I was introduced to the Unification Movement through my second son, David, who joined in 1969 when he was only twenty years old. Before that he had gone through many phases in his young life, searching for his purpose by experimenting with speed and LSD, smoking pot, and trying to find God or himself. During the late sixties, he left home and hitchhiked around the United States for about eight months.
When he came back home, he enrolled in classes at Laney College in Oakland. A young member of the Unification Church who was a classmate at the college, asked David if he would like to come to dinner at the Unification Center in Berkeley. Several months later, David joined the movement and moved into a house on Ashby Avenue with a dozen other members and a married couple, Edwin and Marie Ang, the center’s directors.
Surprised by my son’s quick decision to join the “Moonies” and being a “good Christian mother,” I decided to investigate. I was afraid that he had joined one of the free-sex communes or cults that had sprung up during the “Flower Children” era. I went to the Unification Center and met a small group of dedicated people living there. It was clearly not what I had feared, and my panic left me.
David made many sacrifices to join the movement—he led a life of purity and abstinence, giving up the carefree style of a young bachelor, and gave up other individualistic pursuits of material gain, such as a business career. I felt proud that while he was in the movement he did manage to attend classes at the University of California at Berkeley, which was only a few blocks away from the center, and earned the Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering.
After David moved in with the Unification group, I was then alone, separated from my husband and with only one child left at home. I felt compelled to look inward and did much introspection about my own life. After nearly a year, in which I spent much time studying the life of the founder of the movement, I was becoming familiar with the people in the center and coming to understand the lectures.
My first study of the revelation of Rev. Sun Myung Moon was from a small book, titled Divine Principle and Its Application by Dr. Young Oon Kim, which my son offered to me. While reading it, I became so furious with what I believed to be theological deviations from my confirmed beliefs that I actually threw the book across the room in a sudden burst of anger. Later, I received a sense of quieting, spiritual calm and told my son that I wished to study the teachings further. To his astonishment, I also wanted to become a member of the movement!
From New Truth in The Last Days: My 36 Years in the Unification Church. Lincoln, NE: IUniverse, 2006, x-xi