Growing Up Moonie

Join cult survivor Hideo Higashibaba as he talks with people who were also born into the Unification Church, aka the Moonies. Growing Up Moonie is a podcast of stories of the awkwardness, pain, struggles, and even a little hope that can come from growing up in a cult. Subscribe now and get all 9 episodes in your feed March 4. 

When Hideo Higashibaba left the Moonies he had no idea how he was going to survive without them. He wondered if other kids born into the church had as much trouble adjusting to adulthood, even if they didn’t leave. In this first episode Hideo reflects on his own strange origins and the history of the Moonies.   TRANSCRIPT Hideo Higashibaba [00:00:03] Thanks for listening to growing up. Moonie I am so excited to share these stories with you. Just a heads up to our listeners this episode has mentions of suicidal ideation and mental health crisis. Please take care of yourself as you listen. And now for the first time ever Growing up Moonie. News Announcer [00:00:23] A decade ago, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies, so called Moonies, followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon head of the Unification Church who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies. Interpreter [00:00:38] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy. Crowd [00:00:45] YES. Interpreter [00:00:48] We are talking about absolute fidelity. If anybody deviates from this God given principle, they are bound to hell. News Announcer [00:00:56] But the church has a different plan for the second generation. 2nd Gen [00:00:59] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know we aren't just like this bubble. 2nd Gen [00:01:05] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but not what keeps me in the church. If I'm not doing everything that they want me to do or I don't believe everything that they believe we still have this like line that connects us. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:21] My name is Hideo Higashibaba. I grew up in a cult called the Unification Church. You might know them as the Moonies. I was in the church for 22 years and then four years ago I left. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:37] Almost overnight. I lost my faith my community my family my mind. And since then I have tried to not kill myself. Finish school, find work, and peace a life together on my own. For me, leaving the Unification Church was and is deeply liberating but equally terrifying. There are times when it feels like a dream and other times when it is all too real. When I first left I felt completely out of my depth; the entire way I made sense of the world was gone. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:13] My explanation for everything from why the sky is blue to Why Bad Things Happen to Good People was gone in the space where meaning and purpose used to be was just a vacuum of infinite nothingness. I went insane. With time therapy medication and a lot of generous support from friends, I survived. I stabilized but recreating meaning is a lonely process. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:42] I started to wonder if other people had as much trouble when they tried to live outside the church. I wondered if they felt as ill equipped for life as I did even if they didn't leave. So I reached out to some people who were born into the church and asked them what their childhoods were like and who they are now. This podcast is some of their stories. This is growing up Moonie. Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:11] In case you don't know much about them let me give you a little background on the Moonies. The Unification Church, also known as the Unification Movement, was founded in Korea in 1954 by a man named Sun Myung Moon. He said he was the Second Coming of Christ, the Messiah of all humanity, and that Jesus told him to unite all Christian denominations to bring world peace. In the late 1950s Moon sent missionaries to Japan and the United States. They recruited people on sidewalks and college campuses. By the 1970s there was a church center in every state and a few thousand members Moonies became especially famous for their mass weddings. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:00] My parents were married in 1982 in New York City at an intimate romantic venue known as Madison Square Garden. They shared this special day with 2074 other couples that got married at the same time. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:18] And thanks to the internet I have footage of the wedding. This man is out on a roll. Interpreter [00:04:24] Do you pledge to be the center of love before the society nation world and universe based upon an ideal family. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:36] It was a sea of white dresses and black suits the men wore white gloves. The women veils. It's hard to make out any faces in the crowd. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:46] I think my parents got stuck up in the balcony somewhere. Moon stood on the red carpeted stage with his wife. They both wore white robes and crowns their red and gold thrones behind them. Interpreter [00:05:05] I proclaim that these two thousand seventy five couples are wedded before God. The True Parents the world and the universe. On July 1st 1982. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:23] Just a few months before this special day my parents were just acquaintances. My mom told me she found my dad to be awkward and unpleasant. My dad thought my mom was cute. Then they were put together by Sun Myung Moon in what's called a matching ceremony. In the ceremony, a small crowd of people gathered in a room with women on one side and men on the other. Moon stood at the front and pointed at my dad who stood up. Moon spoke to my dad through an interpreter. Then he turned to the women's side of the room and questioned a couple of people. Finally he pointed at my mom and that was that. My mom and dad then left the room to discuss whether they wanted to say yes to the match or disobey an order from the Messiah and returning Christ. They were married a few months later and had four kids. Me and my three sisters. Hideo Higashibaba [00:06:17] I guess you could say we had a pretty weird childhood although I didn't know it at the time. My mom is actually a minister in the church so it was like everyday was Sunday school. She saw God working in everything from a lucky scratch-off ticket to a flying bird formation to Hurricane Katrina. Everything was an indication that God was working in the world and she passed that belief down to me and my sisters. As a kid, I knew my family and I were different but the main reason I knew that my church was weird was my extended family my mom's family. My grandparents, aunts and uncles mocked us for our beliefs and told me and my sisters we were brainwashed and that my mother was weak-minded that we belonged to a cult. It made for some pretty tense family dynamics. Despite my extended family. I was a proud Unificationist, a proud Moonie. When I was 18, I told my parents I wanted an arranged marriage just like they got. In my heart. I knew what Moon told us about the world was right and it was my job to protect myself from anything that would contradict that. And that worked until about four years ago. Hideo Higashibaba [00:07:36] The transition out of the Moonies has been a lonely, heart wrenching, infuriating, strange, and fascinating process. I've learned more about the church itself. The rumors about its dark origins, the racist misogynist ideas it holds and propagates, its deep seated homophobia. The Unification Church is just the religious part of an enormous empire. Through the church Moon's family owns restaurants, fish distribution companies, at least one gun manufacturer, newspapers a ski resort, a soccer team, and billions of dollars in properties around the world. The list goes on and on. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:17] Don't get me wrong. The religious part of this empire is pretty big too. There are still church centers in almost every state and on almost every continent. Moonies still hold mass weddings now with live simulcast, so even more people can be married at once. What I keep coming back to is how it felt to be a part of all that yet totally oblivious to most of it. Moon's cult created and shaped the lives of thousands of people including me. We all share this strange experience of belonging to a cult but we all coped with that reality differently. It affected who we were and who we became. Those are the stories you'll hear here on growing up. Moonie. 2nd Gen [00:09:11] I feel like we were always kind of made to seem like we were better than other people. 2nd Gen [00:09:16] Once we got there I was just like oh my gosh I don't want to do this but it was kind of that like everyone's watching. You need to make this work. It's going to be difficult and you just kind of accept that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:29] I feel like the closer I get to being who I am the further I get away from the people who raised me. 2nd Gen [00:09:34] I don't care about doctrine or dogma. I don't really care for it if it if it splits up people that you love. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:43] That's coming up on growing up. Moonie. Growing up Moonie is written by me. I also produced this episode. Quinn Meyers edited music by Kai Zabriski and Kai Engel. Please subscribe to this podcast and write in reviews wherever you're listening. It really helps this project reach a wider audience. Hideo Higashibaba [00:10:06] For more information go to Growing up Moonie dot com. My name is Hideo Higashibaba. Thanks for listening.  

