#michael mickler

October 14, 2013

By Michael Mickler, Professor of Church History, UTS

http://appliedunificationism.com/2013/10/14/is-russia-more-aligned-with-gods-will-than-the-united-states/

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Second, Americans have incorrectly interpreted freedom. Again dating back to the Puritans, U.S. civil liberties have been securely anchored within a compass of moral values and the public good. America was great because she was good. However, in contemporary American society, freedom has come to mean the freedom to do most anything one wants so long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s freedom to do most anything they want. As a consequence, the United States has become identified with moral decadence and individualism.

This returns us to the provocative question of whether, from a Unification viewpoint, America’s old adversary, Russia, is more aligned with God’s will than the United States. In a 1989 interview with Za Rubezhom, a Russian weekly, Rev. Moon stated, “through … efforts in favor of true democratization and true religious freedom, the Soviet Union will be able not only to keep up with the West but to overtake it.”

The Soviet Union, of course, is long gone, but Russia lives. And in an odd role reversal, it has taken positions over the past decade or longer that are more in accord with international norms in politics, traditional values in morality, and idealism toward the future than has the United States. This is evident in contrasting U.S. and Russian stances on matters related to: war and peace, mass surveillance programs, persecution of Christians in the Middle East, same-sex marriage, the Bering Strait crossing, and Korean reunification. ...

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Mickler wrote this article after Russia was involved in the following recent conflicts:

1991-1993 Georgian Civil War 1991-1992 South Ossetian War 1992-1993 Abkhazia 1992 Transnistria 1992 Ossetian-Ingush conflict 1992-1997 Tajikistani Civil War 1994-1996 Chechnya War 1 1999 Dagestan War 1999-2009 Chechnya War 2 2008 Russo-Georgian War 2009-2017 Insurgency in the North Caucasus

Michael Mickler, 

from Dan Fefferman’s November 2000 review of ‘40 Years in America’

“As most long-time members recognize, the American Unification movement experienced substantial and rapid growth in the early 1970s, virtually doubling in membership every year from 1970-1974. Michael Mickler offers an intriguing thought as to the nature of the brick wall we hit after that. He sees the experimental Barrytown training project in 1975 as symptomatic of a departure from the American tradition that had previously brought such success. He cites four factors:

1) the sharpening of in-out distinctions between the movement and world

2) an extreme emphasis on fallen nature and obedience to central figures

3) a counterproductive shift away from center life and toward individual pioneering by young members and

4) the creation of an unattractive sense of desperation that failed to bring about the hoped for Pentecost.

But Barrytown was only one symptom of a larger problem. “To a large extent,” says Mickler, “Barrytown was a Japanese import... The Japanese outlook and modes of operation became even more pervasive in the church’s mobile fundraising teams.”

The result was a new church culture. College-aged Americans took on a soldier-like demeanor that had little appeal to their peers. They wore ties while witnessing, spoke urgently of the dangers of Communism, testified less frequently to the joys of their international community, stopped singing popular songs in favor or oriental Holy Songs, and sometimes even spoke in stilted English with a Japanese accent. The American movement may only now be fully recovering from that cultural shift.”