Moonies Totally Explained

Everything about Moonies totally explained

Moonies is a derogatory term for members of the Unification Church, based on the name of church founder Sun Myung Moon. It was first used as a derisive label by the news media in the 1970s in the United States. It has always been considered a disparagement by most church members, but has sometimes been used by them and others without any negative connotations.

History

The term was coined by the tabloid newspapers New York Daily News and The New York Post, in 1974 during the church's "Madison Square Garden" campaign. Rather than calling members of the church "Unification Church members" or "Unificationists," news articles that were very critical in tone used invented names emphasizing the members' relationship to Moon as a charismatic leader - often characterized as a cult of personality - such as "Moon-children" or "Moonite," and later "Moonie."
Unificationists responded to the use of the word as they did to other criticism, by ignoring it, making fun of it, and even jokingly adopting it, referring to themselves in the late 1970s as "proud Moonies" on buttons and mugs.
Sun Myung Moon himself used the word quite a few times. In several speeches he made light of the word "moonies," encouraging members to graduate in three stages from "Moonies" to "Sunnies" and then to "Kingies:" "Those who oppose us call us Moonies but we call ourselves Sunnies and the spirit world will tell you that you're Kingies." He also sometimes referred to members as "moonies" in a straightforward manner.

Response by members

In the early 1980s Unificationists took a public stance against the word, asking major media organizations to stop referring to them as "Moonies," stating that the term was intended as a demeaning and pejorative slur. In an official press release from the American Unification Church headquarters in the early 1980s, "Moonie" was described, in comparison to earlier pejorative references such as "Moonite," as "even more derogatory and diminutive."
In August 1994 the Unification News, the official monthly newspaper of the church, published an article saying in part:

One can only wonder how long Unificationists must bide their time before their sincere petitions regarding the offensive use of the term "Moonie" will finally be acknowledged. I consider twenty years to be enough. Any short-term anesthesia has long since worn off and it really hurts to be so persistently abused. Unification Church members have been derided as "Moonies," then mobbed and beaten. In New York City, a seven-months pregnant woman was beaten and sent to the hospital as a result of irrational hatred of "Moonies." Church missionaries have been murdered in the course of their public church duties because they were "Moonies." Members have been abducted, imprisoned, assaulted and abused. In many instances the perpetrators were not charged by the authorities or even admonished by society because their victims were only "Moonies."

Unification Church member Gary Fleisher wrote, "Calling us 'Moonies' is just a technique of making it easy to hate us, because Moonies aren't human. It is easy to hate and persecute robots. The word Moonie has the same purpose as nigger, kike, spik, mick, or Polak. It is to make a group of enemies, that it's acceptable to hate and misuse."
A dysphemism treadmill effect has occurred, and the term is now sometimes used again, especially by the youth of the church, to refer to themselves.

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