I had gained some wisdom doing interfaith work over the decades, but discovered recently that I had more to learn.
I am studying trauma-integrating meditation with author and mystic Thomas Hubl with students who practice various faiths from all over the world. At our first in-person meeting I connected with several people half my age. But then I found out they were Moonies! I was shocked. Being a Moonie was bad — right?
They were just as surprised that I came from Gloucester, asking me if I remembered when a group of their church members moved here before they were born. I sure did. They said that they had heard stories about those times that made Gloucester look pretty silly, and wanted to hear about it from my point of view.
This happened sometime in the late ‘70s –early ‘80s, when my oldest son was 5 or 6 and I worked at the Hammond Castle Museum. The city reacted when they heard that the Moonies (slang for the Unification Church started in South Korea by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon) bought the Cardinal Cushing Villa in West Gloucester. It was feared that they were a cult who brainwashed people and that our children were at risk. Rev. Moon officiated at marriages of hundreds of couples, who, according to the rumors, were followers forced to marry and give birth to more little Moonies. Since the Cardinal Cushing Villa was the home of Hammond Senior before his son John Junior built his own nearby castle where I worked, we were at the center of the storm. People mixed up the two Hammonds and their homes.
A tour guide, still a student at Gloucester High, Jeannine Harris (who recently retired from our own DPW) was in charge of answering the phone in between tours. More than once, she picked up the phone announcing: “This is the Hammond Castle Museum,” to hear someone at the other end yelling, “Death to you Moonies!” Jeannine would calmly answer, “I am sorry, you have the wrong Hammond Castle. Would you like the phone number of the one were the Moonies live?” They usually answered “yes,” and Jeannine happily gave it to them, with a warm goodbye. I admired her ability to be so professional; she was only 15 years old!
Hammond Sr. had left his castle to the Catholic Church in memory of Cardinal Richard Cushing, so it was the Catholics that sold it to the Unification Church, formally the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. Neighbors reported that the Catholics among us lobbied the present cardinal heavily to stop the sale, but it was too late. Then they lobbied our Jewish mayor, Leo Alper, to call the pope. Maybe he could stop the sale. Rumor had it that he finally tried, but never got through to the pope himself.
Some Unification Church members moved into the villa and then started a tuna fishing business over behind Bob’s Clam Shack, sending the tuna all the way to South Korea, which people thought was very weird at the time. I told my new friends that the gossip died down when our worst fears never materialized. By the time tuna fishing became an asset to the local economy, people seemed to have forgotten who started a pioneering tuna fleet here.
My young friends respectfully listened, though they were clearly amused. I obviously knew nothing about their church, so it was their turn to tell me their story. Rev Moon was a mystic and taught many of the basic mystical principles found in most world religions. Their parents had married in those mass marriages by choice. Rev. Moon taught that they were pathways to peace, since individuals from countries who had been at war with one other were now marrying each other and having children who would be loved by grandparents from enemy countries. As a grandparent, I could see Rev. Moon’s point. These young people were all born to bring more peace and love into the world — which they took seriously. They wanted to learn more about a mysticism that was grounded in practical ways to heal trauma in communities seeking to end war.
These young men and women who grew up in the Unification Church are not the same as one another as I imagined cultish children to be. They are individuals who live in regular neighborhoods, work at real jobs, and enroll their children in public schools. Some work to improve their church; some don’t attend anymore.They are not much different than the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Indigenous, Buddhist, Taoist or Unitarian Universalist students in the class. I am grateful that they had the grace to ask me about Gloucester’s story, and teach me a bit about theirs.
The Rev. Gail Seavey, retired parish minister, served Unitarian Universalist congregations in California, Minnesota, Tennessee and Salem, Massachusetts. For 30 years she came home to Gloucester every July. She is now a member of the Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church. Midweek Musings rotates among Cape Ann clergy.