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John Lofland - Doomsday Cult - Prentice-Hall - 1966

#witches #doomers #occult #vintage #doomsday cult #proselytization #prentice-hall #john lofland #cults #brainwashing #1966 #faith #maintenance of faith

Doomsday Cult – A Study of Conversion, Proselytization and Maintenance of Faith

Book by John Lofland

It went through six printings from 1966-75 and was republished in an enlarged edition by Irvington in 1977.

▲ In this photo, taken in San Francisco (probably late 1962), John Lofland is sitting at the back on the left. Young-oon Kim is in the front row, second from the left; Peter Koch is in the center wearing glasses; Doris Orme is two behind him near the back. It may be Edwin Ang on the right.

pages 3-4 By the late fifties, Sun Myung Moon had assembled several hundred Unification Church followers in and around Seoul. To these believers he announced that the seven years from 1960 to 1967 would be the “Last Days” of the world as we know it, the period of “cosmic tribulation and judgment.” By the end of the seventh year, the world would undergo a dramatic, supernaturally caused transformation through which his faithful followers would become rulers of a restored, eternal, and perfect Garden of Eden. Although this imminent transformation would be effected by “descending spirit forces,” God’s Chosen People would be obliged to play a role. Before 1967 they would be required to assemble 144,000 converts to constitute a “remnant” or “foundation of the new world.” These would provide an elite to govern the theocracy of the “New Age.” Since the restoration of man to God’s grace would involve not just Korea but the entire world—although Koreans were God’s Chosen People—the foundation had to include persons from twelve nations.

Toward this end, in 1959 Moon sent one of his earliest converts, a forty-four-year-old, English-speaking former university professor, Miss Young-oon Kim, to the United States. During the next four years, which she spent on the Pacific Coast, Miss Kim was involved with hundreds of people, but managed to convince only about twenty to accept the faith and help usher in the “Cosmic Era.” These converts forsook their unconverted former associates and families, whom they regarded as enmeshed in the “Satanic” and dying world, to take up communal living and devote their finances and energy to the crucial quest for more converts. Like many of the early Christians, these people served as totally committed agents for “God’s newly revealed plan.”

————————————————————— pages 25-28

The New Age began with individual restoration, and in subsequent years Moon was to restore man symbolically at the tribal, national, and international levels. Thirty-six Korean couples were matched and married in 1961 in order to effect the symbolic tribal restoration. Seventy-two simultaneous marriages in 1962 accomplished national restoration. International restoration would require 144 couples drawn from twelve nations and was to occur sometime before 1967. To be a true part of the New Age, one was required to marry, not just anyone, but a mate of Moons choice. Such mating was known as “the blessing.”

Sexual activity was the original corruption that “stained man’s blood.” Therefore one should abstain from sex until given in blessed marriage. A period of separation also served to purify one and allow taint-free congress with a similarly purified consort.

The foregoing matters were secret, but still more so was the belief in a fully restored world within seven years of 1960.

Revelations 7:4 had to be fulfilled within that period: “And I heard the number of those who had received the seal. From all the tribes of Israel there were a hundred and forty-four thousand.”

Upon attaining this number the “spirit world” would become visible to everyone and cause mass member conversions. The current order would collapse in the process, and members would assume the reins of the new theocracy.

Members were circumspect in speaking of Korea’s “true role,” lest outsiders doubt these American’s loyalty. In safe company, Korea was venerated as “the motherland” and “God’s chosen nation.”

Korean was to be the official and universal language of the New Age. Shortly before 1967, Korea was to “serve as the priest nation for the rest of the world.”

According to Miss Kim: People from all over the world will go to Korea to study the new philosophy, the Divine Principle. Korea will be the center from which the spiritual truth and blessings of the New Age will reach out to every corner of the earth.

