Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon
We are the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification
Europe and the middle east
The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification is working to create a peaceful world, not a new religion. It is a world based on mature individuals, who create good families, communities and nations.
Our goal is a world family, where people from all religions can live together in harmony, as brothers and sisters, and where the one God, who created heaven and earth, is the heavenly Father / Mother of all humankind.
A better future for humanity and peace in the world depends to a large extent on a global renewal of the family, the basic building block of our societies. The family plays a vital role in shaping the children, the future generations.
The key to creating healthy families is the married couple. Our goal is a world where all people live in harmony with themselves, their loved ones, their society and their surroundings. It is a world where there is peace, freedom, love and happiness for everyone.
The Family Federation pursues basic values like freedom, love, truth, unity, marriage, family, creativity, equality, honesty and altruism.
Today, there are many threats to such values. One big problem is a materialistic culture based on free sex, which has a most destructive effect on the family the most important institution in society. Values that strengthen the family, should be given a central position.
Today, the individual, and its rights, are at the center. It is, however, the family that is the key to solving many social problems. Well-functioning families create communities free from alcoholism, drug abuse, crime and divorce.
One of the worst attacks on family values today, comes from the entertainment industry and the media. They often preach a message based on free sex. Sex is often used to promote purely commercial interests.
We believe that sex belongs to marriage. Extramarital and premarital sex become only disruptive elements in your mental development and in the development of an intimate relationship with your spouse.
One of the most important principles that all would benefit immensely from following is to live for others, i.e. your fellow human beings, and to serve and help others.
Another important value for the Family Federation has to do with the relationship with the environment. God’s ideal is that we humans should show love and care for our surroundings, and create a world where humans and nature / environment are in total harmony with each other.
The Family Federation is a movement that – just like South Korea, the country it originates in – has experienced an amazing development over the last decades.
When Jesus Christ called Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Family Federation, to his God-given mission in 1935, the Koreans were suffering immensely under harsh Japanese colonial rule. And as soon as Korea was liberated in 1945, the Northern part, the part where Father Moon grew up, was subjected to a ruthless totalitarian Communist regime. As if the Korean people had not suffered enough, the peninsula was devastated by one of the ugliest wars of our modern era, with more than 3 million fatalities.
It was under such circumstances, with the odds heavily against him, that Father Moon began the work Jesus had summoned him to do. The young Korean was first tortured by the Japanese oppressors. Then, when he preached in Pyongyang, the Communist regime arrested him and tortured him until he was more dead than alive. One year later, they sentenced him to five years in a horrendous concentration camp. It is truly a miracle that he survived any of those ordeals.
As a penniless refugee, he started preaching in the South during the Korean war. Months after the war, with a handful of followers, he founded the Unification Church. By the time the Family Federation was inaugurated in the USA in 1996, the movement had grown immensely and spread to most nations of the world.
The Divine Principle, the English name of what has been serving as the official teachings of Father Moon since the 1960s (first English version in 1973), was primarily written for a Christian audience, with hundreds of Bible quotes. Father Moon kept saying, however, that his original intention was never to establish a church or a new religion. So, after the Family Federation was established, several more textbooks expressing his teachings appeared, written for a much wider audience.
The Family Federation became the first movement of its kind founded by a couple – Father and Mother Moon. When Sun Myung Moon left this world in 2012, Mother Moon carried on the work to spread the ideals that the Family Federation promotes.
Since Father Moon’s passing, large religious groups have started to embrace Father and Mother Moon’s teachings.
Rev. Sun Myung Moon (1920-2012) and his wife Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon. After marrying in 1960, they devoted their entire lives to creating a world where all people can live in peace, harmony, and happiness.
Known affectionately as the Father and Mother of Peace, they worked tirelessly to enable and reinforce committed marriages and strong, healthy families as the building block for peaceful societies, and to foster international and intercultural reconciliation.
Beyond religion, nationality, race and ethnicity, we are all one human family, the holy community of God, our heavenly parent.
Many international organisations were created to accomplish this purpose, including the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), the Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP), the International Association of Youth and Students for Peace (IAYSP), as well as many others across the world.
