Perilous Times, False Religions, False gods
Cult leader Rev. Moon marries thousands in mass pagan wedding
The Associated Press
Sunday, October 10, 2010; 5:35 AM
ASAN, South Korea -- Some 7,200 South Korean and foreign couples
exchanged or reaffirmed marriage vows Sunday in the Cult Unification
Church's second mass pagan wedding this year.
Cult Church founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah,
offered blessings for the participating couples gathered at Sun Moon
University, the cult school he founded in Asan, south of Seoul.
"I pronounce marriage for the blessed beautiful women and handsome men
standing before the gods, the Lords of the world, and myself," said the
90-year-old Moon.
The couples exchanged vows and held hands to pray during the one-hour
spectacle, which was broadcast live online and through satellite
television to 194 countries, church officials said.
"We've always grown up, hoping that we could find someone with whom we
can then share a family to invite the gods in and to bring rejoice to
the gods," 22-year-old Italian bride Mika Kanno said as she stood with
her British husband Chris Koconey.
The participating couples also threw up their hands and cheered
"Hurrah!" in unison.
The church apparently did not schedule the ceremony for the novelty of
the 10-10-10 date.
Critics say the mass pagan weddings prove the cult church brainwashes
its followers. Followers routinely let Moon pick their spouses on the
belief that he has divine insight from the god's and many meet their
future spouses for the first time at the mass weddings.
Moon, who says he was 15 when he was called upon him to carry out the
unfinished work of the gods, has courted controversy and criticism
since founding the Unification Church in Seoul in 1954.
He held his first mass wedding in the early 1960s, arranging the
marriages of 24 couples himself and renewing the vows of 12 married
couples.
Over the next two decades, the pagan weddings grew in scale and began
to involve followers from Japan, Europe, Africa, Latin America, the
U.S. and elsewhere.
A 1982 mass pagan wedding at Madison Square Garden in New York, the
first held outside South Korea, drew tens of thousands of participants
- and protesters. The ceremonies had been smaller in recent years.