In return for spiritual blessings, richer nations would send Korea their material wealth. Revelations 21:24-27 describes this New Age arrangement:

I saw no temple in the city; for its temple was the sovereign Lord God and the Lamb [Sun Myung Moon], And the city had no need for sun or moon to shine upon it; for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk, and the kings of the earth shall bring into it all their splendour. The gates of the city shall never be shut by day—and there will be no night. The wealth and splendour of the nations shall be brought into it.

As is apparent, strong beliefs in Korean national deliverance and Koreans as a super-people are found in the Divine Principle.

The public portions of the DP were remarkably bereft of instructions on what one should do with his life in light of the DP. Insiders of course believed in total dedication to the cause. Indeed, the New Age was to be stratified on the principle of how much work an individual performed in bringing it about. In fact, the principle of “work rendered” was the cult’s paramount moral law. The moral demands and dilemmas of the current social order were irrelevant because a new order was just around the corner. It was on this basis that Miss Kim counseled converts to give up their spouses and friends, quit or change jobs, and stop schooling. There was no need to confront traditional moral problems, such as whether or not to meet violence with violence. They were irrelevant, because in a few years moral dilemmas would no longer arise.

Outsiders were inclined to view UC member as retreating from the world, but members conceived of themselves in a radically different manner. They alone were really in the world and really knew what was happening. Moreover, they saw themselves as eternity’s cadre, as having imminent access to incredible power. They would have more power than any historical ruler and more spiritual status than all previous religious adepts, including Jesus. Although aware of their current and manifest incompetence to rule the world, come the New Age and their blessing, each would undergo profound change in personality, personal knowledge, and leadership competence. “I’m just an ordinary guy now,” one convert said, “but after I’m blessed I’ll be above the pettiness of everyday life and I’ll be able to see things as they really are.”

Moon would not have time to judge everyone’s blessing, so elite converts would help in deciding on the rewards appropriate for the world’s population. Latecomers to the kingdom would find it much more difficult to achieve spiritual and material advance and would do so only by this elite’s permission.

Beyond a conception of the New Age as a severely graded hierarchy of eternal perfection and bliss for the elite, little else was promulgated as inviolate doctrine on what to expect. Moon was still receiving revelations on the character of life in the New Age, so detailed depiction was not yet possible. Nevertheless, members engaged in considerable speculation on its character. Many speculations followed an “as you like it” line, although Miss Kim reported Moon to have said that the social order would be built upon units of New Age (i.e., rematched) monogamous marriages. The elementary unit was to be three families living together, three such units under the authority of another three-family unit. The society would pyramid in this manner up to Moon and his family. A planning committee of sorts in the Korean movement was said to have already drawn up a master chart and filled some top posts. Such a structure was necessary because persons at the bottom would still have evil thoughts. Other proximate families would be able to “spiritually detect” deviationist tendencies and bring quick corrective action.

During informal descriptions of this kind, members sometimes openly admired some aspects of communist social organization (especially the Chinese version). Communistic systems displayed forms of the New Age that failed to make people happy because they were dominated by Satan. They were Satan’s “imitation” of God’s plan, but would work under God. Thus all the “instruments of production” would be owned by God. Children would be rotated from home to home or raised in communal nurseries.

The spirit and material worlds would again merge in the New Age and allow for all manner of marvels. According to Miss Kim, Moon said, for example, that fertilization of crops would be unnecessary —“you simply plant prayfully and things will grow.” One member—a science fiction fan—was fond of predicting travel from one place to another through simply “willing” the trip. Further, one would be able to create material objects by simply thinking about them. Such developed “mind power” would make learning very easy. One willed mastery of materials and it would be done. In general, all the problems of man—poverty, ignorance, disease (spiritual and physical)—would disappear.

The Divine Principle was, then, a relatively complex and articulated millenarian world view. It was a “… phantasy of salvation which is to be

collective, in the sense that it is to be enjoyed by the faithful as a group;

terrestrial, in the sense that it is to be realized on this earth and not in some otherworldly heaven;

imminent, in the sense that it is to come both soon and suddenly;

total, in the sense that it is utterly to transform life on earth, so that the new dispensation will be no mere improvement on the present but perfection itself;

accomplished by agencies which are consciously regarded as supernatural.”

