"Jewish people, you have to repent. Jesus was the King of Israel. Through the principle of indemnity Hitler killed six million Jews. That is why."
While many of the church's recruits have historically been Jews, rabbis have long seen what Rabbi A. James Rudin pattern called a pattern of "unrelieved hostility to the Jewish people" in Moon's Divine Principle, including stereotypes and notions of collective guilt long condemned by mainstream Christian denominations.
Whatever the intent of Sun Myung Moon, his language was enough to prompt condemnation by the extremist Jewish Defense League in the 1970s, which took offense at Unification Church views of Jews. And, calling Moon's words "medicine love" that doesn't necessarily taste good, Unificationist FAQ-master Damian Anderson has warned against watering down the message.
Table of contents |
2 Jewish views 3 Passages in Rev. Moon's talks 4 Controversy 5 External links and references |
Members of the Unification Church, for their part, consider the church to be both pro-Israel and pro-Jewish and thus are puzzled and hurt by charges that the church's teachings could be regarded by anyone as anti-Semitic. Church leaders repeatedly asked for discussions with Jewish leaders who raised the charge of anti-Semitism in 1976, and after getting no response took out full-page newspaper ads to call attention to the church's pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli stance.
Rev. Sun Myung Moon has said:
The Unification Church is accused of traditional Christian forms of theological anti-Semitism.
Many Jews feel that the church's views on Jewish responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus are anti-Semitic. The head of the church, Sun Myung Moon, has called on Jews to repent for the crucifixion, though it has recent gone unnoticed by such anti-hate groups as the ADL.
Several authoritative statements by Rev. Moon about the Holocaust appear in Jewish eyes to place the blame for it mostly on the Jews themselves, as divine retribution for the crucifixion, which is another classic anti-Semitic idea.
According to Jews and Judaism in Rev. Moon's Divine Principle, a report issued by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in 1976, "every time Rev. Moon mentions Jews or Israelites he portrays them collectively as reprobate, with evil intentions."
The controversy raised by the AJC centers around passages found in Divine Principle, the church's theology textbook. Rabbi A. James Rudin, Assistant Director of the Interreligious Affairs Department of the American Jewish Committee, wrote:
In a sermon delivered on March 2, 2003, Moon said:
He also seems to assert that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, and that this was the cause of the Holocaust. Blaming Jews for the death of Jesus, and asserting that the Holocaust was in some sense divine retribution, are classic anti-Semitic ideas.
Unificationists, however, maintain that it's not that simple: it was Roman soldiers who actually crucified Jesus, and the church condemns the Holocaust. This leaves a puzzle for theologians, having to do with the church's little-understood teaching of "indemnity" -- but clearly drawing a line of causation between the Jews' alleged guilt for killing Christ, and what the UC, to many, seems to view as a subsequent payback in the Nazi Holocaust.
Jewish people and Unificationists and their critics, including many Jews, disagree on two major points:
Unificationist views
Jewish views
Blame for the crucifixion
Blame for the Holocaust
The Rudin report
Passages in Rev. Moon's talks
In this passage, Moon clearly calls on Jews to repent and join his movement, if not his church per se. Controversy
External links and references