He founded several organizations, including the Unification Church in 1954 in Seoul, South Korea, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification in 1996 in Washington DC and the Universal Peace Federation in 2005 in New York. He is also known for arranging so-called “Blessing ceremonies” since 1960, the year he himself got married. They are often called mass marriages or mass weddings. Father Moon is also known for founding several newspapers, including The Washington Times in 1982.
Sun Myung Moon was a skilled orator, and his speeches have been published in collections of over 600 volumes, mainly in Korean, but extracts from the speeches have been translated and published in a wide range of languages. His original religious teachings are called the Unification Principles (Wolli – 원리- in Korean – translated as Divine Principle in English. The Korean word wolli actually means principle or principles.)
Father Moon was far more than a religious leader. He thus founded and supported dozens of organizations to promote international understanding and create lasting peace in the world. He was an outspoken opponent of totalitarian, atheistic communism and founded several organizations that developed a systematic ideological critique of communism. Father Moon also strongly believed in culture and sports as peace-making activities and invested in football clubs, symphony orchestras and ballet. Already in 1963, he formed a dance troupe for children, The Little Angels, which eventually became outstanding ambassadors for Korean culture. Moon invested in the establishment of a car factory in North Korea. He saw the ocean’s resources as the key to fighting hunger and malnutrition, and invested a lot in fish farming and also developed fish products rich in high-quality protein.
Sun Myung Moon organized a long series of interfaith conferences to promote cooperation between religions, and also proposed the creation of an Interfaith Council at the United Nations. He was an ardent advocate of the construction of a tunnel under the Bering Strait to unite the nations of the world by means of an international highway.
Dr. Hak Ja Han was born on 10th February 1943 (6th day of the first month according to the Oriental lunar calendar) in the village of Shineui in the district of Anju in present-day North Korea. Her parents were committed Christians. She became an only child because her parents were separated due to political unrest. When the communists took power in North Korea, the then five-year-old Hak Ja Han was imprisoned together with her mother for eleven days. To escape the bloody persecution of Christians, she fled in 1948 with her mother and grandmother, both of whom belonged to charismatic movements, to South Korea, where the three eventually settled in the city of Daegu. Her mother, Soon-ae Hong (1914-1989), met in March 1956 the then newly founded Unification Church, which she joined together with her daughter.
Hak Ja Han was trained as a nurse at a Catholic vocational school. On 11th April 1960 (16th day of the 3rd month according to the Oriental lunar calendar) she married Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon (1920-2012). Over the next 21 years, the couple had 14 children – seven girls and seven boys. Mother Moon, as she is fondly called by members, is now a grandmother to over 40 grandchildren and has also become a great-grandmother. In addition to taking care of all the children, she has always been involved in activities with her husband. This led to an extensive travel itinerary. In Sun Myung Moon’s autobiography “As a Peace Loving Global Citizen”, he writes that she was always concerned about the children: “So great was her love for the children that she did not let a single day pass without writing and sending letters and postcards to the children when she was away from home and traveling with me to various places in the world on speaking tours” (translated from Korean version, pages 226-7).
After the family moved to the United States in 1972, she and her husband completed countless public appearances at conferences and festivals, seminars and Unification Movement events. She also spent considerable time with her husband and other family members in nature – salmon fishing in Alaska and trips to the South American Pantanal wetlands. Both she and her husband were very concerned about green issues and the environmental crisis, which is described in detail in “As a Peace Loving Global Citizen” (pages 307-311).
Hak Ja Han became the first president of the Women’s Federation for World Peace, a women’s movement she and her husband founded in April 1992 in Seoul.
From that year, she embarked on several speaking tours. She gave public speeches in more than 100 countries all over the world. In 1993, she spoke at the UN building in New York and at the Capitol, seat of the US Congress, in Washington DC. During a visit to Bejing, a meeting was arranged with the son of Chinese President Deng Xiaoping to promote a charity project. Hak Ja Han received much media attention when she spoke with former US President George W. Bush and his wife Barbara at peace events in September 1995 in Tokyo and other cities in Japan.
Hak Ja Han holds several positions. She is co-founder of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification and the Universal Peace Federation – just to name a few.
She has been awarded many honorary doctorates.
