Blessing ceremony of the Unification Church President Park Chung-hee. She said: "I join in a trans-religious spirit. I like the Unification Church way of interpreting the Bible, incorporating the Quran and Buddhist scripts". In 2013, four months after the death of Sun Myung Moon, the church held a Blessing ceremony for 3,500 couples in South Korea, while another 24,000 followers took part in other countries via video link. This ceremony was presided over by Hak Ja Han. Moon's practice of matching couples was very unusual in both Christian tradition and in modern Western culture and attracted much attention and controversy. Members of some churches have expressed
Unification Church of the United States Church against charges made by its critics, including parents of some members. In 1977, church member Jonathan Wells, who later became well known as the author of the popular Intelligent Design book "Icons of Evolution", defended Unification Church theology against what he said were unfair criticisms by the National Council of Churches. That same year Frederick Sontag, a professor of philosophy at Pomona College and a minister in the United Church of Christ, published "Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church" which gave an overview of the church and urged Christians to take it more seriously. In an interview with