Countercult ministries often concern themselves with religious sects that consider themselves Christian, but hold beliefs thought to contradict the Bible, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Unification church, Christian Science, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

As Martin's definition suggests, the countercult ministries concentrate on non-traditional groups that claim to be Christian, so chief targets have been The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science and the Unification Church, but also smaller groups like the Swedenborgian Church

Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church ( many of whose members were targets of deprogramming ) issued this statement in 1983:

* Deprogramming Article in Unification Church sponsored wiki-encyclopedia.

Rachel White Scheuering writes that, when SEPP began, it was affiliated with the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, a think tank run by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

Moonie is a pejorative term sometimes used to refer to members of the Unification Church.

Church members have used the word " Moonie ", including Sun Myung Moon, President of the Unification Theological Seminary David Kim, and Moon's aide Bo Hi Pak.

In the 1980s and 1990s the Unification Church of the United States undertook an extensive public relations campaign against the use of the word by the news media, including hiring civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy to equate it with the word " nigger ".

The word " Moonie " is derived from the name of Sun Myung Moon, the founder and leader of the Unification Church.

The 2002 edition of The World Book Dictionary does not note a negative connotation, defining it simply as: " a follower of Sun Myung Moon "; nor does the 1999 edition of the Webster's II New College Dictionary, which defines it as " a member of the Unification Church established and headed by Sun Myung Moon.

The Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Japan describes it as a colloquial term to refer to a member of the Unification Church.

It became prevalent and was used both by critics of the Unification Church, as well as by church members themselves.

The word " Moonie " used within the Unification Church itself and by church members in public as a self-designation.

Defense counsel for Sun Myung Moon instead asserted use of the word in the jury selection process was necessary to identify the Unification Church and to question jurors about possible prejudice.

" Judge Gerard L. Goettel instructed the jury that the case involved the Unification Church, Sun Myung Moon, and his followers, whom the judge stated were " sometimes referred to as Moonies.

In 1984, The Washington Post noted: " Members of the Unification Church resent references to them as ' Moonies '", and quoted one church member who said " Even in quotation marks, it's derogatory ".

In 1985, the president of the Unification Church of the United States, Mose Durst, asserted there was a positive change in perception of the church after Moon's trial and his conviction on federal tax violations and conspiracy: " In one year, we moved from being a pariah to being part of the mainstream.

The Unification Church hired civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy to equate the word " Moonie " with the word " nigger ".

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, by 1989 Unification Church members preferred to be called " Unificationists " rather than " Moonies.

" The Washington Post reported that " Unification Church members are being advised no longer to accept the designation of ' Moonie ,' and to declare any such nomenclature as indicative of a prejudiced view of the church.

" In 1989 the Chicago Tribune was picketed after referring to members of the Unification Church as Moonies.

* The flags of Cyprus and Kosovo ( and that of the Australian territory of Christmas Island ) are the only national flags which depict the shape of the area that they represent ( the Korean Unification Flag depicts the Korean Peninsula, although it is not an official flag in either North or South Korea ).

Three years later editorial page editor William P. Cheshire and four of his staff resigned, charging that, at the explicit direction of Sang Kook Han, a top official of the Unification Church, then-editor Arnaud de Borchgrave had stifled editorial criticism of political repression in South Korea.

In 2003, on notification by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, about 500 Christians, Muslims, Jews and other international and interfaith tourists joined the Unification Church Middle East Peace Initiative " to such a degree that the Old Gates were opened by the Israeli police near the Wailing Wall, and by the Muslim leadership at Al Aqsa, without incident ", as the official UN-report says.

That same year, Unification Church held the Interreligious Peace Sports Festival between the people of various faiths, which is, according to the UNESCO official data, " an annual sporting event designed to build and promote friendship and peace among people from different cultural and religious backgrounds using the powerful medium of sports competition ".

In 2004, one of the Unification Church pastors gave the official invocation to one of the formal events of Las Vegas chaired by the Mayor of Las Vegas.

It was only during the 1871 Unification of Germany that the unified nation state of the German Empire first was assigned an official capital.

* The Guidelines for National Unification （ National Unification Council official site: Chinese and English ）

Despite the Lee Myung-bak government expressing a verbal anti-North Korean stance, the head of the government-funded Korea Institute for National Unification, Kim Tae-u, proposed that the South Korean government renegotiate on the Mount Kumgang Tourist Region with North Korea without any official apology on North Korea's military actions towards the ROKS Cheonan sinking and the Bombardment of Yeonpyeong.

American pastors of Sun Myung Moon | Moon's Unification Church in front of the Moon's official residence in Cheongpyeong.

The Unification program was the official excuse, but the program itself was partly a gimmick to ' Americanize ' the Canadian forces and eliminate, as far as possible, the British traditions of the past.

