Moon’s trusted manservant Col. Bo Hi Pak, with the real Reagan.

From the Washington Post in 1984:

With Moon and his family standing before them in ceremonial Korean dress, selected church officials played different religious and political leaders, such as Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, President Reagan and Japanese Emperor Hirohito. Each one prostrated himself before Moon, bowing his forehead to the floor three times, [former Moonie official] Soejima said.

“The meaning is that Moon is higher than all of them,” Soejima said. In church theology, “Sun Myung Moon is the father and his wife is the mother of the whole human race.”

A while back, a woman in Minneapolis, unaware of this reasoning behind the U.S. Senate’s hosting of a March 23, 2004 ritual on Capitol Hill, asked the New York Times:

To the Editor:

”A Crowning at the Capitol” (news article, June 24) described an event that was not only appalling but also frightening.

In March, a man in a Senate office building donned a crown and declared himself the Messiah. He was watched by elected officials.

Why was he permitted to do this? Why did elected officials participate? I do not understand why those who are believers are not screaming in protest.

This kind of ceremony seems to be acceptable and is allowed in Washington. Why did most of the press ignore it until now?

This terrifies me and makes me wonder: Where is this country headed?

But conservative politicians have been putting up with Mr. Moon for a long time. Former Tonight Show host Steve Allen, in this rare interview from the early 1990s, said:

There is a danger in these cults…to refer again to the political factor…if the guy is what we like to hear about and want to encourage, we’ll put up with all sorts of nonsense. A classic instance is the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.. This man says he is not come to remind us of Jesus Christ…he says I, HE, is Jesus Christ. Well, he’s not.

And nonetheless many leading conservatives, including people in Mr. Reagan’s White House invited Mr. Moon to sit on the stand when Mr. Reagan was inaugurated. And this was a group of, I don’t know, maybe a hundred people. Small group. He was there. Nut though he is. Dangerous nut though he is.

Why? Why would those brilliant Reagan advisors, some of whom I know, and some of whom were brilliant, do such a shocking thing? Because he was anti-Communist. Swell.