After her husband’s death in 2012, she has only continued her lifelong efforts to build a kingdom of heaven here on earth, a peaceful world based on harmonious families and individuals. She has also launched notable new initiatives, such as the founding of the Sunhak Peace Prize.
She is particularly interested in the reunification of the Korean peninsula, and in recent years took the initiative to host large rallies for peace in the largest South Korean cities as well as speaking at large peace meetings with over 10,000 participants in major cities around the world, including Vienna, New York, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Bangkok, Busan, Osaka and Nagoya.
Hak Ja Han is perhaps best known for the mass weddings which she and her husband officiated for many years. After he passed away, she has continued with such large weddings every single year.
Together with her husband Sun Myung Moon, Hak Ja Han holds the title “True Parents”.
Her name is sometimes written Hak Ja Han Moon, especially in the Western world. In South Korea, women do not take the husband’s name when marrying, but in Western countries “Moon” is often added after her name to make it clear that she is Sun Myung Moon’s wife. In Korean writing, the name is 한학자 – Han Hak-ja. The family name always comes first. The family name Han is pronounced with a long a. Hak Ja are the two first names, sometimes written Hak-ja, pronounced with short a’s.
God is the Creator, who created everything to realize His ideal. Central to God’s ideal are mature men and women, harmonious marriages and families with God at the center, and a humanity that lives in harmony with nature.
God is not only masculine but also feminine. In God, the masculine and the feminine are in harmony with each other.
The essence of God is His heart. God also has feelings, intellect, and will. He created us humans for us to exist in a love relationship with Him. The relationship between God and human beings is a parent-child relationship. God wants us humans, His children, to understand Him. Our teachings provide a thorough explanation of God’s nature and His deep heart.
We see God as the Creator of the universe. The essence of God is his heart and mind, while his energy represents his outer aspect. Since heart is central to God, he longs for a heart relationship with us, that is, a love relationship. Emotions, intellect, and will are important qualities of God’s mind. He created us humans in His image, with these qualities. To develop a relationship with God therefore, means to come to feel some of the things God feels, think along similar paths to God, and develop a will to do some of the things that God likes to see done.
God does not live for himself. He exists for others. Therefore, it is an important principle for us not to live for ourselves, but to live for our fellow human beings.
God is the source of unity and it is when we ourselves attain unity in our own life, that we become one with God. God can become one with those who become one with each other. It is when mind and body become one that we may feel God. When man and woman become one, they may feel God. When we are in harmony with nature, we may feel God.
The relationship between God and humans is like a parent-child relationship. God is like our Father / Mother, and we are meant to be his / her children.
Absolutely! Ethical ideals are a very important part of the Family Federation. Our very goal is to create a world based on ethical ideals. In our teachings, we explain how God created man and the whole universe to realize his ideal of love. God is our Heavenly Father / Mother and created us humans as the highest of all created beings, and as His/Her children, in order for Him/Her to have a deep love relationship with us.
In order for this ideal to be realized, God wanted us all to grow to perfection. That can only happen when we put spiritual values above the material. Perfection / maturity means becoming people who have a deep relationship with God’s heart, and who are able to love their fellow human beings 100%, in a selfless and unconditional way. Becoming such people means that God’s ideal is realized on the individual level. This is therefore an ethical ideal that God wants us all to realize, an absolute ideal.
Central to our movement’s teachings is the ideal of marriage. Originally, when God created the first humans, God planned that those who realize God’s ideal on an individual level, would then enter into a marriage that He/She could bless. Such a marriage is an eternal relationship, not only for our earthly life, but also for our eternal life in heaven.
In order to realize the ideal of marriage, it is absolutely necessary to live for one’s spouse, to be faithful to and invest 100 % in him / her. The attitude necessary to create a harmonious marriage is to want to make one’s spouse happy, not to put one’s own happiness first. The greatest joy is to make others happy.
The family ideal is, of course, closely related to the ideal of marriage. We see the family as an extremely important part of God’s ideal. The individual’s happiness depends on good experiences within the family. The family is the fundamental unit where we may experience all of life’s four basic forms of love, namely children’s love for their parents, sibling’s love, marital love and parental love. If our families function well, so can our communities. If we grow up with positive experiences of love within the family, we will also be able to create positive and deep relationships with our fellow human beings elsewhere in the society / world.
