Sun Myung Moon

Sun Myung Moon (; born Moon Yong-Myeong; 6 January 1920 – 3 September 2012) was a Korean religious leader, also known for his business ventures and support for conservative political causes. A messiah claimant, he was the founder of the Unification Church, whose members consider him and his wife Hak Ja Han to be their "True Parents", and of its widely noted "Blessing" or mass wedding ceremonies. The author of the Unification Church's religious scripture, the ''Divine Principle'', he was an anti-communist and an advocate for Korean reunification, for which he was recognized by the governments of both North and South Korea. Businesses he promoted included News World Communications, an international news media corporation known for its American subsidiary ''The Washington Times'', and Tongil Group, a South Korean business group (chaebol), as well as other related organizations.

Moon was born in what is now North Korea. When he was a child, his family converted to Christianity. In the 1940s and 1950s, he was imprisoned multiple times by the North and South Korean governments during his early new-religious ministries, formally founding the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, simply known as the Unification Church, in Seoul, South Korea, in 1954.

The Unification Church teaches conservative, heterosexual family-oriented values from new interpretations of the Christian Bible mixed with theology from Moon's own text, the ''Divine Principle''. In 1971, Moon moved to the United States and became well known after giving a series of public speeches on his beliefs. In the 1982 case ''United States v. Sun Myung Moon'', he was found guilty of willfully filing false federal income tax returns and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. His case generated protests from clergy and civil libertarians, who said that the trial was biased against him.

Many of Moon's followers were very dedicated and were often referred to in popular parlance as "Moonies". His wedding ceremonies drew criticism, specifically after members of other churches took part, including the excommunicated Roman Catholic archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. Moon was also criticized for his relationships with political and religious figures, including U.S. presidents Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush; Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev; North Korean president Kim Il Sung; and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Provided by Wikipedia