The group attracted as much controversy as the church itself, with opponents deriding it as a 'front group' for the church, a situation which statements by official CARP leaders that CARP was not "affiliated" with the Unification Church did nothing to dispel. Strictly speaking, CARP is a separate legal entity from the church, so neither body is an affiliate of each other in the way that Boston's Channel Four (WBZ-TV) is an affiliate of NBC. But with the leadership and nearly all the membership of CARP being church members, and the aims of both bodies being nearly identical, some church and CARP members found the attempt to distance CARP from the church unsettling, or at best, pointless.