Hideo and Jenn grew up going to church, Sunday school, and church camp together, but they had wildly different home lives. Hideo talks with Jenn about the pressures, guilt, and strict rules that guarded the childhoods of second generation Moonies.     TRANSCRIPT News Announcer [00:00:02] A decade ago the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies. So called Moonies,  followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies. Interpreter [00:00:16] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy. Crowd [00:00:22] Yes! Interpreter [00:00:22] We are talking about absolute fidelity here. If anybody deviates from this God-given principle they are bound to hell. News Announcer [00:00:35] But the church has a different plan for the second generation. 2nd Gen [00:00:38] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know we aren't just like this bubble. 2nd Gen [00:00:42] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but it's not what keeps me in the church. 2nd Gen [00:00:48] Then if I'm not doing everything that they want me to do or I don't believe everything that they believe. We still have this like line that connects us. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:00] My name is Hideo Higashibaba. I grew up in a cult called the Unification Church. You might know them as the Moonies. This is Growing Up Moonie, stories from the childhoods of people born into the church. Like me. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:24] I was a Moonie until about four years ago. When I left, my life was ripped into chaos and I had a lot of trouble coping without the church. I had to find new ways to make sense of the world. In my journey, I reached out to other people born into the church to ask them about their childhoods what their lives were like. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:45] One of those people is Jenn. Jenn Is not her real name. She asked to change it for this podcast because people finding out you're a Moonie can make life, well, awkward. More than that it can sometimes make it hard to keep friends or even get a job. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:03] Yeah. We haven't seen each other in what like Oh it's been a minute. Jenn [00:02:08] Yeah, I don't know maybe like six years or maybe more. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:13] I saw Jen and her family every week at church in Gloucester, Massachusetts at a place called Morning Garden. It's a retreat center owned by the church. An enormous mansion with a chapel where we held services members weren't allowed in most of the house mostly because it was reserved for the founder. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:32] Sun Myung Moon and his family. We mostly just use the chapel and the kitchen. Moon bought Morning Garden in the 70s for his fishing ministry, which basically means he bought a whole bunch of boats and got a lot of church members to fish for him. It was the beginning of a global fishing business which Moon used to fund his religious empire. Morning Garden is right on the ocean, so there's a dock where we would swim and an old stone tower down by the water. Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:03] There's another tower on a hill overlooking Gloucester Harbor and several acres of woods which we kids spent hours playing in. Jen and I were in the same Sunday school class and groups at camp and workshops. So we saw each other a lot. I called her to ask how she felt about growing up in the church. Jenn [00:03:22] I said I don't know all my memories of growing up are like really great. I don't really have anything negative to say. For the most part I think like sometimes looking back I can see how some things might have been negative. But honestly like I think personally that we had like a great childhood. Jenn [00:03:39] I just remember like running around at morning garden and we would all hang out and like going to church was like pretty fun. I think when we were younger once I once I became a teenager I was like hated going but I know when I was a kid I actually really liked to go and like going to see everyone and hanging out after church and just like going swimming at Morning Garden or having cookouts or whatever and I think it always felt like a big family. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:04] That was the idea one family under God. People who joined the church as adults are called First Generation people born into the church like Jenn and I are called second generation or second gen. Another name for us is blessed children or BCs and the second generation, these special children, were the whole reason behind the huge mass weddings Moonies were famous for. To create so-called "true families" free from the sins of the world. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:36] The idea was that if the Messiah, Moon, blessed the marriages then the children that came from those couples would be free of Original Sin. That's right. According to my parents I don't have original sin. So there. Anyway not having Original Sin is kind of a big deal. And because of that, we Blessed Children were told we were special. That we were destined to continue God's Will to win the world back from Satan. And it was kind of a lot for kids who still have to go to school with a bunch of normal Original Sinner people. Jenn [00:05:14] I feel like we were always kind of made to seem like we were better than other people because we were second gen. Or yeah, just because we throw our lineage and being born without Original Sin or at least like that's what it said I always felt like we were made to look like we were better or supposed to be perfect. Jenn [00:05:34] I think like going to school are like so many of the things I took part in. I've met someone like the best people that, you know, they're not in the church and they're not BCs and like I don't know. To me I never...you can't look at that as like a bad thing or that they are not as good as me or anything like that. So I think that was a big thing for me. Even in high school or anything like that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:57]  It seems like for you you were like a part of the public school system like you were really a part of your Gloucester community as well as the church community. So seems like that cross pollination could happen more easily. Jenn [00:06:07] Yeah. No that's right because yeah. Even like me and my siblings we were always like very involved in sports or other stuff like that within our high school. So we always hung out I think we hung out with BCs more than actual BCs. So for us it was kind of like, most people didn't even know we were Moonies or anything like that. Jenn [00:06:25] I still to this day, like they don't know because we were just always with like other kids a lot. So I think it was very different for me. Rather than you I know you like your school is very small and very closed off kind of from other stuff. And I think your parents were a lot more strict than mine with certain things. Hideo Higashibaba [00:06:46] That is definitely true. Because being born into a cult wasn't enough, my parents also put me in Waldorf School, an alternative private education where kids don't learn to read until third grade, and there's a lot of knitting and poems and lamb's wool but that's a different called for a different podcast. My school was really small and I was an awkward, nerdy, poor, hyper-religious kid who got a note exempting me from sex ed. I did not have a lot of friends. I played sports but came home straight after and did my homework. I once asked my mom if I could sleep over at a friend's house and she said, "why?". Jenn on the other hand, went to public school, had non church friends, did sports and went to parties. Her parents wanted her and her siblings to follow the values of the church but they also wanted their kids to have pretty normal lives. Hideo Higashibaba [00:07:47] I was wondering, were you ever afraid that your friends at school would find out your Moonie. Jenn [00:07:51] Yeah I was so afraid. I was terrified of that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:07:55] Well what did you think was going to happen if they found out. Jenn [00:07:59] I don't I think it was, I mean I had even had like no one had ever asked if I was a Moonie but he would ask others kids were Moonies and never really. Yeah. So that I would get nervous and think they were gonna find out about me and it was never like...I guess it was seen kind of negatively but people just more found it weird and it was always this thing where no one really knew much about it they just knew we were supposed to get like arranged marriages and everyone that we like lived in a castle in Morning Garden. