Wacky or dangerous?
by Volker Weber
The Guardian reports:
The US Senate was used for a bizarre ritual in which the Rev Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification church, was "crowned" and declared himself the messiah in the presence of more than a dozen Republican and Democratic members of Congress, it was reported yesterday.
"Emperors, kings and presidents ... have declared to all heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's saviour, messiah, returning Lord and true parent," the 85-year-old Korean "Moonie" cult leader told several hundred guests at the meeting in one of the Senate's office buildings on March 23, according to the Washington Post.
He also claimed endorsement from Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, who had all been reformed and reborn through his church's teachings - an idiosyncratic version of Christianity which rejects the use of the cross as a symbol and denounces homosexuals as "dirty dung-eating dogs".
The glittering event in the Senate's Dirksen building reflected Mr Moon's extraordinary influence in US politics. He owns the conservative newspaper the Washington Times and the US news agency United Press International.
Who needs the Moonies, if you already have the Bushies in control?
[Thanks, Christophe]
