Books in Brief: The Making of a Moonie—Choice or Brainwashing?

The Making of a Moonie—Choice or Brainwashing? by Eileen Barker (Basil Blackwell, 306 pp., $19.95)

The members of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, now almost universally referred to as “Moonies,” constitute a fascinating problem for outsiders—and perhaps above all for conservatives, because they are so unabashedly anti-Communist and pro-American. How do Moonies become Moonies? Do they join the church as an act of conscious will? Or are most of them just vulnerable youngsters, lured away from their families, cleverly brainwashed by such techniques as “love-bombing,” and turned into glassy-eyed zombies? British sociologist Eileen Barker, dean of Undergraduate Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, set herself the task of finding out, at least as far as American, British, and European Moonies are concerned, and she spent nearly seven years at the job. She brought to it formidable scientific qualifications, interviewing in depth and/or issuing probing questionnaires to Moonies, ex-Moonies, “non-joiners,” and control groups of uninvolved individuals from similar backgrounds, as well as parents, spouses, and friends of Moonies. She also attended numerous Moonie workshops and communal facilities (though it is important to note that personally she always found the attractions of the movement “eminently resistible”). As a result, her report—first published in Britain two years ago and now available here—is one of the most interesting and authoritative studies of the Unification movement that has ever appeared in print. The book does not purport to be a comprehensive analysis of the Unification Church: It tells only enough about the history and theology of the movement to make Professor Barker’s study of Moonie motivations comprehensible, and scarcely touches at all upon such important questions as where the money comes from. But it is likely long to remain the most objective and comprehensive study of what makes a person become a Moonie, and this lends great weight to Professor Barker’s conclusion: “I have not been persuaded that they are brainwashed zombies.”

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William A. Rusher

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The Making of a Moonie—Choice or Brainwashing? by Eileen Barker (Basil Blackwell, 306 pp., $19.95)

The members of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, now almost universally referred to as “Moonies,” constitute a fascinating problem for outsiders—and perhaps above all for conservatives, because they are so unabashedly anti-Communist and pro-American. How do Moonies become Moonies? Do they join the church as an act of conscious will? Or are most of them just vulnerable youngsters, lured away from their families, cleverly brainwashed by such techniques as “love-bombing,” and turned into glassy-eyed zombies? British sociologist Eileen Barker, dean of Undergraduate Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, set herself the task of finding out, at least as far as American, British, and European Moonies are concerned, and she spent nearly seven years at the job. She brought to it formidable scientific qualifications, interviewing in depth and/or issuing probing questionnaires to Moonies, ex-Moonies, “non-joiners,” and control groups of uninvolved individuals from similar backgrounds, as well as parents, spouses, and friends of Moonies. She also attended numerous Moonie workshops and communal facilities (though it is important to note that personally she always found the attractions of the movement “eminently resistible”). As a result, her report—first published in Britain two years ago and now available here—is one of the most interesting and authoritative studies of the Unification movement that has ever appeared in print. The book does not purport to be a comprehensive analysis of the Unification Church: It tells only enough about the history and theology of the movement to make Professor Barker’s study of Moonie motivations comprehensible, and scarcely touches at all upon such important questions as where the money comes from. But it is likely long to remain the most objective and comprehensive study of what makes a person become a Moonie, and this lends great weight to Professor Barker’s conclusion: “I have not been persuaded that they are brainwashed zombies.”