Unification Church of the United States Unification Church of the United States The Unification Church of the United States, sometimes colloquially referred to as the "Moonies", is a new religious movement in the United States of America. It began in the 1950s and 1960s when missionaries from Japan and South Korea were sent to the United States by the international Unification Church's founder and leader Sun Myung Moon. It expanded in the 1970s and then became involved in controversy due to its theology, its political activism, and the lifestyle of its members. Since then it has been involved in many areas of American society and has
United States v. Sun Myung Moon York Civil Liberties Union, called the prosecution "an indefensible intrusion in private religious affairs." The "New York Times" and the "Washington Post", which had both been critical of Moon, expressed concern about the government's prosecution of him and the consequences it might have for other religious groups. Michael Tori, a professor at Marist College (Poughkeepsie, New York) suggested that Moon's conviction helped the Unification Church gain more acceptance in mainstream American society, since it showed that he was financially accountable to the government and the public. In 1991 Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Carlton Sherwood wrote a book in Sun Myung Moon's