This is what they believed. In the next two chapters, I shall try to explain how they came to believe it.

_____________________________________

#sun myung moon #unification church #divine principle #John Lofland

On the 1962 Reorganization of the Unification Church as a Political Tool of Japan, South Korea, and the U.S., Pt. 3

▲ Pictured: Kim Jong-pil, and Japanese prime minister, Hayato Ikeda, in 1962 Read parts 1, 2 , and 4 Parts 1 and 2 traced how the Unification Church was reorganized in 1961–62 under Kim Jong Pil’s direction into a tool of the emerging U.S.–Japan–ROK anticommunist bloc. What began as a marginal Korean religious sect was pulled into the center of a complex political ecosystem linking the KCIA, CIA, and Japan’s postwar far-right. Kim’s 1962 trips to Tokyo and the U.S., arranged alongside KCIA staff who were themselves Moonies, revealed the intimate connections between intelligence agencies, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, Unification Church leadership, and criminal “fixers” and gangsters like Yoshio Kodama, who were together discretely coordinating normalization talks and anti-communist organizing. The same networks that produced the Kim–Ohira memorandum also oversaw the UC’s restructuring, integrating Moon’s religious movement into the international anti-communist networks that would surface in organizations like Asian Peoples' Anti-Communist League (APACL) and the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Together, these events make it clear that the UC’s later role in covert and violent right-wing operations were not simply opportunistic moments seized by church leadership, but the result of the covert arrangements made in 1962.

As mentioned before, KCIA director Kim Jong Pil met directly with UC members. John Lofland, who became a renowned sociologist, having his research into early American UC launch his career, was actually present at this meeting at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. He discusses the visit in Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith (1966, 1977). HWDYKYM identified the aliases Lofland used in the text below.

The most spectacular of these visits supported the feeling that UC political control of Korea was imminent. In November 1962, the mass media reported the official United States visit of a Korean political figure known as the “Director” [KCIA Director, Kim Jong-pil]. A feature story on Korea and the Director’s visit appearing in a national news magazine said he was the mastermind behind the then current Korean military junta [of Park Chung-hee]. He “provides the ideas, the drive, the plans. By his own immodest but unchallenged statement, [he] is the dominant figure of … [the] ‘revolution.’ ” After talks with high level officials in Washington, the Director spent two days in San Francisco before returning to Korea. He stayed in a luxurious hotel that ﬂew the Korean flag over its main entrance in order to honor his presence. The day of his arrival, Miss Kim received a phone call from the Director’s aide and interpreter, a Korean army colonel and UC member. He told her that he had arranged an audience with the Director for Miss Kim and her followers. Miss Kim and five core converts appeared at the hotel the next afternoon, where they met another of the Director’s aides, who had only recently converted to the UC. Before entering the Director’s suite, the Koreans conversed excitedly in their native tongue, while American members stood around and giggled with joy. The audience with the Director himself consisted of Miss Kim telling him of her work for the UC in America, after which each local member gave a brief testimony to the UC/Divine Principle’s wonders and how it had changed their lives. The interpreter translated for the converts and for the Director, who continually smiled, nodded, and chain smoked. There were soft drinks, and toward the end of the hour the Director said that he was not a religious man but had great sympathy with UC. He could not help them publicly in Korea, but he would secretly give them a hand whenever possible. After the audience, the members assembled in the interpreter’s room, where pictures were taken and an air of family festivity reigned. Dinner talk back in the UC Center focussed on the audience. Miss Kim emphasized that such a meeting was unique and had occurred only because the Director had high regard for his two aides who were UC members. Note was made of the recently converted Colonel being related by marriage to the junta head and thus having direct access to him. The Director’s interpreter, Miss Kim reported, was also his speech writer. When assigned to write a speech, he always got help from a top-ranking person in Moon’s movement in order to give the speeches a Divine Principle slant. Church members had a strong suspicion that the two aides would eventually convert the Director, Kim Jong-pil. Since Sun Myung Moon was to control the world by 1967, control of his home base [Korea] would certainly come before that time. Although UC members in America were obscure and ignored, even the most skeptical had to agree that, for some months in 1962 at least, Korean control was not a fantasy. Members had access to the people whose conversion could have given them power, if only in a short-lived coup. In any event, after their meeting with the KCIA Director, Kim Jong-pil, members possessed an important sense of being secretly near the center of power in Korea. Was this not testimony to the Unification Church member’s truth [the Divine Principle]?”