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:29] The city of Gloucester has changed a lot since the Moonies rolled in 40 years ago. Back then people would scream at Moonies in the street telling them to leave and giving them the finger and mooning them. I don't actually know if that's true but I read it somewhere once and I think it's hilarious. Anyway, things have calmed down a lot since then but church members are still cautious like Jenn asking to be anonymous. Moonies didn't live in a castle in Morning Garden and we went to regular school. Still, I know you don't have to be physically confined to be controlled. Second Gen we're told from birth that we were separate from the world, better than the world. So we had to act like it. We were told to strive for perfection for complete control over our bodies through our minds. That meant proper thoughts and proper action at all times. No swearing, no parties, no alcohol, and definitely no dating. We were representatives of God and Moon. Wherever we went and that was a lot to carry around. Jenn [00:09:34] If you're not following every single rule you doing everything you feel very guilty. And I found that with a lot of things like if I was doing any little thing wrong or kind of you know like you think other things or you think you do so

Sun Myung Moon was born the son of poor farmers in present-day North Korea and by the time he died ruled a global cult and was a billionaire. Hideo digs into some of  the stories and legends surrounding the charismatic leader of the Moonies.     TRANSCRIPT Hideo Higashibaba [00:00:03] Thanks for listening to Growing Up Moonie. Just a heads up to our listeners, this episode includes lewd references to women. Please take care of yourself as you listen. Okay, back to the podcast. News Announcer [00:00:17] A decade ago, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies. So called Moonies followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon head of the Unification Church who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies. Interpreter [00:00:32] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy? Crowd [00:00:39] YES Interpreter [00:00:41] We are talking about absolute fidelity here. If anybody deviates from this God-given principle they are bound to hell. News Announcer [00:00:50] But the church has a different plan for the second generation. 2nd Gen [00:00:53] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know we aren't just like this bubble. 2nd Gen [00:00:59] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but it's not what keeps me in the church. 2nd Gen [00:01:04] Then if I'm not doing everything that they want me to do or I don't believe everything that they believe we still have this like line that connects us. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:12] My name is Hideo Higashibaba. Until four years ago, I was in a cult called the Unification Church. You might know them as the Moonies. This is growing up Moonie, stories from people who grew up in the church like me. Before we continue hearing the stories of people who were born into the church, the second generation, I want to tell you a little about the founder a man named Sun Myung Moon. This man matched my parents. On their wedding day they and 2074 couples made their vows to him. Interpreter [00:01:53] Do you, as an ideal husband and wife, pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy. Crowd [00:02:01] Yes! Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:04] In a way. I exist because of this guy. There is no way my parents would have had children together otherwise. My parents don't like each other at all. But in the church not having children is not an option. It's seen as a sign of weakness or failure. Sure, my parents had some kind of choice; to join a cult to get married to have children with someone they disliked. But the fact remains that my existence is tied to a man who abused, used and manipulated my parents. A man that demanded their faith and took their money while they worked 70 hour weeks and counted pennies. But to the world, Moon is just some strange character, the charismatic leader of a distant cult. With the mass weddings and rumors of brainwashing. He kind of became a household name in America. Clip from Seinfeld: Elaine [00:03:02] Anyway, Mr. Costanza I want you to do is go into the shop with me and tell me what they're saying. You do speak Korean? Clip from Seinfeld: Mr. Costanza [00:03:10] I want to talk to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. He bought two Jesus statues from me. He's a hell of a nice guy. Ever seen that face on him. It was like a big apple pie. Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:21] Moon was like family to me. He was more important to my parents than anyone else,  even their own parents. And so naturally I held him near and dear to my heart too. My parents told me he loved me that I was special to him and I never met the guy. Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:42] I did see him speak a few times. Once, I must have been five or six years old, I remember I was very confused because it was a school night and me and my sisters were up way past our bedtimes. We drove into Boston to some fancy hotel with maroon carpeting that I was not allowed to lie down on. Hundreds packed into the ballroom of the hotel and I remember I was very uncomfortable because unlike other Moonie gatherings men and women all sat together. And there were no kids. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:15] During events like this, parents usually left their children at home or went to the children's room which had a video feed of the speech. My mother sat us at the back of the ballroom. People glared at us and told my mom she should be in the children's room with her kids. She glared back or ignored them. My mom is a minister so she was often responsible for hosting guests and other ministers at speeches. It was infuriating that she was expected to miss most of the ceremony in a room of screaming children. No one thought that maybe her husband should be taking care of the children, although I am sure that idea crossed her mind more than once. She told me and my sisters we had to behave perfectly. No squirming, no talking, no crying. We behaved like angels in our dresses and tights that were always a little too small. We resisted the urge to kick our feet or climb up on our chairs to look around. Because these events were so boring. I spent hours of my childhood trying to stay awake during the preliminary musical offerings. Then came an introduction. Rev. Walter Fauntroy [00:05:35] And I'm so pleased to stand with you to rebuild the family and to save the nation and the world. We thank God for each of you. We thank God for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:51] And then Moon would finally speak. He knew very little English so he had an interpreter. Interpreter [00:05:56] During the course of my life. I have totally committed myself to the salvation of humankind centered on God's will. I have lived my life with a single minded goal to accomplish God's Will transcending time and space and forgetting everything else. Hideo Higashibaba [00:06:13] My mother often reminded me and my sisters that we were lucky to have been born in the time of the Messiah. Not many people were so blessed to be able to see him in person. Not surprisingly, Moon the self-proclaimed savior of all humanity, covered a lot of ground in his speeches. Interpreter [00:06:34] In order to understand human history and the world from the perspective of God's providence, I would like to speak on the topic: the path for America and humanity in the new millenium. Hideo Higashibaba [00:06:48] Moon was born in what is now North Korea in 1920 during the Japanese occupation. The story goes that when he was 16 years old Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision and told him he was the person chosen to carry on his mission. Moon went to Japan to study engineering and then the Korean War happened. The United States invaded, driving out the Japanese and razing the Korean peninsula to the ground. Eventually, Moon wrote The Divine Principle which he said held all the secrets of heaven and earth and God's will. There's a lot to it but some of the more crazy parts include a bit about how the Virgin Mary was not actually a virgin because, uh, that's not possible...duh. Also, Moonies believe Jesus did not come to earth to die for our sins. Moon said Jesus was supposed to get married and have a family, blessed by God of course. The fact that he was crucified instead wasn't exactly a failure but it was not a part of the plan. The Divine Principle, known as the DP, had other little gems like this one. This is my editor Quinn reading a section. Quinn Myers [00:08:02] Jesus came as the bridegroom to all humanity. All devout believers should become his brides awaiting the time of his return. After these brides celebrate the marriage of the lamb with Jesus, their bridegroom, they are to live in the kingdom of heaven in oneness with him as his wives, in a metaphorical sense. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:23] Clearly Moon had a pretty loose relationship with things like science and reality. Reading back through the DP, it reads like a step by step justification for men to own their wives as property, why black people are actually inferior to everyone else and why gay people are trash. A little 'how to' for patriarchy, racism and homophobia. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:50] By 1955, Moon's church had 30 centers all over Korea. A few years later he sent missionaries to Japan and then America where the hippies and free love people were gaining traction. If they wanted a revolution Moon wanted a counter revolution where women knew their place, homosexuals were punished for their sins, and God's will prevailed. He literally called for America to return to its Puritan roots. Interpreter [00:09:19] Homosexuals lesbians or even those who go after a free sex life. God doesn't want those people. If they practice that kind of unprincipled life they are less than animals. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:37] I'm not sure why people were attracted to this kind of bullshit. I vaguely remember first generation, the adults I grew up with, giving testimony, telling the story of how and why they joined the church. One first gen said they were really uncomfortable with all the sex and drugs their peers were getting into. The Unification Church claimed a moral high ground over all that. The first gen didn't have to think about why the free love revolution made them uncomfortable. Moon did it for them. Hideo Higashibaba [00:10:09] In the early days Moonies called their leader, master. By the time I was born he was called True Father and his wife Hak Ja Han was called True Mother. Together they were the True Parents, the Messiah of all humanity. Moonies think the True Parents are the first people to achieve perfection and oneness with God since Adam and Eve screwed up and were kicked out of Eden. When Moon spoke he had planned remarks but he went off script a lot and asked the audience questions. People would shout back answers or clap. As a kid it made me very uncomfortable. I was always told to be quiet and seeing all these grown-ups yelling was really off putting, especiall

In the early days of the Moonies, members all lived together in centers across the country and world. But when the second generation were born many families decided to move out and try something new: being totally separate from and yet a part of society. That’s what the second generation had to juggle, all the time and every day. Hideo and Teruko talk about the struggle to understand identity and belonging as the second generation.     TRANSCRIPT News Announcer [00:00:01] A decade ago, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies. News Announcer [00:00:08] So called Moonies, followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon head of the Unification Church who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies. Interpreter [00:00:16] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy. Crowd [00:00:24] Yes! Interpreter [00:00:25] We are talking about absolute fidelity here. If anybody deviates from this God-given principle they are bound to hell. News Announcer [00:00:35] But the church has a different plan for the second generation. 2nd Gen [00:00:38] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know we aren't just like this bubble. 2nd Gen [00:00:43] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but it's not what keeps me in the church. 2nd Gen [00:00:48] Even if I'm not doing everything that they want me to do, or I don't believe everything that they believe we still have this like line that connects us. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:10] My name is Hideo Higashibaba. For the first 22 years of my life I was a member of a cult called the Unification Church. You might know them as the Moonies. I was born into the Unification Church and so were thousands of other people all over the world. This is Growing Up Moonie, stories from people who grew up in the church like me. People who joined the church as adults are called first generation and people born into the cult like me are called second generation blessed children or BCs. When first generation joined most of them gave up their worldly possessions and moved into church centers all over the country. My family lived in one of those centers in Boston. Every day the adults would go out fundraising or evangelizing and left their kids with a couple of other missionaries in a makeshift nursery. When I was born I was too small to be in the nursery so I spent the first year of my life with my mom at her meetings or the lectures she did on the church's teachings. When I was 2, my family moved out of the center and joined the hundreds of other Moonie families trying something new; being totally separate from and yet a part of society. That's what the second generation had to juggle all the time and every day. The next person I spoke with for this project was Teruko who was friends with my older sister Yojin when we were kids. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:48] I'm really happy to connect with you I feel like we spent a lot of time to get always you in Yojin spent a lot of time ago those kids and I kind of idolized you. And then when you moved away it's sort of like I don't know and everything felt like it changed. Teruko [00:03:01] Yeah I mean I am the center of a lot of people's lives. Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:04] Pretty, pretty humble and modest I can see as well. Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:11] Teruko's family lived in Gloucester near a lot of other Moonie families. She went to school with a lot of other BCs and saw them every week at church. I always felt like an outsider, even at church. But I remember Teruko was in the thick of things, playing with the other kids, tearing around morning garden with Yojin and getting into trouble for running off into the woods. When she was in middle school Teruko's family moved to Omaha. She says the church community out in Nebraska was a lot more spread out and isolating. Teruko [00:03:45] There is actually a girl in middle school who told me that her grandma was a deprogrammer and I was really scared. I legitimately thought someone was going to come after me to take me away a or or whatever like all those horror stories you hear as a kid. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:00] All Moonie kids grew up with stories of people who were kidnapped and deprogrammed or forced to denounce the leader Sun Myung Moon and the church. One woman I knew would testify to her faith by telling the story of how she was kidnapped by her family and locked in a room for days. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:20] They told her she couldn't leave until she rejected the church and its teachings. Eventually, she got them to bring her something to drink. It was in a glass bottle so she broke it and cut herself with the glass. They took her to the hospital and she escaped back to the church. Because of stories like that, a lot of second gen me included, tried to keep our religion a secret for as long as we could. But with that girl threatening Teruko with her grandmother, Teruko didn't want to hide anymore. Teruko [00:04:52] Yeah that was kind of a turning point I think for me too. I don't know, I felt like I was kind of hiding everything for a long time and then she, when she told me that she said it kind of like, 'oh found out your secret.' And I was like 'oh crap.' And then I was like 'You know I shouldn't hide anything anymore because that's how bad things happen to people.' So, I actually was pretty outspoken, which is sort of an opposite reaction to most people. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:20] Being separate and disliked by the general public was like a badge of honor. The leader Moon said we should be proud of our persecution. It made us worthy of our blessings. But for kids trying to go to school with other well-liked and normal children, that's a hard sell. I felt so guilty for hiding my faith. I desperately wanted to feel included and normal but that's hard to do would you also believe that you don't have Original Sin. Before that girl threatened to out her, Teruko did her best to hide her religion from other people. Teruko [00:05:58] I think it did make me feel kind of bad, like you're lying most of the time but you're not sure who you're lying to and I always felt weird about two parts of my life crossing over. Hideo Higashibaba [00:06:11] Why was it so anxiety inducing do you think? Teruko [00:06:17] Probably because, I would say one strong thing that I remember from Sunday school or camp or workshops or whatever, it was learning that second gen really special and were born without any Original Sin and all that stuff that we learned. And so other kids are not at the same level so you're different than them and I don't know, I guess I felt kind of like I had to be two people, like I had to be someone who was quote unquote "normal" or not the church around my school friends because they wouldn't understand because they weren't the same as me and then at church I couldn't be that person that I was at school because I had to create that separate personality. Teruko [00:07:11] One really scary thing, I think maybe one thing that helped me smash those two lives together was I took psychology in high school and we did a whole section on cults and I chose the church as my final project. Hideo Higashibaba [00:07:28] Wow. Dang. Dang girl, that is bold. That is very bold. Teruko [00:07:32] I was like, you know I'm terrified but I'm going to take it head on because otherwise I'll just be scared forever. Yeah, so I started my presentation off like very by the book and and then my big reveal was like five minutes before the end of my 30 minute presentation. I was like, Oh by the way I'm in this church. And people physically backed their desks up. And I got an A plus because I think my teacher was afraid to fail me. It was a good presentation, I like I wrote a good paper. But yeah, people looked at me differently after that, but all in all I don't think anything changed. And that's when I realized that it really wasn't that big a deal. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:11] After high school Teruko got matched to a guy from England through picture matching where two families send pictures of their kids back and forth to potentially marry them off. They were blessed in Korea but Teruko ended up breaking it off. Soon after, Teruko decided to do this church program called STF, which a lot of second gen did after high school...other than get married. STF stands for Special Task Force. It's a program for college age blessed children that mimics what a lot of first gen did when they were full time missionaries. On STF, they do a lot of what's called witnessing, recruiting people to workshops or lectures on the church's teachings. They also do volunteer projects and give talks in schools about the importance of abstinence. All this was supported through fundraising which they did by traveling around in vans selling trinkets or candy on the street. Teruko [00:09:12] It was kind of like a Jesus Camp situation where I started questioning whether another really wanted to be in the church and then I thought, you know what, I should just dive in head first because that's the right thing to do and I will join STF and I will do pitch picture matching and that will fix me. It did not work like that. That's not how things actually work, I found out. But it was a really good experience, I got to travel Europe for six months. I met a lot of cool people and I think it came out better. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:46] I mean it sounds a little bit traumatic. Teruko [00:09:49] That was very traumatic. But I have to do everything really extreme, I can't do anything the safe way. Not that I am a risk taker I'm just not strategic. Hideo Higashibaba [00:10:05] What was what was what was traumatic about it. Teruko [00:10:08] Well I was shunned for a good portion by everyone from, all the brothers, all the guys from England because I broke the...well I was actually blessed which in the church is getting married but

In the textbook definition of a cult, a group must have three things: a charismatic leader, insider/outsider identity, and shared ritual. In this episode, Hideo shares some of the rituals of the Moonies and what he had to leave behind.     TRANSCRIPT News Announcer [00:00:01] A decade ago, The Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies. News Announcer [00:00:08] So-called Moonies, followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon head of the Unification Church, who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies. Interpreter [00:00:16] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy. Crowd [00:00:24] Yes! Interpreter [00:00:25] We are talking about absolute fidelity here. If anybody deviates from this God-given principle they are bound to hell. News Announcer [00:00:35] But the church has a different plan for the second generation. 2nd gen [00:00:38] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know we aren't just like this bubble. 2nd gen [00:00:43] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but it's not what keeps me in the church. 2nd gen [00:00:48] Even if I'm not doing everything that they want me to do or I don't believe everything that they believe we still have this like line that connects us. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:05] My name is Hideo Higashibaba. Until four years ago, I was a part of a cult called the Unification Church. You might know them as the Moonies. This is Growing Up Moonie, stories from people who grew up in the church like me. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:21] In my second year of college I took a social psychology class and there was a whole chapter in our textbook about cults. And you guessed it, the Moonies were in it. I learned that for a group to be called a cult it has to have three things: a charismatic leader, insider outsider identity, and shared ritual. The Moonies charismatic leader is obviously Sun Myung Moon and we've heard a lot about the insider outsider identity in past episodes. But before we go into the next interview I want to take a minute to talk about that last thing. The rituals of the Unification Church. I have two decades of Moonie knowledge, stories, poems, chants, and songs in my head. Even after I rejected the reasons behind them, the shared ritual is in my bones. I catch myself singing church songs, what we called Holy Songs. I can even remember most of the words. Hideo singing [00:02:29] Pure new life that was sown within the gardens furtile soil. Sprouting seed has now become blossom of heavenly loveliness. Father above... Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:47] The words are bananas. That's partly because a lot of them were translated from Korean but also partly because they're just crazy. Hideo singing [00:03:01] The Father's dwelling place is the fountain of our life drawn to the light of eternal day we banned the darkness. May the Word of God... Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:19] There is no reason for me to sing these songs now but I catch myself singing them in odd moments. The lyrics kind of creep me out. Hideo singing [00:03:27] So eternally to receive his love. We shall be his pride... Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:41] Correct church etiquette dictates that one always bows in the presence of the founder Sun Myung Moon and his wife, who are called the True Parents. If they weren't around you bow their picture. There was the full bow, where you place your right hand over left. Then put your hands to your forehand as you bend down to crouch in front of the picture. Then there was the half bow, where you just bend at the waist for when you were outside or in a rush or something. Being a Moonie is made up of dozens of small rituals like this. There are way too many to mention them all here so I'm just going to tell you about three important ones. During the week Moonies were expected to read the sacred texts of the church for at least an hour a day usually old speeches and lectures from Moon. This is called Hoon Dok Hae. It's a Korean phrase that from what I can tell means get up ridiculously early to read little gems like this. Here's my editor Quinn reading from one of Moon's speeches. Quinn Myers [00:04:42] In the world today there are advanced nations and underdeveloped nations. In the advanced nations people have a lot and end up discarding leftover things, whereas people in underdeveloped nations lack many things, especially food. They may even starve to death. Twenty million people die of starvation each year. Do you think that is God's will? What the advanced nations are doing is oppressing the universe's natural system of interaction. If this continues the advanced nations will be unable to avoid divine punishment. Heaven will not let this go unnoticed. Already, signs of judgement are appearing in various places. One of the signs is the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, and another is drug and alcohol abuse. Both free sex and homosexuality are the madness of the lowest of the human race. God detests such behavior the most. Satan, on the other hand, praises such behavior the most. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:42] You heard that right. World hunger is caused by gay people. Most Moonies didn't actually do Hoon Dok Hae every day, I know my family didn't. We usually just did it on Sunday mornings before church. Other rituals were just for special occasions. There's the matching and blessing obviously but also stuff you could only do at Chun Pyung, the church's headquarters in Korea. My family went there the summer I turned eight. Chun Pyung is this beautiful white marble city. I think it's a resort town with bathhouses and a hospital. There's a lake and beautiful mountains everywhere. I think there's a big palace now too, dedicated to the founder and his family. One of the rules at Chun Pyung is that we had to wear white shirts. I have no idea why but that was the rule. When my family and I went there were 12,000 people at the same workshop all wearing white shirts and dark pants and almost everyone there was Asian with black hair. So the place looked like the static on a television screen. In the 10 days my family was there we climbed the special mountain and drink the special water on the mountain. I went to a bathhouse for the first time. Chun Pyung was very hot and not very exciting for an 8 year old. Everything was kind of different like it would be in any foreign country but not that weird. But then there was Ansu. Hideo Higashibaba [00:07:18] The Ansu hall is this enormous room with hundreds of people all sitting on the floor in rows. A team of singers and drummers come on stage and start to sing the song, Blessing of Glory in Korean. They lead the crowd, stepping to the music, while the drummer keeps the beat. The crowd claps to the music for a couple of verses and then the leader signals to everyone to start hitting themselves to the beat. That's right, hitting themselves. Not just anywhere, that would be crazy! You only hit the part of the body that the leader tells you to. So they yell 'arms!' or 'legs!' and 500 people start hitting their legs in unison. Other leaders would walk through the crowd showing people how to hit themselves correctly, sometimes urging people to hit themselves harder. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:14] Why do Moonies do Ansu, you may ask. It's to free the body of the evil spirits trapped inside. Most Moonies did Ansu only a few times in their lives because it can only be done in certain places at certain times. You can just go around hitting yourself all the time! It had to be done in Chun Pyung and sometimes at one of Moon's gazillion billion properties in upstate New York. The most memorable part of my family's trip to Korea was when I barfed in the Ansu Hall. I'd been really sick for the whole trip. Somehow I'd gotten a stomach bug on the way over and combined with the jetlag, I was a hot mess. My mum and sisters and I were settling down in the Ansu Hall before a session, when I stood up too fast and projectile vomited all over the floor. All the women around us started pulling towels napkins little packets of Kleenex out of their bags to help us. The only man nearby made this disgusted noise and scooted away like, 'Ulgh!'. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:17] I was covered in vomit, so my mother grabbed me by the back of the neck and steered me out of the hall into the bathroom. I didn't have to do answer after that. I remember feeling really guilty because instead of feeling bad that I couldn't do this wholly special once in a lifetime thing I was relieved. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:45] A smaller but no less odd ritual is holy salt. The logic behind holy salt is that Satan rules over everything in the world. So, Moon told us that before we go around using all this stuff that Satan has claim over, we should claim it back. Anytime we brought anything into the house; groceries, bags of hand-me-downs, Christmas gifts, we would say a prayer and sprinkle this salt on the objects three times. If you didn't have salt handy, you could also blow three little puffs like, pff pff pff. For some reason we also did this to toilets before we sat down on them. I guess it was because you didn't want to put your bare bottom on Satan's toilet seat. All that was years ago when the founder Moon was alive. Life was good. It was uncomplicated. Then in 2012... News Announcer [00:10:39] The Reverend Sun Myung Moon who founded a global religious movement has died. His Unification Church was famous for its mass weddings in which thousands of followers often from different countries married simultaneously. At the same time, he faced accusations of brainwashing... Hideo Higashibaba [00:10:59] Since Moon's death, the church has split into factions. One is headed by his wife and the other two are led by his sons who both insist they are the true heirs. It's kind of a mess and one of the factions has gotten extra weird. News Announcer [00:11:15] Ex

Katie and Hideo talk about Katie’s recent marriage to another second generation, the struggle to live the values of the church, and the innate need for belonging.     TRANSCRIPT   News Announcer [00:00:01] A decade ago, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies News Announcer [00:00:08] So-called Moonies, followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies. Interpreter [00:00:16] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy. Crowd [00:00:25] Yes! Interpreter [00:00:25] We are talking about absolute fidelity here. If anybody deviates from this God-given principle, they are bound to hell. News Announcer [00:00:35] But the church has a different plan for the second generation. 2nd Gen [00:00:38] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know, we aren't just like this bubble. 2nd Gen [00:00:43] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but it's not what keeps me in the church. 2nd Gen [00:00:48] Even if I'm not doing everything that they want me to do or I don't believe everything that they believe, we still have this like line that connects us. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:00] My name is Hideo Higashibaba until four years ago. I was a part of a cult called the Unification Church. You might know them as the Moonies. This is Growing Up Moonie, stories of people who grew up in the church like I did. One of the only Moonies I still talk to is my friend Katie. We've known each other since we were babies. Her mum took care of me when my mum was a full-time missionary. Katie is a year older than me, and we were never very close, but we tried to look out for each other at workshops and church camp. After high school we lost touch and the next time we saw each other was in our early 20s in Japan. I was in Tokyo for an internship and she was visiting family nearby. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:44] We met at a cafe can caught up. It had been a tough few years for Katie. She had struggled with her health, her brother had left the church and wasn't talking to anyone in his family, and her parents had been looking for a match for her for years. She got her hopes up with each person and each time it didn't work out in money matching everyone both the kids and the parents have a say. Katie had been rejected both by potential matches and his parents and that hurt. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:17] After Tokyo we stayed in touch over Facebook and texts. We spoke in the summer of 2017 for this project and by that time Katie had some big news. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:27] You look really sleepy are you OK? Katie [00:02:30] Oh no, I'm fine. I just got back last night from Iowa. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:34] Oh, what were you doing in Iowa? Katie [00:02:36] I was seeing Kenny. