Religious Intolerance

My pieces regarding management of The Washington Times and its downward spiral have appeared on the Huffington Post and prompted visceral comments from people who raled against me and "the Moonies."

Some comments to set the record straight:

• Yes, The Washington Times was founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who also founded the Unification Church, which has about 12,000 members in the United States but more in Japan and East Asia.

• Moon is actually a successful multi-billion-dollar global business entrepreneur, so people who focus on his religion to denigrate him and The Washington Times are missing the greater point that Moon has amassed billions through his fishing and mining production businesses worldwide, manufacturing in China and elsewhere. And he has used that fortune to oppose global communism and totalitarian dictatorships, in all their forms, that restrict liberty of citizens and democracy. So what's the beef?

People have posted comments on Huffington Post in response to my pieces, many complaining that I made reference to my 21 years as a national reporter for The Washington Times and these critics bashed Moon as a way to suggest that none of our work is credible.

Well, this is not new to me. Religious intolerance is alive and well in our land, particularly among conservatives of all stripes.

The Reverend Moon's ideology is based on his stated belief that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was Satan's victory and that Christ's resurrection never happened, which I believe is rubbish, and I said that to the Reverend Moon at a dinner on Kodiak Island in Alaska in August 1997. So the Reverend Moon says he is here as the "second coming" because Christ should have married and had a "perfect" family, and Moon and his current wife (is it the third?) are purportedly building a "perfect" family, including frequent mass-arranged marriages of couples, the first huge mass wedding occurring at RFK stadium in Washington, D.C. as the Reverend Moob launched The Washington Times.

One of those married at that ceremony -- Josette Shearan -- to Yale University theological PhD graduate Whitney Shiner -- a lovely couple and both wonderful people -- hired me at The Washington Times, went on to become a top senior editor at the paper, then moved on as CEO of Empower America with Bill Bennett, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Jack Kemp, then became deputy U.S. Trade Representative with Robert Zoelick with ambassador rank, and now is the top U.S. State Department under-secretary for global trade and economic development and a key adviser to Secretary Condoleezza Rice.

I don't personally agree with the Reverend Moon's religious ideology, but in my more than two decades at The Washington Times, no one ever laid a hand on me or my stories from his religious perspective, and I never got any instructions to write or rewrite a story from a Moon persective.

But in terms of the "perfect family" scenario, read the published account of Moon ex-daughter-in-law Nansook Hong to get a chilling account of what went on in the Moon household in Westchester, New York. This has nothing to do with religion, but personal libertarianism and materialism out-of-control, and actual lunacy of some members of the rich Moon family.

There is another frenzied lunatic movement in our country and elsewhere of Christian evangelical people who try to get Jews to leave their faith and become Christians. They call their movement Messianic Judaism. I was once blamed for being "anti-semitic" because I did not want a fervently Southern Baptist family member to be involved and spend time in this Messianic Judaism movement, instead of doing other productive things. So I called a Jewish friend, Mark Levin, who was chief of staff to Edwin Meese III when he was President Ronald Reagan's attorney general, to ask about this scurrilous anti-semitism accusation. And guess what he said?

The person accusing me of anti-semitism was actually the anti-semite, because anyone who tried and worked to take Jewish people away from their faith to become Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or whatever was, ipso facto, anti-semitic.

Quite frankly, I'm weary of Christians who question a person's belief in God and whether they are "saved" or not because of a commitment to Jesus Christ. That's not in our pay grade. The Bible says, "Judge not lest ye be judged." That's God's role when we die, to be the Judge and decide whether we go to heaven, hell (or purgatory in the Catholic paradigm).

The same with traditional Mormons. I have many lovely Mormon friends, wonderful family people, but many of my mainstream church Christian friends (Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, non-denominational Protestant) question the Mormon religion and their beliefs. Well, I tell my friends to forget it. Most Mormons are wonderful family people, and one of their chief leaders, Willard Marriott, has built the leading global hotel chain. The Marriott ethic in their hotels is hospitality par excellante, and the company trains and treats its employees better than any I know as a longtime traveler. So purported Christians who question the Christian faith and commitment of Mormons are wrong because, as my parents used to tell me, the proof is in the pudding.

The same with Muslims. As a national reporter for The Washington Times in 1995, I was assigned to cover the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, which focused on a proposed platform for world feminist advancement. Well guess what happened?

At the little village near Beijing where the world's feminist non-government organizations met and had their exhibits, the global lesbian leaders were hosted in a special tent organized by the Australian women delegates, and on a particular Sunday when everyone was invited to attend religious services according to their faith, the lesbians organized an attack on the Muslim country exhibits.

The western feminists were upset that Muslim women wore veils and had different views on male-female relationships than western women, so the lesbians joined and ran through the village shreaking and hollering, ripped off Muslim womens' veils, sprayed red liquid on their exhibits, and cpmmitted other acts of vandalism. It was a hate crime, pure and simple, and the United Nations officials did nothing about it.

This showed there is much religious intolerance in the world, mostly intolerance from secular non-religious and anti-religious people against people of faith -- Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and other faiths.

The bottom line for people who believe in a God who created our universe and planet Earth and everything in it - who couldn't - it boils down to tolerance and acceptance of diverse views. The problem for people of faith is that non-believers and secular people against any form of religious belief are the most intolerant and bigoted people who commit all kinds of intolerant acts against people of faith, no matter what faith.

So people of faith need to join together against a common secular humanist anti-religion enemy that wants to throttle religious faith and expression in all its forms. This is not a time for civil war between Christians and Jews against Muslims. Rather, it comes to a point where secular anti-religion forces have got government agencies doing their work to denigrate all religious groups and take them down. So what are religious faith-based groups going to do? All of us should join together to support all those who believe in God the Creator of the Universe, regardless of whether they call themselves Jew, Christian, Muslim, or whatever.

The bottom line is the need to really stand for liberty for all, tolerance among different faiths all joined in their belief in God the perfect Being and Creator of the whole universe, and in diversity as people and families of good will move around our planet to improve themselves economically and all our communities where they live.

This is the key challenge facing all people of faith over the next several years.