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This article deals with a study of the Moonies in Belgium, focusing on unificationism. It was learned that the Unification Church has been accorded an importance in western countries because of the attention of the mass media. Orchestrated press campaigns have typically alleged that Moonies induce converts to break off contact with their families, deceive donors and potential converts about their identity, and brainwash their recruits. The media have both fed and in part created public and political concern, yet, outside the Far East, there have never been more than about 12,000 Moonies. The organization, development and activities of Moonies in Belgium was examined to determine who had joined, how they were attracted and recruited, and the consequences for family relationships. Compared with other places, Unification Church in Belgium enjoys considerable autonomy, having first depended for assistance in evangelism on Austrian missionaries, who began work in 1968-69. The Belgian Church began properly in 1973, when a Belgian couple were converted in Denmark. The main activities of Belgian Moonies were witnessing, fund-raising, and business. Their activities differ from other Church congregations.

This paper reports the findings of a participant observation study of the role system of the Unification Church. After noting several strategic inconsistencies in the literature on roles and the organization of authority in the Church, the paper describes 1) the therapeutic ideology of "heart" elaborated by the Moonies; 2) the communal ideal they pursue, the personalized family; 3) the two fundamental role-sets of the Church: father and child, Abel and Cam; and 4) the organization of these roles in a therapeutic but hierarchical apparatus of charismatic relations. On the basis of its role system, the Church synthesizes the seemingly opposed social forms of personalism and authoritarianism in a distinctively therapeutic religion; it is an egalitarian gemeinschaft which organizationally integrates the "impulsive focus" of the contemporary narcissistic culture of emotions with its apparent opposite, the "institutional focus" of extreme religious fundamentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been very little social science research on the financing of social movements despite the obviously critical role economic resources play in movement survival and impact This paper offers a major accounting of the economic structure of the Unificationist Movement The primary resource generating and disbursing structures are described and the relationships among them analyzed This analysis suggests that 1) the movement is a minor factor in the religious economy although relatively highly diversified, 2) the economic structure is consistent with the characteristics of a world transforming movement, and 3) the Unificationist Movement is most unusual in its creation of a corporate conglomerate to underwrite its theological agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is informed that religious sects have been studied sociologically as social movements, minorities and deviant groups. The perspective of the sociology of deviance has principally been adopted in attempts to understand those instances when a sectarian group has aroused public hostility. It is opined that both deviance amplification and the sect-to-denomination models can offer important insights into the role of public hostility in the life of a religious movement. It is informed that the principal aim of this article is to demonstrate the need to take a broad view of the dynamics of conflict between nascent religious sects and their "host" societies by examining the limitations of the deviance-amplification model and the ambiguities implicit in the sect-to-denomination model. This critical evaluation of the deviance amplification and sect-to-denomination models will be conducted with reference to two empirical cases: first, that of the public hostility around by the Mormons in mid-nineteenth-century Illinois, and second that of the Moonies in Great Britain during the last decade.

This research investigates the hypothesis that perceptions of cult indoctrination techniques are based on negative schematic representations as opposed to objective evaluations. It Is specifically suggested that individuals who are asked to evaluate cult indoctrination techniques are anchoring their judgments on the group label in contrast to the process being employed. Subjects were asked to read a description of a young man who joins a group and is exposed to its indoctrination process. Depending on the condition, subjects were led to believe that the group was either the Moonies, the Marines, or the Catholic Church. Except for the group label, in all three conditions the description of the indoctrination process was identical. Subjects were then asked to evaluate both the group's indoctrination techniques and the individual who joined the group, and to complete a questionnaire regarding their general knowledge of cults. Results indicate that subject ratings are significantly affected by the group label and that general knowledge regarding cults is based primarily on indirect sources. Implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Samples of one new religious group (Unificationists) and two established religious groups (Catholics and Presbyterians) were compared on measures of the importance of communal experiences to one's religious faith and the number of prior religious associations. A three-way interaction emerged among religious group, importance of communal experiences, and number of prior religious associations. Also, communal experiences in a religious context generally were valued for the social support they provide, although the type of social support differed among the three groups. These findings provide evidence of the ‘communalization of experience’ and religious searching for some members of one new religion and even for some members of two established religions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]