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:38] Kenny is Katie's husband now. When Katie and I talked they were about to go to Chun Pyung in South Korea to be married along with 4,000 couples. It's weird, but even though we were bombarded with the matching and blessing our whole lives, neither I nor any of my siblings went through the process. I actually didn't know very much about how it works. So I asked Katie what it's been like for her. Katie [00:03:02] I started when I was 20 and the first guy was four months and we got really close to getting engaged. That one was a good relationship, but definitely not what I am experiencing now with the relationship I'm in right now. It's a totally different dimension. With that one it was more about you know doing what your parents want, like going into the process because you know it's the right thing to do and it's part of the church and you know all that stuff. And I feel like a lot of the relationships I went through was sort of on that dimension. I've been through five before Kenny and I feel like I was taking on that other perspective kind of thing where you like in it, but you're not in it, you know, like your heart isn't fully in it. Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:56] When we were younger the founder of the church, Moon, still arranged marriages in what were called matching ceremonies. That's how most first generation were married. There was also something called 'parents matching' where many parents would find a spouse for their kid, and then there was a variation on that where second gen would find someone on their own and ask their parents permission. The process has modernized over the years. There's a website now like a Match.com for Moonies. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:26] Do most people find their matches through their parents through the website? Katie [00:04:31] No. These days people are actually like finding other people they think would be good matches and then having their parents, like talking to their parents about it and seeing what their parents say so that the kids are very much involved these days. Just because there's been so many mistakes and so many break ups and so many matches that broke and stuff and it's always really hard for the kid. So parents see that and they don't want definitely kids, so they're a little more loose these days. There are people who are getting blessed to people you know who are first gen outside the movement and they go to the blessing and there are people find each other like me and Kenny except not through our parents but through just like mutual friends or just they themselves met up and thought they would be a good match because they felt very connected. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:24] Are they even holding meetings anymore? Katie [00:05:26] No they're not. It just got weird. At one point they were matching people based off their thumbs. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:35] You heard that right. Their thumbs. Moon died a few years ago and his wife Hak Ja Han took over, but she did it a little differently than her husband. Hak Ja Han had men and women stand on each side of the room. Then she told everyone to fold their hands like they were praying. Then the women were told to cross the room to find someone with a matching thumb on top. But no women were moving, so they had the men choose instead. Yeah, that's when it got weird. Katie's family really wanted her to be blessed to another second gen. I think there was extra pressure to marry her off because she was the first child. Originally, she and Kenny chatted for a few months and it was going well. Then they got into a fight and Katie broke it off. But two years later... Hideo Higashibaba [00:06:26] He actually texted me out of the blue, even though I said never contacted me again. He texted me out of the blue and he said like there's so many things that I think could work out about us and things that I feel like I still think about and it's true. Like for me the whole relationship, the first time was amazing. I felt so connected to him...like it's interesting like when you meet someone and you feel like it's so different from any other person you've been with. And it just feels right. It's kind of like my last attempt to keep my mother involved in the process and to show her that you know all her attempts weren't in vain. So he was actually kind of my last chance, after him I was actually kind of thinking about dating other people and not really being churchy. So anyway it's a weird dynamic but I'm here, I'm in this life, and it's working out really well right now. So that's all I'm really grateful for. Hideo Higashibaba [00:07:37] Katie is a second generation, a Blessed Child born without original sin. The entire purpose of her life, for her entire life, was to marry another blessed child and have a family with him. To do something or be someone else felt impossible. But after spending most of her 20s looking for a match she was about to give up, try dating. She told Kenny to never contact her again, but he ignored her and they kept talking and she fell in love and found a reason to stay. She made the choice to stay. As children we were told to beware of the temptations of Satan, of outsiders. We had to protect ourselves and our purity. Katie says she worked so hard to be unattractive it just seemed impossible for someone to have a crush on her. Katie [00:08:31] If a guy was attracted to me I never knew. Because one thing, I gained a lot of weight. I was very smelly. I just never never thought that anyone would like me because I tried so hard not to let people like me so if there was someone who did like me it surprised me. It was like I was watching the world from a different perspective, like I wasn't really part of it. But I wasn't really not a part of it. If that makes sense?  I spent a lot of time in my house not really hanging out with people, just kind of on my own watching TV a lot. And I've watched the TV and definitely wanted to kiss or wanted to make out or wanted to like, really try those things and really, you know, experiment I guess? Curiosity, all that stuff, but I just never really felt like I was missing out on anything because...I feel like sometimes I'm from a different world, one where I'm and doing the right things because I know in my heart that that's based off my values. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:37] I heard this a lot when I was a Moonie. I even said it. Things like, I don't need friends or I'm not interested in dating because romance before marriage doesn't live up to my values. 'Living up to my values' was like a place holder for how I actually felt which was miserable and lonely. And for Katie... Katie [00:09:58] It's definitely made me feel isolated and lonely for sure but I don't feel like I had some support from other BCs too like I feel so much support from them. And even going to church every week I felt like I could be myself more, I felt like I was supported more. Most of my friends are BC because, you know, 'the outside secular world, you don't want to be friends with them' kind of thing. I had my commun

In this final episode Hideo shares his reasons for leaving the Unification and all he lost—and gained—when he left.     TRANSCRIPT Hideo Higashibaba [00:00:01] Thanks for listening to Growing Up Moonie. Just a heads up for our listeners, this episode includes mention of mental health crisis, rape, family abuse, death, hospitalization, homophobia, and child abuse. Please take care of yourself as you listen. And now the final episode of Growing Up Moonie. News Announcer [00:00:21] A decade ago, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies. News Announcer [00:00:28] So called Moonies, followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies. Interpreter [00:00:36] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy. Crowd [00:00:44] Yes! Interpreter [00:00:45] It. We are talking about absolute fidelity here. If anybody deviates from this. God. You may be about to go. News Announcer [00:00:55] But the church has a different plan for the second generation. 2nd Gen [00:00:58] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know we aren't just like this bubble. 2nd Gen [00:01:03] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but it's not what you see in the church. 2nd Gen [00:01:08] Even if I'm not doing everything that they want me to do or I don't believe everything that they believe we still have this like line that connects us. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:20] My name is Hideo Higashi Baba. I am queer, brown and transgender. I like reading, watching TV, swimming, and hiking, and hanging out with my dog Stanley. And oh yeah I grew up in a cult. This is Growing Up Moonie, stories of people who grew up in the Unification Church, Also known as the Moonies. And for this last episode I wanted to tell my story. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:48] For the most part before I left, I was a really good Moonie. When I was 18 I told my parents I wanted an arranged marriage just like they got. I read the sacred texts, I didn't date or smoke or drink. I got good grades and honored my father and mother. At church, I was taught the Divine Principle the sacred teachings of the church. I learned that the source of all sin was sex that I had to save my virginity for my husband. In my heart I knew what the founder Sun Myung Moon told us about the world was right and it was my job to protect myself from anything that would contradict that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:30] I am my parent's third child out of four. There are my two older sisters than me than my younger sister. Before I was born my father Shinichi prayed and prayed for a boy but all he got was another kid with a vagina. He doesn't know that I'm transgender. I'm pretty sure he would not be happy to find out. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:51] My parents had four children in six years, and from the moment we were born we were told we were special. Unlike my classmates, their parents, the people we saw out in the world, we didn't have Original Sin and that meant we were better than everyone else. It also meant that we had to be better. Better behaved, better in school, more modest, discreet, and generous. We were literally born to save the world from Satan, to reunite humanity with God. And we could not fuck that up. Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:27] But there's something else. I grew up in an abusive family. My mom Andrea would fly into rages and yell at us until she was hoarse. She also hit us. My dad Shinichi did too. You might not know that much about abusive or co-dependent family structures; in my family, we were raised to take care of Andrea. Our needs came second. No matter how much she yelled at us or hit us. Our job was to make sure she felt OK. How we felt didn't matter. As a kid I tried not to cry when she hit me but it wasn't because I was tough. It was because I didn't want to make her feel bad for what she was doing. This co-dependent relationship and isolation from the outside world meant that our relationships with the church were inextricable from our relationship with Andrea. You couldn't get one without the other. Doing things Andrea didn't like weren't just annoying to her. She made it clear that what you were doing was a sin. Like if we tried to run away when she wanted to yell at us or hit us that was disrespecting our elders, against God's instruction to honor our father and mother. She told me that she hit us because she saw a defiance, a kind of sin in our eyes. She could tell Satan was working in us and she had to beat him out. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:57] I was discouraged from having friends and I wasn't invited to a lot of sleepovers or parties. So I spent a lot of time at home. At the time. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. In fact I thought it was all a good thing. My family meant everything to me. They were more important than my feelings, my dreams, or anything I wanted, and that was completely normal. Sun Myung Moon told us to honor our father and mother that the family was where the love of God resides. And I believed him. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:34] It's not that I wasn't curious or didn't have my doubts. I was told that if something didn't make sense it was because I didn't have enough faith. I just had to pray about it and God would provide me the answers. Having a different opinion or being something other than what was expected of me was not an option. My job was to prepare myself to be married to get blessed. No one asked me what I wanted because no one cared. If I contradicted my parents or the church I would be yelled at or hit. So I developed a deep denial about everything. I learned again and again to ignore my feelings, ignore my body and my instincts. So the arranged marriage, the homophobia, the self-loathing, it all seemed perfectly normal to me. When my extended family who are not in the church made fun of me for my faith I defended the church and my parents. I'm still baffled by why my grandparents aunts and uncles thought it would be funny to tease a seven year old about their beliefs. I certainly didn't have any say in the matter. Hideo Higashibaba [00:06:45] Anyway, my immediate family was controlling but I was never discouraged from learning or traveling. When I wanted to go to a tiny liberal arts college in Ohio, they supported me, but I wonder if they would have if they knew how much it would change me. In college, I met all kinds of people and it got harder and harder to maintain the bigotry I was raised with. I also started crushing on a boy almost immediately and that terrified me. I had already promised myself to the blessing and with this crush I felt like I was betraying that promise. I pushed my feelings for this person down as hard as I could and eventually I got over it. So I thought I knew what to do when another boy at school named Ian after me out a couple years later. I told him, no I don't date, but Ian was different. I don't mean that he was particularly nice or interesting or even good looking. What made Ian special was that he did not go away when I told him I wasn't interested. He just kept hanging around saying all he wanted to do was spend time with me, that he just liked talking to me, yada yada. All the things a naive and inexperienced person like me wanted to hear. And it just felt so nice to be liked and my sister had married someone outside the church. By that point it just didn't seem that bad to go out with a non-Moonie. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:17] When we did eventually start dating it was weird and awkward and embarrassing like so many first boyfriends are. Now, I wouldn't even consider it a relationship. But at the time I did. Shortly after we started dating, I left for an internship and most of our relationship was over the phone. I'm taking the time to tell you this embarrassing story about Ian because we got into a fight that shattered my faith which is where I started the story when Jenn from the first episode of this podcast asked me why I left the church. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:52] I got a huge theological argument with my boyfriend at the time who was Jewish and he basically was like, 'why do you believe this?' And it took like three days worth of arguing with him about this particular piece of scripture, because I was like, I don't know for me, you know, for example the fall of Adam and Eve, like that's for me at the time was like this is inherently true and this is something that I can believe happened and he was like, 'well I just think that some people made it up, like some people made up the story as a way to make women feel bad and like to oppress women. And I never literally never thought about it like that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:26] We fought about the anti-Semitism of the Bible and Christianity and I defended it. It was a three day long argument over the phone, him back at school, I was back at home on break by that point. It was just a total mess. But finally, I sent a message apologizing. I said that if my beliefs were oppressive and anti-Semitic then I would have to change what I believed. I had no idea how much that single text would change my life. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:57] I don't think he knew that he was challenging...it wasn't like an intellectual exercise for me, like, we were having an argument over like my entire belief system. Like how I made sense of the world and why the color blue was the way it was and why was born and like it was really existential and I don't think he understood that it was. And kind of spiraled out of control like that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:10:24] Throughout this three day shitshow I told my sisters I'd been fighting with Ian but not what it was about exactly. I told them about the apology but not what it said. They did not like that. My sister Anshin cornered me and demanded details. She said I shouldn't change for anyone especially a bo