The Day of Hope tour in Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Detroit and Kansas City

The Day of Hope tour continued across the country. The Minneapolis, Minnesota talks began the day the National Prayer and Fast for the Watergate Crisis was proclaimed.

Reverend Moon and Unification Church members all joined in a fast that day. The St. Paul and Minneapolis newspapers printed substantial stories quoting the Day of Hope speeches and the Watergate statement.

At the November 29 Day of Hope dinner for 150 at the Sheraton- Ritz Hotel, proclamations were read from Gov. Wendall Anderson, Minneapolis Mayor Charles Stenvig, and St. Paul Mayor Larry Cohen.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, the Day of Hope was proclaimed by a rally on Fountain Square. A December 2 story in the Cincinnati Enquirer informed its readers that Reverend Moon would stop in Cincinnati December 4-6 as part of a national tour meant “to save Christianity from backsliding, and with it, the world, from sin, communism, and the like.” The story was entitled: “To Revitalize Christianity is Korean Clergyman’s Goal.” The Enquirer later reported that Reverend Moon told about 100 local leaders at a banquet that “God brought East and West together… to move both toward love, charity, hope, peace and salvation.”

In Detroit, Michigan, faced with the anonymity and apathy of a large city, ten Unification Church members staged a sit-down in the middle of downtown Woodward Avenue. The November 14 Detroit

Free Press published a photograph of six members “sporting grins and traffic tickets after Woodward sit- down.” Their goal: to publicize the December 9 and 10 Day of Hope talks. Another day, the inventive Detroiters marched to one of the leading pornography shops. They painted over the entire building with water-soluble paint to demonstrate their concern about morals. (They later washed it off.)

The Kansas City newspapers published thorough stories on the December 16-18 Day of Hope talks there. Alice Hartmann, writing for the December 17 Kansas City Times quoted from the first speech, “God’s Hope for Man”:

“from the pulpits of most Christian churches, one hears teachings which push man down as a sinner,” he said through an interpreter.

“These teachings are causing an unclosable gap between man and God.”

The emphasis Mr. Moon and his followers place on the relationship between man and God is that both are unified in the spirit of love.

“God and man occupy a subject-object relationship,” Mr. Moon said. “As the object of God’s love, man is occupying the most important position. Almighty God needs you; He needs man.

“An Almighty God without man who has a fine house, a big car, but no one to talk to, no one to relate to, He is a poor God.”

Mr. Moon also characterized the relationship of God and man as analogous to the relationship between a father and his son, which he called “the closest, most human relationship on this earth.”

“No joy is greater than the love coming from your own son or daughter,” he said. “And no joy is greater than the love coming from a father to his sons and daughters.”

The following day the Kansas City Star outlined basic elements of Dr. Moon’s teachings on the fall of man, Jesus’ mission, salvation, and the kingdom of heaven.