Reverend Moon: A Bush Family Album

By John Gorenfeld
Talk to Action


During the 2004 race for president, Kevin Phillips, the Nixon staffer promoting his book American Dynasty, pitched the Democrats an easy one. "Why don't they spend a little time talking about all the people George W. Bush associates with in religion-like towers?" said Phillips on PBS's "NOW."

He pointed to Sun Myung Moon, the wealthy friend of the Bush family and publisher of the Washington Times, who'd just made the news for wearing a crown and robes on Capitol Hill and informing a gathering of House of Representatives members he was the Second Coming. Phillips also mentioned an incident in which Doug Wead, the Bush family point man on religion, lured Southern Baptists to a 2001 inaugural prayer lunch hosted by Moon. As it turned out, the, luncheon welcomed Bush to the White House but also celebrated the teachings of Moon, who calls Jesus a failure in contrast to his own splendor. "And then you turn around and go to the Sun Belt and pretend that you're the hero of every fundamentalist and evangelical," Phillips said of such Republicans.

In 2001, Wead mailed out invitations that brought 1,700 Christian leaders to an "Inaugural Prayer Luncheon For Unity and Renewal." An important detail was left out: the inaugural luncheon was to celebrate the vision of interdenominational "unity" particular to Reverend Moon, the Unification Church leader who was the star of the event.

Moon, long interested in uniting Christianity under his fatherly authority, spoke at the event, and was presented with honors naming him the equal of Billy Graham and Martin Luther King. Guests leaving the banquet hall fumed after being handed pamphlets praising Moon's church.

Afterwards, SBC executive Morris Chapman told the Baptist Press the Bush luncheon (which also featured then-Attorney General John Ashcroft) reminds us "that the world increasingly is filled with wolves in sheep's clothing."

(There's more to the story, here.)