Hi! I'm using this blog space to add some supplemental material to my recent story on Bush and the Unification Church. QUESTION: Isn't this Salon article arguing that the Bush administration should be denying funding to organizations based on the religious beliefs of their officials? ANSWER: No, although you have to wonder what would happen to a grant application from Matt Hale if he started a World Church of the Creator Teen Purity League. Of course, the important difference here is between funding religiously-inspired social workers, and funding a church's missionary project. Which is it? In researching this story, I wrestled hard with the possibility of the former, before the evidence became overwhelming that it was the latter. First, let's look at program director Richard Panzer's analogy: If people who happen to be Catholics receive federal funding, is it a big deal? Common sense says nah. But let's say that a board comprised of archbishops and high Vatican officials founded a federally-funded project, X, while concealing its religious connections. Let's further pretend that the Pope -- who in our scenario owns a pro-administration newspaper and makes many offhand references to manipulating Washington -- described this X as a holy mission, making speeches like this one about the politicians he courted: "Think how many billions of dollars True Father has spent on The Washington Times? Millions of dollars. True Father spent this kind of money for enemies. True Father has brought so many dignitaries to conferences, paying for their travel. They did not pay. Now is the time they have to pay Father back. Instead of paying me back, take care of my missionaries." Unconstitutional? Dunno. Worth hearing about? Well, yeah. But finally the Pope analogy falls apart when you look at the one-of-a-kind Unification Church. In the '70s, Bob Dole and other Congressmen probed the group's "non-religious activities," finding that it had aggressive political aims that it concealed in a maze of front groups that pretended not to be affiliated with the UC. The Moon organization once held a gigantic fundraising campaign to help sick kids -- but investigators in Congress found that most of the money was secretly going to a PR firm to make the church look better. There's a great book on the subject by Congressional aide Robert Boettcher, who talks about Moon's enmeshment in the huge Koreagate influence-peddling scandal of 1976-8, which for some reason no one today remembers. There's a lot more that there wasn't room for in the detective story of Free Teens USA. You might be interested in reading more about...

• The church's '70s notorious battle against "deprogrammers" who claimed the church aggressively separated college students from their families -- using indoctrination and humiliation to turn them into Moon's street corner sales representatives. ("Escape from the Moonies")
• Federally-funded Free Teens directors, who appear to have run offices responsible for that controversial recruiting. Now, at least one has gone out on the town bowling at Brunswick Lanes with disadvantaged New Jersey youth, at a cost to you, the taxpayer.
• Unconvinced by the Holocaust quote? Read other examples of the "unrelieved hostility to the Jewish people" that rabbis of the '70s saw in Moon's teachings.
• Pat Robertson's warning that this "Pandora's box" would erupt if the White House agreed to give money to religions without discrimination. On his 700 Club, he specifically named the UC as a group condemned for its "brainwashing" that should not receive money. (He piped down after his Operation Blessing received money from the Compassion Capital Fund.)
• Jesse Jackson's attack on the "fear and shame" program of the Pure Love Alliance, which threw wild teen rallies featuring rappers, pornographers burned in effigy, people dressed up as STDs, and signs like "Extramarital Affair: You Are a Witch." That, as far as I can tell, was the church's first effort to enter the public school system. But this time around, they have taken a more low-key approach.
• All the many politicians who have accepted speaking fees from Moon, including William Bennett and others. (In some cases, they may have taken the money without knowing who was putting on the conference. Others have been regular guests.)

What I'd like to get into in my next story is that government funding of quasi-religious social programs is an experiment that already happened in the '70s with programs like California's Synanon Church. That didn't go so well. E-mail me if you have any ideas. (Adapted from a comment I left on the blog of Jane Galt, and re-edited a bunch of times.)