🇺🇸Erwin Lux

I'm from Luxembourg, but I met and joined the Unification Church in the United States — twice, in 1975. The first time was during its teaching workshops in Barrytown (on the Hudson River in upstate New York, later the site of the Unification Theological Seminary) that spring, where I went through 3-, 7-, 21-, and 40-day programs, and also saw Moon for the first time. (Sun Myung Moon — the Korean church/cult founder who died in 2012, and whose followers regard him and his still-active wife Hak Ja Han as "the True Parents of humankind" representing God on Earth.) He didn't make a good first impression: to me he seemed terribly arrogant. I was mostly impressed with his "Divine Principle" teaching and the friendliness of a majority of the members, which is why I stayed in the movement.

In the summer I worked in Boston for a few weeks with a group from Barrytown led by Henry S., restoring a basement apartment that we later used as a witnessing centre. Peter S. (a member of that FB group at the time I wrote this) was my central figure for a short time at 4 W 43rd St. — the church headquarters in New York City — under Neil Salonen, then president of the American church, in the fall of 1975. During that time I travelled a couple of times with Larry O. in a big truck down to the Sophie Mae factory in Atlanta to pick up loads of peanut brittle, which we dropped off for Mobile Fundraising Teams in the Carolinas, the Virginias, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. (MFTs were church members who moved from town to town selling various items door-to-door or in parking lots or bars, to raise money for a "good cause" — the church.) Later I worked for a few weeks with Ron P. and Toni M. at the Going-Up Press printshop in Washington DC, under its director George E.

After telling everyone I needed a break, I left the job and the Washington DC branch of the church on Veterans Day (11 Nov.), and hitch-hiked down to Durham, North Carolina, then west along Interstate 40 all the way to California, sleeping under highway bridges a couple of nights. I briefly visited Brad B., a member friend who'd quit, in San Rafael in Marin County, then tried for a few days hitch-hiking north from Sacramento, sleeping in bushes. Later I rode freight trains with a hobo I met at a Sacramento soup kitchen, but didn't get very far. He was badly hurt on one train and I took him to a clinic (27 Nov.); then I was robbed near Livermore of all my meagre possessions, and finally I was invited to a free Thanksgiving dinner in a house near the University of California Berkeley campus by two "students" who said they belonged to a local "Creative Community Project" organisation. I recognised quickly enough that it was the Unification Church by another name — but by that time I was ready to rejoin the fold anyway.

After a few weeks attending Divine Principle workshops and working in their garden at Boonville, and a few more mostly spent "witnessing" (proselytising mostly young tourists) at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco with Matthew Morrison, I was sent east in a bus with many new recruits. Then came Moon's big religious rallies at Yankee Stadium in New York in June 1976, and at the Washington Monument that September; and before the end of that US Bicentennial year (1776–1976) I became part of the editorial staff of our new daily The News World in New York City. At first I worked briefly in the National Department with Josette S., and then I was transferred to International — first under Hal McK., then Robin K., and finally Betsy O. I might mention here that I was an illegal alien the whole time I was in the US, never qualified to get a "green card" residence permit.

I pressured my bosses, publisher Mike W. and chief editor John D., to let me go to Bangkok, Thailand as correspondent. After some time they agreed, but told me I'd have to pay for the trip and most expenses from my own pocket. In July 1979 I went home to Luxembourg to make some money working with local church members. In October I took the trans-Siberian train across the Soviet Union — from Luxembourg to Nakhodka, a journey of well over 11,000 kilometres on trains in 11 days, stopping overnight only in Moscow and Khabarovsk on the way — then a Soviet ferryboat through a typhoon in the Pacific to Yokohama, where I arrived exactly two weeks after leaving my country (6–20 October). That was followed by another two weeks travelling in Japan with my "spiritual mother": a Japanese lady who had introduced me to the church in New York, and who had invited me to visit her in Tokyo. (Her husband had been one of the first followers of Moon in Japan in the early 1960s; they are both deceased now.)

