SunHak Institute of History, USA Help Us Preserve Our Movement’s Heritage

Greetings from the SunHak Institute of History, USA! You are probably aware that Dr. Kim directed FFWPU to establish a U.S. history institute modelled after the institute in Korea. He appointed me director, and we formally launched the institute on November 2. I currently work part-time with the institute and continue as Vice-President/Professor of Church History at Unification Theological Seminary, Barrytown, New York. I anticipate working full-time with the institute from July 1, 2018.

Shortly after the institute’s launch, we established a working group that brought together representatives from the East Garden Museum that True Mother dedicated a year ago, representatives from an audio-video digitizing project which has been ongoing in New Jersey for several years, representatives from the FFWPU Media Team, and representatives from FFWPU administration, about ten or so people in all. We had our first meeting on November 13 and plan to meet the second Tuesday each month, including this week.

The East Garden Hyo Jeong Museum celebrated its first anniversary on December 6, and has already become an important pilgrimage site and repository of True Parent’s materials. Multi-Format, Inc. in New Jersey to this point has digitized 7,000 hours of video and 11,000 hours of audio on 2,000 blue ray discs which have a life of 50-100 years. Our history institute will work as a partner organization with these projects as well as with FFWPU.

I write you now to request your cooperation in helping to preserve our movement’s heritage. One major contribution would be to make sure that your local church and members do not discard historically significant documents or items. I encourage each of you, if you haven’t already, to start a collection of materials relevant to your local church. The Washington, D.C. Church has been exemplary in gathering documents and putting together booklets celebrating their 25 th and 40th year anniversaries. Member’s diaries and journals are also precious. The institute will in the not-so-distant future establish a website and one of the features will enable members to upload testimonies, memories, materials, etc. We also will be pursuing oral histories, especially with senior members. At present, we do not have a repository and are not equipped to handle material donations, but that may change. Our current and ongoing task is to inventory and start to catalog U.S. holdings. Many of you did a great job cataloging Holy Items in your local churches several years ago.

Please contact me if you have any suggestions or feedback. I expect to make reports through the FFWPU Newsletter or directly as we go forward.

Michael Mickler, Ph.D. Director SunHak Institute of History, USA