wish each and every one of our brothers and sisters across the United States a happy anniversary of our church.”

Vice President of the Unification Church USA Rev. Joshua Cotter greets the nation with the following statement: “Dear brothers and sisters, happy Foundation Day. This is the 58th anniversary of the founding of our church by our True Parents in 1954 in Seoul Korea. The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) was officially founded on the foundation of history and the tears, sweat and blood of our Heavenly Father and our True Parents. On this momentous occasion, we want to wish each and every one of our brothers and sisters across the United States a happy anniversary of our church. This May first is a time of new beginning, during which we are also launching the final phase of a witnessing campaign that will take us up to July 1, 2012. This is a great day.”

May first is also known as International Workers’ Day, which is officially celebrated in more than 80 countries and is commonly used as an opportunity for street demonstrations by Marxist movements, socialists, communists and anarchists. International Worker’s Day commemorates bloody moments in history such as the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, during which the Chicago police fired on laborers on strike in response to a dynamite bomb, and the May Day Riots of 1894 in Cleveland, Ohio, during which violence erupted among the unemployed.

According to received tradition, Rev. Moon chose May first as the official founding day of HSA-UWC partly to replace the violent and Godless foundation of May first with one that celebrates the establishment of a God-loving organization seeking to create world peace.

Dr. Tyler Hendricks, former president of the Unification Church USA and member of the education department at Lovin’ Life Ministries offered clarifying remarks about Foundation Day. “This day is not an official Holy Day, but it’s what we call a ‘Landmark Day.’ Holy Days, of which we have eight, include the Day of All Things, True Parents’ Birthday, True God’s Day, and so on. Landmark Days, which are not Holy Days but are still significant, include True Parents’ Holy Wedding Anniversary, the

Day of Victory of Love, Foundation Day and so on. When I was church president in the 90s and Father was at East Garden, he would always let us know a day or two before May first that Foundation Day should be celebrated. This Foundation Day is not the same as the upcoming Foundation Day on February 9, 2013 which is the founding day of Cheon Il Guk.

Tyler Hendricks

“Dr. David Kim, who passed away last year and who was one of the few with Father on May 1, 1954, said that Father conferred with others as to what the church should be called and how the title should be translated. Dr. Kim said that Father’s expressions were hard to translate, even hard in Korean to grasp, because Father put together words that were new to him to express. They eventually arrived at HSA- UWC.”

Words of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

The following excerpt has been taken from books about Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s life. These books were prepared from a collection of autobiographical excerpts from Rev. Moon’s speeches over the years, which once collected, were arranged chronologically. Some of the translations from the original Korean to the English used in the book may be incorrect. The books were not published generally but were prepared for the benefit of the True Children. More excerpts can be found on Gary Fleisher’s website: tparents.org.

“If Christianity had become one with me in 1945, I wouldn’t have had to suffer so much in treading this path. However, when Christianity opposed me, I had to endure extreme suffering and overcome it all by myself. I had to set up the Unification Church in place of Christianity and establish the foundation to restore the world through indemnity. The Unification Church was established in the seventh year counting from 1948; that period had the significance of indemnifying the Old Testament Age. So, on the foundation of these seven years, humankind could enter the New Testament Age for the first time.

“That’s why I established the Unification Church on this new foundation, before 1960. The period until 1960 indemnified the failure of Christianity. You have to know that I had to go through courses representative of all the suffering courses in God’s will in the Old and the New Testaments because of this. I had to lay the foundation, indemnifying not only everything the Israelites had failed to do and everything the Christians had failed to do but also everything that had Jesus failed to do.

“I established our church in Seoul in 1954. With a few members, notably President Eu, we began by hanging the sign on a little house in Bukhak District. I was not trying to start another denomination. The name was the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, but I hadn’t intended to create that. I wanted to create a movement that was beyond sectarianism, transcending religious denomination, but that was not going to work. That is why I had no choice but to found the Unification Church.

“From the point of view of God’s overall will, the fact that our church was established amidst trials and suffering is sad. However, if we look back at it from the point of view of historical tradition, the establishment of the church under such difficult circumstances is all the more impressive. Not everyone welcomed the church’s existence. I declared it one day under lonely circumstances, a few people meeting together and shedding tears. We can pass by good things without knowing they are there; yet it is always our task to overcome difficulties in order to find something good. Therein lies the promise of a new day.

“So who stood up for God’s will? It was not all the spiritual Christian organizations. It was I who stood in front of God. It was from that time that I began to receive opposition, and so I stood alone.

“At that time, South Korea was torn asunder. The Korean government had been completely swept away. Those with money wanted to escape; Christian ministers sent all their children overseas for their studies. Within the country it was a time of great confusion.

“It was from this point that I laid the foundation for the Unification Church. Following the foundation that was laid for the Unification Church, the form of the new [Korean] government became settled. That is the viewpoint of the providence.

“Using the satanic side, Heaven prepared a chaotic society as an environment that enabled God’s will to advance. So I established our church in 1954 and expanded upon this new foundation within the chaos of the time. The Unification Church developed in confrontation with the government and the established Christian churches. The Unification Church had to occupy the mainstream and be able to change the social and national environment.”