Former Member: Allen Tate Wood

[Peter Daley]

Allen Tate Wood's website
Author of Moonstruck: A M<emoir of my Life in a Cult

1985, Summer: Allen Tate Wood on Sun Myung Moon & the UC (North Texas State Interview/Tragedy Of the Six Marys)

Hello I'm Tom Waldren and with me today I have Allen Tate Wood, former chief political officer and former state leader of the Unification Church, commonly known as the Moonies. He has been working to inform the public about the dangers of destructive cults since 1975.

ATW: Well, I would say that the basis of his power is two things: deception and service. I think that people today are deceived into joining the Unification Church – this is the rank and file members who join as people who are serious, people who believe that they have had a serious religious experience or that they have met God. But in fact they are inducted into a situation which is taking control of them. But in addition to the rank and file member who joins essentially in good faith, you have many, many fellow-travelers, or people that Mr Moon is wooing. He is trying to gain influence over them, and he woos them with service.

TW: Such as?

ATW: So, politicians for instance. Mr Moon will provide services to a politician, or he will provide backing to a candidate, or one of his front groups will provide money to a political candidate to help him carry out his campaign.

TW: Which he himself gets through donations.

ATW: Yes, the Unification Church raises money through a whole host of organizations but its principal fundraising activity in the United States is done by young converts who are on the streets 16 hours a day selling peanuts, flowers, candy, whatever. That money goes to the Unification Church headquarters and is spent on a wide variety of Unification Church projects.

TW: He claims to derive some of his ideas, his ideology, from Christianity. On the other hand he also claims he is the messiah. Now that is kind of a contradiction. How did you deal with that at the time when you were approached?

ATW: Well, of course when I was approached I wasn't told that Mr Moon was the messiah. When I was approached I was told that I was going to be meeting some people who were involved in a religious commune, that their philosophy was essentially Christian, or Christian based. It was only after a certain amount of time that I found out they believed that Mr Moon was the messiah. Of course their teaching explains and justifies this and says that it is completely coherent and congruent with the bible. But if one goes deeply into the Unification Church you find out that in fact it is anti-Christian. It repudiates the essential tenets of Christianity.

TW: OK. Now when you discovered that there was contradiction in there, how long had you been in the cult itself?

ATW: Hmm... Well, I think that you begin imbibing contradictions as you go in, and the longer you're in, the deeper the contradictions are. So for instance when I first me the Unification Church I was told that Mr Moon was a virgin at the age of 40 when he married his present wife. After I'd been in the church for a year or so I found out that actually there had been an earlier wife. After I'd been in for two years I found out now that there had been an earlier wife than that, and in fact in 1970 in Japan, I met Mr Moon's eldest son, [Sung Jin Moon] who at that stage was 24 years old. So he was born in 1946. So Mr Moon was not a pure virgin in 1960 when he married his present wife. Yet when I joined the Unification Church, that was part of the doctrine. We were taught that he was a pure virgin until the age of 40, and that was part of the basis upon which I made my commitment to the church.

The interview continues and is as enlightening as it is long

July 2, 2008: The Social Impact of Cult Groups (The New Statesman/The Internet Archive)