In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family

From the beginning,Nansook Hong tells a story that can break your heart.She grew up believing in Reverend Moon,with the sweet innocent faith of a child.When she was only 15,Reverend Moon selected Nansook to be the wife of his eldest son.She writes that her faith began to be shattered,when she saw the true reality of life in Reverend Moon's family.Nansook began a very lonely journey of life,living with a brutal husband who did not love her;and a family that failed to live according to the high ideals of love that Reverend Moon has always preached to the world.Her only joy in life was her children,and a continuing faith in God through all adversity. I have been a Unification Church member for many years,and reading Nansook's book has been a devastating experience for me.Through the spiritual pain that I now feel,I believe what Nansook has written.We must always face the truth,if we are ever going to have any kind of a really decent life.By writing her book,Nansook has given a gift of much needed truth to everyone. Nansook's story is often sad and heartbreaking,but it is ultimately an inspiring story of deep love and personal courage in the face of great danger. From her book,we can learn the absolute necessity of always striving to have a responsible and a caring heart.This is a very vital,important book. I give it my highest recommendation. END

Nansook Hong's insider account of life under the same roof as Sun Myung Moon and his wife and children reveals the magnitude of the fraud perpetrated by Moon, who teaches his followers to remain totally abstinent until they are married by him. Even after marriage they must often endure additional waiting periods, undergo a bizarre sexual ritual (the "3-Day Ceremony") and put up with lengthy separations from their spouses, all at the express commandment of Sun Myung Moon. They regard these deprivations as virtuous and a necessary part of building the Kingdom of Heaven. But, as Nansook Hong reveals in this devastating tell-all account, Sun Myung Moon does not live up to his own teachings. He has frequent affairs, which he rationalizes as "providential", that is, mandated by God. He tolerates the same behavior in his children and merely seeks to conceal it from public knowledge. He forbids his followers from using drugs, yet turns a blind eye to his own children's drug abuse. He frequently visits gambling casinos in Las Vegas and claims that somehow by doing so he is spiritually elevating the other gamblers. Nansook Hong's brave book tears away the facade and reveals the rot at the core.

I never joined, but I was in the Unification Church for 5 months in 1979. I met many fine, intelligent and idealistic people. The theology was fascinating and seemed "modern" to me -- at first. As Nansook Hong writes, Mr. Moon and his minions took full advantage of the idealism and youthful energy of the young people they targeted for their movement -- who were fundraising fodder for a fake Messiah.Hong's book is an excellent expose of this deeply flawed cult and its leaders. I read most of it in one day, it was so engrossing. The chronicle of her spiritual and marital struggle very aptly illustrates the adage, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."The book gives many personal examples of how women are denigrated in this church. I heard Reverend Park, in Berkeley, California, address a small group. He laughed derisively at one young man and said he was "like a woman". That angered me -- one incident that led me to leave the cult.Thank you, Nansook, for the book. I'm certain your story will inspire many in their quest for spiritual freedom and personal integrity.

Born and raised in the Unification Church, those of us whom have left to seek a higher level of existance can relate to the trauma of leaving a religious cult. Those on the outside can finally begin to understand the ties that bind in such misuses of faith. Ms. Hong's account is both believable and horrifying, in that she accurately relates events of her fourteen years of dedication to a monster of an abusive husband and father and mother-in law, and bares her soul to all in a noble effort to dispell the mask this family hides behind. Some may view her as a greedy, vengeful woman, looking for some means to get back at the Moons for their terrible abuse, but as an insider, I say bravo for her courage, something so many ex-members have not been able to muster. I only hope that this will be the beginning of a passage out of darkness for so many members of the Unification Church, who, in their blind faith to the Moon family, have lost so much of themselves along the way. For all those who have been wavering on the fringes of the church, too afraid to leave, but too confused to stay, may this be the push they need to find help and break away. Ms. Hong has an important message for anyone who yearns to understand more about this opulent family, claiming to be the messiah. She is neither vindictive, nor greedy. Ms. Hong tells the TRUTH behind all this betrayal, something the members THOUGHT they had found all along.

"In the Shadow of the Moons" is a deeply moving true story of courage and hope in the face of impossible odds. Beautifully written, this book should be recommended reading at seminaries and in classes on religion. Nansook Hong, in my opinion, is a modern day saint, who endured fourteen years at the hands of a monster and lived to tell the tale. As a 23 member of Ms. Hong's former church, I know first hand the difficulties that she endured. She was faced with the wrenching decision to leave the religion that she was born into, and the family that she had always believed were perfect in the eyes of God. People who have never been members of an authoritarian, messianic religious movement may have a hard time understanding why she stayed in a living hell for 14 years. This is not a typical case of spousal abuse; it is what happens when followers of a religion practice blind devotion and worship a man instead of God. It is a testimony to Ms. Hong's character and faith that tried her best to make this marriage work, although it was doomed from the start. The book is though provoking and disturbing. Indeed, it brought me to tears. Her courage to leave the luxuries of the emperor's palace to live a normal life with her five children is inspiring. It tells us that even in the face of the deepest adversity and impossibly difficult questions, there is always an answer; there is always hope. God bless this sweet and courageous young woman. May she find happiness in her life.