The UC’s access to state power was not a fantasy of overzealous converts. By the end of 1962, Moon's movement had cemented its place at the hinge of the U.S.–Japan–ROK bloc’s shadow diplomacy, where unofficial statecraft converged with fascist and far-right political networks.

The Imperial Ghost in the Neoliberal Machine (Figuring the CIA)

Sasakawa, a Respected War Criminal Moonies Were Brainwashed by The CIA As Soldiers In The Cold War Onni Durst worked at the Korean Embassy in Tokyo in 1959

On the Unification Church in Japan and its political (KCIA) origins

Moonie Women on Capitol Hill

“Japanese Bridgehead” - on how the UC gained power in and through Japan

Paraguay ‘Archives of Terror’ Yield New Horrors – and links to the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon

Which Moon representative arranged anti-communist terrorist funding in 1978?

A WACL Rogues’ Gallery

#parapolitical #anti-communism #anti-communist #Kim Jong Pil #john lofland #apacl #wacl #KCIA #CIA #unification church #japan #south korea #republic of korea #american church #unification church in america #young oon kim #politics #recommended

The story of the first ever Divine Principle book, published in Korea in 1956

▲ A chart, devised by Miss Kim, from the 1956 Divine Principle. Sun Myung Moon did not write the Divine Principle. He admitted this when questioned in court in New York in 1982.

▲ Young-oon Kim teaching in San Francisco in 1963. John Lofland lived with the group around this time. In 1966 he published a book about his observations.

Book extract:

Young-oon Kim rendered the first English translation of the Divine Principle in Korea in 1956. It was mimeographed on newsprint and paperbound with a green and white cover displaying the Yang and Yin.

Miss Kim compiled the DP in 1956. Before that, the only written version had been long, complicated, and written by another Sun Myung Moon follower, [Hyo-won Eu]. (Moon never committed his revelation to writing.) Even Miss Kim had trouble deciphering this version, so she simplified and shortened the doctrines for presentation in English. Also, Moon had worked out the meaning of history only up to the death of Jesus. In order to complete the English version, Miss Kim had to work up the detailed meaning of Western history since that time. She was uncertain of these interpretations, but said she would accept responsibility for any errors (during the accounting period at the beginning of the New Age theocracy).

She brought several copies of this book to America, but did not use them in proselytization as they were manifestly Korean and written in imperfect English. She completely rewrote the book, with free editorial aid arranged by her friendship family. In this reworking, a number of empirically ludicrous observations were omitted, such as the following:

. . . The face, figure, manner, and skeleton are the representation of the internal man. One may judge the approximate tempers by the type of blood, because our blood represents our mind.

Direct references to Korea and translation problems were dropped (e.g., “In translating the Korean word TANGGAM I have chosen the word INDEMNITY, although it is not quite adequate”).

Materials that linked the DP to authoritative Western opinion were added:

An English historian, Arnold J. Toynbee . . . has advanced the thesis that … a new form of civilization is needed before we can progress further. A new religion . . . would be a fusion of Christianity and major Oriental philosophies. With this new religion alone there will be generated new hope for mankind and the establishment of a foundation upon which a new civilization can grow. Such a new religion is now taking hold.