In early November I went to Bangkok to try to work as correspondent. I didn't manage to get a work permit, and the high spiritual atmosphere in the local centre (I didn't have enough money to afford a place of my own) was not at all conducive to journalistic work. In New York, Mike W., John D., and others left their jobs and the church during that time, and the paper was in trouble — so in early 1980, after three months in Thailand, I was called back. Over the following two years I spent another 18 months working for The News World in NYC, and several months in Luxembourg or travelling in Europe on my own — once spending three days in prison in Czechoslovakia in March 1982, because I was found in possession of "anti-Soviet" literature and documentation on nuclear weapons. My last time in the US was March–June 1982, when I did research for the Russian émigré author Lev Navrozov in NYC.

I'm telling you all this only so you can see I was nothing at all like a model member. I was always more or less on the fringes of the movement, even though I believed in Divine Principle, True Parents, and all that, and was deeply troubled by my own inability to completely "submit". (This word always reminds me of the meaning of Islam; my few weeks as a practising Muslim in the Middle East in 1972–73, when I performed the full Haj pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, had left a lasting impression.) Despite my status as a sort of loose member, I was strongly urged by many friends and former central figures to participate in a matching — Moon's arranged matching of couples for one of his many publicity-seeking mass weddings — in Seoul in October 1982, and this is where I had my one and only close encounter with Moon himself.

In the school of the Little Angels (a children's singing and dancing troupe founded by Moon to charm world leaders, whose large hall was crammed this time with men and women members waiting to meet their matches), he asked Western men who wanted to be matched with Oriental women to come forward. I was one of several dozen or more who did so. After matching a few others, he reached over somebody else's shoulder, gently took me by the chin, and — to my great surprise — asked me directly in English why I wanted an Oriental wife. I said I thought it was more interesting, and I could learn more. He seemed to like my answer; then he asked where I worked and where I was from, and after hearing my answers he took me along a row of Oriental women and chose my wife, who is Japanese. I realised later that I was chosen for the "Blessing" not because I was a good member or ready, but simply because they needed to try to get as close to 6,000 couples together as possible. So… bodies were needed to fill the quota.

Later I helped to start the weekly newspaper Middle East Times in Cyprus, and worked there and in Greece for a few years, while my wife worked in one of the church's secret accounting offices in Japan and also went out fundraising (street selling) there. I didn't see my wife again until almost 4 years later, and then only for a week when we went to Luxembourg to meet my parents. In 1987 we got legally married in Japan, but did not stay together, as I took up an assignment as correspondent in Pakistan. We only started our family in 1988 when I returned to Japan, and later lived in Greece, where our first son was born (1989); then a year in Egypt, and Cyprus again — until we finally settled in Luxembourg in late 1991 after my father died. We had another son in 1994, and a daughter two years later. Both our sons turned out to be seriously mentally handicapped and autistic, totally unable to live independently; they inherited the fragile-X chromosome syndrome. Luckily, our daughter did not inherit any of it, and is not handicapped at all.

During the late 1990s I completely turned away from the Divine Principle teachings about "God" and "True Parents", and developed my own ideas about how we and the universe came into existence — but I did not impose anything on my wife, who remains a loyal follower of Moon and now his wife. I no longer believe in the "God" postulated by the monotheistic religions at all. I don't hide the fact that I reject Divine Principle from leaders here in Luxembourg, but nonetheless my wife and I are regarded as regular members — though I don't participate in most church activities, including one of the most basic, prayer. Our daughter knows I don't believe, but I let her choose her own way — though under the influence of my wife — so she has gone to several short workshops to learn Divine Principle in the Netherlands, and has also been to Cheong Pyeong (the church's main spiritual headquarters in South Korea, in a resort area by a lake of the same name) for 21- and 40-day workshops.

It seems she fits in well and can take it all in stride, without the terrible mental and spiritual struggles I went through, and also without becoming any kind of fanatic. She is very level-headed. She has always been able to make friends easily, and has some close friends here in Luxembourg who have nothing to do with the movement. She studied for five years at Sun Moon University (the church's own university) in Korea, which she really seemed to enjoy. She met an American fellow student and member there, whose parents contacted us because he had told them he was interested in our daughter as a matching partner. When our daughter agreed, we arranged a matching with him and his parents, and they were "blessed" by Mrs. Moon in 2018. So, somehow I am both still inside and outside the church — inside in a practical sense through my wife and daughter, even tithing; outside because I don't believe any of their teachings at all, and don't follow any instructions. Of course, it's like a house of cards, and it could all come crashing down if my wife insisted on following a course that would go totally against my convictions.