Difference between revisions of "Talk:Unificationism"

Revision as of 16:08, December 17, 2009

It's fairly obvious that a coordinated attack is not the same as "providing legitimate information". If the two gentlemen I block have reason to give credence to the sources supplied, I wonder why they felt it more important to repeat their changes than to explain them. --Ed Poor ^Talk 11:31, 30 April 2008 (EDT)

What's "94% voluntary dropout rate" mean? Does it mean that only 6% of the Church is left, or that 94% of dropouts are voluntary? I'm confused.-LawrenceA 10:53, 14 November 2008 (EST)

Out of more than 100,000 full-time members who had ever lived in US church members for at least 6 months, only 5,860 remained in 2001. So 6,000 out of 100,000 were left. Simple math. --Ed Poor ^Talk 10:56, 14 November 2008 (EST)

What these extraordinary figures mean, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, is that the church never had an effective mind control technique. People just kept walking away, probably due to the high demands on their time.

Rev. Moon had actually suggested that church leaders take better care of members and not overwork them, but many of them didn't listen. --Ed Poor ^Talk 10:58, 14 November 2008 (EST)

Old complaints

Removed from article:

Moonies are also accused of separating members from their families, and pressuring members to work long hours and hand over what they earn to the "Church".

This is really three separate complaints. Each has a measure of truth, but each also obscures the reality. Like a Catholic monastery, a Unification Church witnessing center in the 1970s and 1980s was populated by full-time religious people. They lived and worked as brothers and sisters, apart from their natural families. Also, as in the Catholic monastic tradition, Unification Church members followed a schedule of activities from early morning to late at night. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, church members who lived in centers did have outside employment and nearly all chose to donate their earnings to the church. Organized fundraising replaced that, and all funds received by church members from donors had to be reported and turned in; to do otherwise would have been a violation of law. --Ed Poor ^Talk 12:14, 29 November 2008 (EST)