The editorial work arranged by the friendship family did much to make this second version literate, and therefore respectable. However, when printed in the summer of 1960, Miss Kim had only the Maple Hill people in Oregon to edit and proofread the stencils. The book came out with a host of grammatical and typographical errors. In San Francisco, many people noted these, and Miss Kim spent untold hours going through almost 500 copies, pasting correction slips over large errors and rectifying smaller ones by hand.

These changes marred the book’s appearance. In the fall of 1961, with the aid of a co-worker of Elmer’s, a hospital orderly, a more literate draft was produced and 750 copies printed. This version was thought to be appropriately impressive and literate until Lester became influential in the cult. Lester thought the grammar and syntax to be defective. He claimed the book’s flaws had hindered him in studying the DP, and he was certain that scholars would dismiss the DP if its presentation were not more competent. Miss Kim undertook to revise the book once again. After additional editorial work of some magnitude, Miss Kim pronounced this fourth version as the final revision. Translations into every language of the world would be made from it.

There was, then, a persistent (and expensive) concern with packaging the world view. It was important not only to omit information that would “stumble” prospects, but also to avoid being dismissed as illiterate and thus ridiculous.

The book used the alias of Chang for Moon and Lee for Miss Kim. Elmer and Lester are other aliases.

____________________________________

extract from: Doomsday Cult A Study of Conversion, Proselytization and Maintenance of Faith

John Lofland University of Michigan

Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 1966

from the back cover:

This pioneering work takes one behind the scenes of a doomsday cult and explains its people, its aims, and its methods of proselytization. Through an intimate dissection of cult process and social life, the reader learns about:

CONVERSION

seven conditions that account for changes of world view and how these conditions develop.

PROSELYTIZATION

how missionaries gain the attention of prospects and how they promote acceptance of their doctrines … how conventional organizations are infiltrated in search of prospective adherents … kinds of people attracted to a doomsday cult … how friendship bonds are promoted and exploited … use of spiritualistic literature and doctrines to promote conversion.

MAINTAINING THE FAITH OF BELIEVERS

how a doomsday cult supports faith through drawing upon experiences and events in the conventional world … how spiritual experiences, conflicts among adherents, suffering, poverty, and symbols and ceremonials are utilized.

DOOMSDAY CULT

is a probing depth study of conversion, proselytization, and maintenance of faith among a deviant group that denies conventional conceptions of the “real world”.

____________________________________

More information about the 1956 Divine Principle can he found here:

Young-oon Kim joined, but it ended in tears and flames

Where Sun Myung Moon got his theology

Sun Myung Moon questioned under subpoena in court in New York, May 1982. He was asked about the authorship of the DP.

The Korean background of Sun Myung Moon’s church

Divine Principle – The Parallels of History examined

____________________________________

John Lofland

Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith is a sociological book based on field study of a group of Unification Church members in California and Oregon. It was first published in 1966 and written by sociologist John Lofland. It is considered to be one of the most important and widely cited studies of the process of religious conversion, and one of the first modern sociological studies of a new religious movement.

While a student at the University of California, Berkeley Lofland lived with Unification Church missionary Young Oon Kim and a small group of American church members and studied their activities in trying to promote their beliefs and win new members for their church. Lofland noted that most of their efforts were ineffective and that most of the people who joined did so because of personal relationships with other members, often family relationships. Lofland published his findings in 1964 as a doctorial thesis entitled: "The World Savers: A Field Study of Cult Processes," and in 1966 in book form by Prentice-Hall. There have been several updated and expanded editions since. The book introduced the expression "doomsday cult" to the English language and since then it has been commonly used in various contexts.