Another important ethical ideal for us, has to do with the relationship with our surroundings. God’s ideal is that we humans should show love and care for our surroundings, and create a world where humans and nature / surroundings are in total harmony with each other.
It is not a certain atmosphere per se that we in The Family Federation primarily seek to create. Our primary goal is to create a world of love. We seek to practice such a love whenever we meet. We seek to live a life based on a true love for our fellow human beings. And love creates the atmosphere.
It is, of course, easier said than done to create a world of love, but we aim for that goal. It is when people from very different backgrounds show a true love for each other, across religious, racial, cultural and national divides, that God can finally feel at home in the human world. And that is what God has always longed for, to live in the midst of us.
According to the Family Federation, human beings, both man and woman, were created by God to realize God’s ideal. The ideal for us humans is to first become mature men and women not only physically, but far more significantly, also spiritually. God created us as social beings. Therefore, the individual maturity, as the world religions mention, is not the highest goal in life. We are created to create harmonious marriages and families. Such families are the very foundation of harmonious societies, nations, and a world of peace.
Man is primarily a spiritual being. We are a spirit and have a body. Our physical body is something we have for a certain number of years in the physical part of our life. The purpose of our physical body is to make our spirit perfect, based on the life we live. Our spirit is in fact largely shaped by our actions.
However, because evil and sin entered the world, God’s ideal for humanity was never realized. We became sinful people in a sinful world. Everyone, to a greater or lesser degree, bears traces of sin and the fallen human nature. That is why we humans need salvation.
You need spiritual insight because you are essentially a spirit. You only have the body for a certain number of years and lose it when you die. But your spirit, your soul, your inner self, lives on. Spiritual insight helps you adjust to spiritual reality and your eternal home there.
Some. One of the most important, according to the Family Federation, is not to have sex before marriage. When you are married, you should only have sex with your spouse. We view sex as something sacred, belonging to marriage.
Other rules to live by are to stay away from alcohol and drugs, as well as pornography. Masturbation is also not recommended. Masturbation only has to do with satisfying oneself. The main aspect of sex should be to satisfy your partner. This is the principle of living for others applied in the sexual field.
Another rule is that one should learn to live for others and serve them.
We do not have a lot of rules for our everyday life. The most important thing in life is love. Anything that helps to realize what we call “God’s three great blessings to humanity” is good. What prevents us from realizing them is evil. The blessings are 1) Individual maturity. 2) Marriage and family with God as the center. 3) Man’s stewardship of the environment, both physically and spiritually.
During his lifetime, Father Moon (1920-2012) was the global leader and also leader of several projects of the Unification Movement. But he most often consulted with a council of elders, as well as his own wife.
Since his death, Mother Moon, Hak Ja Han, is the top leader. Under her guidance, there is a leader for each of the various movements that make up the Unification Movement. Each such leader also has a board with whom he/she consults.
The movement also has continental leaders. Under them, there are regional leaders of a group of countries. Under them again, national leaders and local leaders. At each of these levels, the leader consults a board of elected members.
Membership is open to anyone, young and old, men and women. It is easy to become a member of the Family Federation, but the necessary steps may vary slightly from country to country. So we advise you to contact your national or local branch. In some countries, all it takes is to fill in an online registration form. In other countries, you may first have to attend a short seminar, where key points of the teaching and movement are explained.
There are many benefits of becoming a member.
First, you may become a better person. You learn to respect yourself and realize your potential. You gain a better self-understanding. You get a 100 percent positive goal in your life.
Second, you will learn how to develop better and more meaningful relationships with friends, your loved ones and your fellow human beings in general.
Third, you learn to deeply respect your surroundings and to treat everything and everyone with the respect they deserve. God loves all creation and all people. Step by step you learn to familiarize yourself with God’s feelings toward the created things and your fellow human beings.
The members of the Family Federation, like most people, have their own political opinions, and some members are also politically active. But our movement is first and foremost a religious / spiritual movement and has no political doctrine. However, there are things in our society that a religious / spiritual movement cannot close its eyes to.
