Page "Moonie (nickname)" Paragraph 14

British sociologist Eileen Barker titled her 1984 book, which was based on seven years of first-person study of members of the Unification Church in the United States and Great Britain and has been influential in the field of the sociology of religion, The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing ?.

She commented in the book's introduction: " Mention the name ' Moonies ' to anyone in the West today, and the chances are that you will receive an immediate reaction which falls somewhere between a delicate shudder and an indignant outburst of fury.

" In the 1995 book America's Alternative Religions, published by the State University of New York Press, Baker wrote: " Although they prefer to be called Unificationists, they are referred to in the media and popularly known as ' Moonies '.

" In the same book, Anson Shupe, a sociologist known for his studies of religious issues, and David Bromley, a sociologist who has written extensively on new religious movements, also use the word Moonies to refer to members of the Unification Church.

In his 1998 book Religion, Mobilization, and Social Action, Shupe notes that Barker, Bromley, and he himself had used the term in other publications, " and meant no offense ".

In his 2000 book Mystics and Messiahs, Philip Jenkins likens the term to " smear words such as Shaker, Methodist, Mormon ".

Jenkins mentions use of the word in book titles including Life among the Moonies and Escape from the Moonies, and comments: " These titles further illustrate how the derogatory term ' Moonie ' became a standard for members of this denomination, in a way that would have been inconceivable for any of the insulting epithets that could be applied to, say, Catholics or Jews.