Blessing ceremony of the Unification Church was first held in 1961 for 36 couples in Seoul, South Korea by Sun Myung Moon and his wife Hak Ja Han, shortly after their own marriage in 1960. All the couples were members of the Unification Church. Moon matched all of the couples except the 12 who were already married to each other from before joining the church, which was officially founded in 1954. Later Blessing ceremonies were larger in scale but followed the same pattern with all participants Unification Church members and Moon matching most of the couples. In 1982 the first large scale Blessing held outside of
Unification Church of the United States the government and the public.(see also: United States vs. Sun Myung Moon) In the 1970s the American news media began using the word "Moonie" to refer to Unification Church members. This was widely considered to be derogatory. In the 1980s and 1990s the church undertook an extensive public relations campaign against the use of the word by the news media. In 1989 the "Chicago Tribune" was picketed after referring to members as "Moonies". Minister and civil rights leader James Bevel handed out fliers at the protest which said: "Are the Moonies our new niggers?" On an October 6, 1994 broadcast