____________________________________

Not many people find themselves at the inception of a social movement that becomes as influential as "the Moonies." This is a fascinating glimpse at the church as it grows better and better at performing the job Lofland's title describes. The practitioners of the Divine Precepts (Divine Principle) become quite proficient at these arts as you might expect. What is unexpected is how shockingly poor their performance was at the beginning – locking proselytes away in a room for hours and forcing them to listen to audiocassettes of Sun Myung Moon. The depth with which Lofland treats this subject is quite astonishing.

This is not a dry book at all. It has all the suspense of a thriller even though you probably already know the bizarre ending (Moonies become prominent in the 1970's, parents have their children deprogrammed, etc.) Lofland – a professor at the University of California, Davis – is quite an engaging presence in person and in writing.

Read this if you want to learn how to control groups of people, or to avoid being controlled against your wishes.

#unification church #sun myung moon #cult #divine principle #John Lofland

Moonies were constantly researched by researchers/academics

Isn’t it interesting how often the Moonies allowed sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists into their workshops, into church meetings, into very sacramental and intimate church spaces? There are so many studies and papers from the 70s into the 80s, and of course even before that, with Young Oon Kim’s Bay Area Moonies getting involved in the John Lofland and Rodney Stark study in the early 60s. There were studies on the process of conversion and de-conversion, personality and behavior modification, marriage, etc., with these research often trying to figure out how Moonies function and live in the world, how their beliefs mold their actions and thoughts, and often revealing that these sorts of changes (conversion to Moonies) are possible for just about anyone, especially those with more typical, well-adjusted, middle class backgrounds.

The UC was known to have often pushed some of its members into interviews and surveys, especially those considered more “normal” and PR-worthy, but at times, they freely allowed researchers into their spaces, with access to “insider” information and experiences.

Some of these researchers saw the more eccentric, ecstatic, and concerning behaviors at the Barrytown workshops.

This may have been due to the carelessness of the researcher’s temporary central figure and their inability to properly shield the eyes of the researcher(s), but also may have been intentional, or thoughtless. Maybe they wanted the researchers to understand and see what was going on... to help contribute and develop a science.

What science? Well, regarding mind control, conversion, personality changes, and actions/practices that can cause dissociation and memory loss. These were all things heavily being studied on CIA funds from the 50s into the 70s/80s. These things are still being studied by the CIA, having advanced and evolved in a time of the constant surveillance and communication via the internet.

Perhaps that’s jumping the gun, but how could this have not played some role throughout UC history, considering... US history and their confirmed operations at the time.

Perhaps UC leaders did not know... but it seems unlikely that they didn’t, especially considering Young Oon Kim’s time with Rodney and Stark, which was when two budding, CIA-connected academics studied the largely unknown Moonies’ conversion process and helped Kim translate the Divine Principle in English (which had initially started with the help Pastor McCabe in Korea, a visiting prophetic Pentecostal leader from Australia, whose Apostolic Church denomination paid for him to liaison with Moonies in the 50s, though McCabe later on denounced Moon’s doctrine.)

Not all of these studies reflected well on Moon and his organization, though some were used for apologetics, even if framed as “critical.”

Some of these studies were used in deprogramming cases to say that the UC was not a threat, and that there was no genuine “brainwashing” or “mind control” occurring that the UC could be held responsible for.

It was also during this time that Moonies had been very actively forging ties with academia and cultural institutions, from donating to Christian seminaries (”Shaw Seminary”) to paying renowned Nobel prize-winning scientists to speak at conferences and join the boards of their organizations, like Professors World Peace Academy and International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, as well as pumping out propaganda through their own organizations like Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation. These ties and connections led to the purchase of the University of Bridgeport in the 90s.

It probably would help to have ties to the institutions studying your organization. It probably helps to have their studies keep your organization safe in court. It also probably helps the government to keep this organization safe. As we know now, George H.W. Bush protected Moon through the Koreagate years. We also know that Rep. Leo Ryan, who was murdered in Guyana following his time in Georgetown, had found substantial evidence prior to his Guyana trip that the UC and other cults in the U.S. were being used by the government as intelligence operations.

#john lofland

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