Our movement thus took a clear anti-communist stance throughout the Cold War. This was not done for political reasons, but because we view any totalitarian system, be it communism, fascism or extreme forms of nationalism, as something evil. God created us to be free people in a free world. Communism is not just a totalitarian system, but represents in addition a materialism that denies God and the human spirit, and is militantly opposed to religion. Communism is the very antithesis of the ideals we promote.
Today, there are many threats to a world based on values such as freedom, love, truth, unity, creativity, equality and justice. One big problem we face today, is a materialistic culture based on free sex, which represents forces that have a most destructive effect on the family, the most important institution in our society. We believe that values that can strengthen the family should be given a central position in society.
Today, the individual, and his / her rights, are at the center. The family, on the other hand, is the key to solving many of our social problems. Well-functioning families create communities free from alcoholism, drug abuse, crime and divorce, societies where everyone can feel at home.
We are opposed to any attempt to undermine the family’s central place, and are strongly against anything that exposes our children to unethical and immoral ideas. One of the worst attacks on family values today comes from the entertainment industry and the media. They often preach a message based on free sex. Sex is often used to promote purely commercial interests. We believe that sex is a part of marriage. Young people clearly benefit from abstaining from sex until they are married. In marriage, faithfulness to your spouse is the only recommendable option. Unfaithful spouses almost inevitably lead to divorce or dysfunctional homes.
According to the Family Federation, God created everything in nature as an environment specially designed for us humans. We are created to live in harmony with nature and love and care for everything there. God wants us humans to manage nature in a loving way. To do so, we need in-depth knowledge of the laws of nature and everything in nature: plants, animals, minerals, etc. We regard the environment as very important.
According to the Family Federation, the love of God is 100 % selfless. God exists for others. He created us humans to live in a love relationship with Him. In other words, God longs for a deep love relationship with each of us.
Because of the Fall, God never experienced such a loving relationship with humanity. The first man and woman never reached the required maturity for such a relationship. They were in a unique position as the parents of all humankind, and all human beings descended from them. Their relationship was not based on a mature, selfless love where God was at the center. Because of that, they created a world based on an immature, selfish and false love. “False” is used here in the sense of a love that has nothing to do with God, the source of true love.
A family based on the true love of God means that husband and wife strive to love each other in a selfless way, where they fully invest in each other. The purpose of true love is to make the other happy, not to satisfy oneself. A prerequisite for true marital love is to be faithful to one’s partner. In a family based on true love, parents invest fully in their children. The parents live for the children and want the children to be better than their mum and dad. True love for children also means taking responsibility for them.
A better future for humanity and peace in the world depends entirely on a global renewal of the family, the basic building block of our societies. The family plays a vital role in shaping the children, the future generations. And the key to creating healthy families is the married couple.
From physics, we know that two points are not enough to make something balance. In the same way, husband and wife are not enough either. A third point is necessary to create a balanced and lasting relationship. A married couple needs a common spiritual center. The ultimate center of a love relationship is the very source of true love: God! That is why the slogan for the mass weddings has been “Families with God at the centre”.
According to Genesis, God made man in His image, as man and woman. Thus, it takes a man and a woman to fully express God’s spirit. It’s through the harmonious couple that the spirit of God may be present in our families.
God is our Parent (Father/Mother). And it is through being good parents to our children, that we may begin to feel God’s parental love for humankind.
Such a renewal of the family is something that neither governments nor religious communities can achieve. That is why God has called Father and Mother Moon to hold large ceremonies, so that as many as possible may receive the Blessing of God upon their marriage. Since their own marriage in 1960, Father and Mother Moon have blessed millions of couples The ceremonies are open to people of all races, nationalities and religions. When millions of men and women begin to do their best to realize God’s ideal of love in their marriages and families, this will eventually change the world.
In his lifetime, Father Moon was known as the world’s biggest matchmaker. He personally suggested to men and women who would be a good marriage partner for them.
Since he left this world in 2012, most of the second generation young participants in the large weddings have found their own partner in cooperation with their parents. Those who are not born into the faith, may apply to be introduced to a potential spouse by the Family Federation. Many of the participants in today’s large wedding ceremonies are couples who are already married in their own religion or civilly. For such couples, the Blessing of marriage represents a renewal of their marriage vows and a renewed determination to create a marriage/ family with God at the centre.
