Portland's Walk of the Heroines Honors Young Oon Kim

Young Oon Kim Fulfill your responsibilities with creativity, persistence and passionate love for life

Dr. Young Oon Kim was the founding spiritual inspiration of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU) in America, bringing the movement first to Oregon and eventually to the entire US. Her vision and dedication, self-sacrifice and love influenced thousands to pursue a religious life. Dr. Kim’s writings inspired many more to pursue a spiritual life centered on God. These works included a three-volume study on World Religions and four books on Theology along with extensive inter-faith work.

Dr. Kim is best known as a writer and teacher. For thirteen years she taught theology and world religions at the Unification Theological Seminary in Barrytown, NY. She published nine books in her active career, many listed as required reading even to this day. While her classes were always well attended by the seminarians, Dr. Kim was often sought out not for her academic knowledge of but for her deep understanding of spiritual truth—a pursuit she dedicated her life to first understanding and next bringing to the world through her writings and teaching.

If you have a burning desire to love others you will have discovered the secret of radiant living.

If you cultivate that kind of faith then God can entrust you with any kind of mission.

Her early path was not an easy one. From impoverished beginnings, torn by two wars, and the severity of the Japanese occupation of Korea, Dr. Kim’s life changed when she began living with an older sister who married into wealth. However, despite her own improving material circumstances, she still felt the suffering and grief of those living a war torn life around her, this drove her to find answers to burning universal questions. This set her on a journey that ultimately developed into a deep relationship with God and blossomed into a series of spiritual experiences with Jesus in her teenage years.

I want you to have an epoch-making experience in your life, meeting the living God face to face . . .

In her continued quest for spiritual knowledge, Dr. Kim also felt compelled to study, seeking spiritual understanding from religious academics. She attended Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan and later, became a theology student, graduating with honors in 1942. After graduation she began teaching, first at a Methodist women’s Bible College, then a Catholic girls’ high school and finally at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul. In 1948, she left for Canada to study at Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto, and she graduated with a Masters in Divinity in 1950.

This was the beginning of her ecumenical and interfaith work. She then spent six months in Germany and Switzerland studying European reconstruction efforts and attending ecumenical conferences sponsored by the International Missionary Council and the World Council of Churches.

However varied the doctrine and forms of worship, I see two universal features in all faiths: God is seeking his children everywhere, and they are anxious to return to Him.

Ultimately, Dr. Kim found what she was looking for in the teachings of the Divine Principle and Rev. Moon - believing this to be the highest expression of Christian understanding of the day. Hearing the call of God, she departed her home as an evangelist, on a quest to bring the spiritual truth of the East bound for the United States where she continued to study, began to teach, and built a following from those prepared to hear the message.

She arrived in January of 1959, with a scholarship to University of Oregon in Eugene. In January 1961, Dr. Kim was ordained in the Universal Church of the Master in July of that year, and she gave spiritual and theological lectures at Williams College in Berkeley.

In Sept 1961, Dr. Kim incorporated her group as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, in California, and passed the presidency of the group on to an American in the autumn of 1964. The name was later changed to the FFWPU.

In all Dr. Kim spent the rest of her life in this country dedicated to teaching the way of peace through spiritual understanding. Her efforts helped lay the foundation for a worldwide religious movement. From these seeds sprang a host of inter-religious and intercultural organizations

including the Professors World Peace Academy and the Women’s Federation for World Peace, and Ambassadors for Peace, still an active force for peace today.

God is not just our heavenly father - God is our father-mother creator, a combination of both - masculine and feminine principles in perfect balance.

In recognition of her achievements as a spiritual leader and academician, she was awarded three honorary doctorates. In 1988, she returned to Korea, teaching World Religions at Sung Hwa Theological Seminary until her death in 1989. Dr. Kim dedicated her life to living for the sake of others and demonstrated her deep felt faith in the true relationship between God, our parent and all humankind. For this, she is well loved and long remembered.

Honoring Acknowledgement

The Women’s Federation for World Peace honors Dr. Young Oon Kim.

Written by: Stephanie Herremans