Michael Tori, a professor at Marist College ( Poughkeepsie, New York ) suggested that Moon's conviction helped the Unification Church gain more acceptance in mainstream American society, since it showed that he was financially accountable to the government and the public.

Key organizers of the event included George Augustus Stallings, Jr., a controversial former Roman Catholic priest who had been married by Moon, and Michael Jenkins, the president of the Unification Church of the United States at that time.

Michael Jenkins, Family Federation for World Peace and Unification

" In 2010 National Public Radio reported that young members of the Unification Church " bristle at the term ' Moonie '", while USA Today reported that " the folks who follow Rev.

" 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.

Massimo Introvigne, who studied the Unification Church and other new religious movements, said that this confirmed that full-time membership is no longer considered crucial to church members.

In 1997, Al Sharpton, a Christian minister and a candidate for the 2004 presidential election, who had also taken part in other Unification Church events and holidays, took part in a blessing ceremony at RFK Stadium, Washington, D. C., as a wedding-vow renewal with his wife.

According to the same poll, if status quo is not an option and the ones who were surveyed must choose between " Independence " or " Unification ", 65 % are in favor of independence while 19 % would opt for unification.

According to a December 2009 poll from a Taiwanese mainstream media TVBS, if status quo is not an option and the ones who were surveyed must choose between " Independence " or " Unification ", 68 % are in favor of independence while 13 % would opt for unification.

Nimoy, who had earlier requested $ 1 million to cameo on The Next Generation, appeared in the episode " Unification " that aired during November 1991 to increase interest in the feature film.

In 1936, he became known across the globe for a photo ( known as the " Falling Soldier " photo ) long falsely presumed to have been taken in Cerro Muriano on the Cordoba Front of a Workers ' Party of Marxist Unification ( POUM ) Militiaman who had just been shot and was in the act of falling to his death.

Australian psychologist Len Oakes and British psychiatry professor Anthony Storr, who have written critically about cults, gurus, new religious movements and their leaders, have praised Barker's work on the Unification Church's conversion process.

Other plot lines include Jessica's adopted daughter Corinne courting Father Tim Flotsky, who ended up leaving the priesthood, and the two eventually marrying and having a child who is possessed by the Devil ; Chester being imprisoned for Peter's murder, escaping with his prison roommate Dutch, and being afflicted with amnesia after a failed operation ; Jessica's other daughter, Eunice, sleeps with a married congressman, and then falls in love with Dutch ; Mary's stepson Chuck, a ventriloquist whose hostilities are expressed through his alter ego, a quick-witted dummy named Bob ; Jessica's love affairs with several men, including Donahue, a private investigator hired to find the missing presumed-dead Chester, her psychiatrist, and a Latin American revolutionary known as " El Puerco " (" The Pig "; his friends just call him " El "); Billy Tate's confinement by a cult called the " Sunnies " ( a parody of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Movement, called the " Moonies " by its critics ), and then his affair with his school teacher who becomes unhinged ; Danny and his romantic trials with the daughter of a mobster, a black woman, a prostitute, and Chester's second wife, Annie ; and Burt's confinement to a mental institution, his abduction by aliens while being replaced with an oversexed alien look-a-like on Earth, and getting blackmailed by the Mob after becoming sheriff of their small town.

" Donald Tingle and Richard Fordyce, ministers with the Christian Church ( Disciples of Christ ) who debated two Unification Church theologians in 1977, wrote: " In short, indemnity is anything you want to make it, since you establish the conditions.

The FBI arrested six of the kidnappers, who claimed that the crime was an attempt to change Unification Church policy.

In 1987 at a church gathering, a Zimbabwean Unification Church member who was thought by Moon to be the continuous " channel " on earth for his deceased son Heung Jin Moon, " beat Bo Hi Pak so badly that he was hospitalized for a week in Georgetown Hospital.

Many CPGB and Independent Labour Party members went to fight for the Republic and with the Stalinist led International Brigades and the Workers ' Party of Marxist Unification ( POUM ) anti-fascist forces, including George Orwell who wrote about his experiences in Homage to Catalonia.

The following year, de Borchgrave played a key role in the sale of the further downsized UPI to News World Communications, the international news media company founded in 1976 by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, who was also the founder of The Washington Times for which de Borchgrave had worked earlier.

Famous people from Sunchang include Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, who was born there.

One such example were the Swiss serving under Francis II of the Two Sicilies who defended Gaeta in 1860 during the Italian War of Unification.

Other influential supporters of the AUF include Dr. André Action Diakité Jackson, who is an AUF National Committee Member African Unification Front and chairman of the ADC & ADPA in Luanda, Angola ; John Atta-Mills the president of Ghana, Alhaji Yahaya Ndu who is also a member of the AUF National Committee and the president of the African Renaissance Party in Nigeria, Alimamy Bakarr Sankoh, head of the Sierra Leone People's Democratic League ( PDL ), and Dr. Miria Matembe ,< ref >