Christianity in Korea Church has increased its membership by 70% in the ten years leading up to 2007. Numerous unorthodox sects, such as the Unification Church founded in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon, have also developed in Korea. The influence on education has been decisive, as Christian missionaries started 293 schools and 40 universities including three of the top five academic institutions. Christianity was associated with more widespread education and Western modernization. Catholicism and Protestantism are seen as the religion of the middle class, youth, intellectuals, and urbanites, and has been central to South Korea's pursuit of modernity and westernization after the end
Sun Myung Moon Moon for introducing doctrines which tended to divide the Christian church rather than uniting it, which was his stated purpose in founding the Unification Church (originally named the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity). In his 2009 autobiography Moon himself wrote that he did not originally intend on founding a separate denomination at all. Moon has been criticized for basing some of his theology on that of his former pastor Baek Moon Kim. Kim wrote down his theology in a book, titled "The Fundamental Christian Principles". It was around this same time that Moon began to claim