Sun Myung Moon (born 1920) was the founder of the Unification Church, a movement combining Christian and Oriental religious traditions which focused on "God-centered marriages" as a way of saving the world. Enormous controversy surrounding the group erupted in America in the 1970s, leading to many kidnappings, deprogrammings, and much inflamed rhetoric.

Sun Myung Moon was born on January 6, 1920, in Jeong-ju in what is now North Korea, then under Japanese occupation. His family converted to Presbyterianism when Moon was ten years old. He entered college at age 19 in Seoul, studying electrical engineering, and graduated in that field from Waseda University in Japan in 1943. He then returned to Korea to pursue his engineering career. However, his work soon became more religious than secular.

On Easter Sunday, 1936, Moon had a vision of Jesus, he reported, in which he was told that he had been assigned to the mission of completing Jesus'...