A minister Who Supports Ex-Believers in Exiting the Unification Church: "If the Second Generation of Unification Church Members Deny Their Parents, and They Became Worthless Themselves."

This post is a DeepL translation (partially revised by the blog administrator) of the following article.

本投稿は以下の記事のDeepL翻訳（一部、管理人修正済み）です。

A minister Who Supports Ex-Believers in Exiting the Unification Church: "If the Second Generation of Unification Church Members Deny Their Parents, and They Became Worthless Themselves."

Continues from Part 1: A Former UC member and now minister who helps people leave the church talks about his "handkerchief-selling" days and his feelings of atonement - KIB: kurogane in black

"This place was used as a 'shelter' to shelter people who had fallen into poverty and victims of domestic violence. Of course, there were also believers and so-called second-generation residents staying here."

A corner of a residential area in Shirakawa City, Fukushima Prefecture. Itaru Takesako, 55, minister of the Shirakawa Church of Christ in Japan, pried open the front door of the old house, which is now dilapidated and no longer used as a shelter.

He said, "Wow, I haven't been here for a while, so the cobwebs are all over the place."

As he brushes the cobwebs off his head, Mr. Takesako proceeds to a back room. There, as in the building, were a number of ageing bookcases lined up in a row.

Wiping the dust off with his fingertips, Mr. Takesako opened a book. At the front of the book was a portrait of an elderly man in a business suit. This man is Sun Myung Moon (died in 2012 at the age of 92), the founder of the "Family Federation for the Unification of World Peace (formerly known as the World Christian Unification Church, hereafter Unification Church).

■ The "second-generation religious issue" was highlighted by the statement of the suspect in the "shooting incident of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The July 8 shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has brought the Unification Church back into the public spotlight. As Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, the suspect who attacked the former prime minister, described his motive, he mentioned the Unification Church by name.

According to his statement, the suspect's mother was a devoted believer who donated approximately 100 million yen and went bankrupt, leading to the collapse of her family. And thus he committed the crime.

The Unification Church was founded in Korea in '54 and was approved as a religious corporation in Japan in '64.' In the '80s and '90s, "Spiritual Sales" became a social problem, in which people were sold expensive items such as vases, fomenting anxiety that their ancestors were related to them and that they were possessed by spirits. Mass Weddings," in which groups of men and women are matched by a cult and brought together, have also been the focus of strange attention.

And this summer, after the incident, the existence of "second-generation religious people" came under spot light. Mr. Takesako says, "Like Mr. Yamagami, the second generation of religious believers are those who are forced by birth or upbringing to become involved with religious organizations that have many problems of their own volition. This is the point of the 2nd generation."

In fact, Mr. Takesako himself was a member of the Unification Church at the end of his teenage years. He left the church and became a minister at the age of 25. For the past 30 years since then, he has been confronting the issue of cults based on his own experience. In particular, he has counseled more than three-digit numbers of Unification Church members, and has led many of them to leave the church.

And in recent years, he has become increasingly concerned about the issue of the second generation of believers.

"In the 1990s, after Mass Weddings began to be held on a large scale, the number of second-generation believers began to increase rapidly. There must be tens of thousands of them all over Japan. And it is not only Yamagami who is suffering."

■As he spoke about his experiences in front of family members who came to him for counseling and believers who were being urged to leave the church

Mr. Takesako decided to read the Bible again. Many people say that the Unification Church is wrong. Then, he thought, if he read the Bible properly, he would understand what they meant. However.

I was taught only the Unification Church-style reading, so even if I face the Bible on my own, all I can read is, 'The Old Unification Church is right.

I asked my minister to teach me how to read the Bible correctly, and after three months of attending church, he told me that there was a school that would teach me the Bible correctly. That was the Christianity Department of Tohoku Gakuin University.

At the age of 21, Mr. Takesako opened the door to Tohoku Gakuin University's Christianity Department.

"Within six months, I realized how the old Unification Church had become. I found out within six months that the Unification Church was teaching a distorted reading of the Bible. I realized that they had a purpose first and were only misusing Christianity to achieve it."

After graduating from college, Mr. Takesako became a minister.

Meanwhile, during his time in Aomori, Mr. Takesako also had the opportunity to teach.

"In Aomori, I taught Bible classes at a Christian high school, and after moving to Shirakawa, I became a part-time lecturer at two universities in Sendai, Tohoku Gakuin University and Miyagi Gakuin Women's University."

While working with young students, the existence of "second-generation religious people" caught Takesako's attention.

It was shortly before the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. In one of my lectures, I showed a picture of Sun Myung Moon and his wife, saying, 'Be careful of cults'. He said, "They are the leaders of a famous cult. After the lecture, a female student confided to me, 'I have the same picture at my parents' house. That was the first time I met a 2nd generation."

■ A high school student who was forced to give up her job in order to participate in a Mass Wedding, was rescued by her grandfather.

It was shortly before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. I was consulting with a 2nd generation.

"She was a second-generation Blessed High School girl whose parents were both members of the Unification Church. She dreamed of becoming a hairdresser and wanted to find a job after graduation, but her parents, especially her father, were ardent believers. He was obstructing her in her job search, saying, 'You have to train to be a bride until the Mass Wedding'. She was fortunate that she did not have a bias toward the Unification Church because of her strong dislike of her father, who was so arrogant in everything he did."

Mr. Takesako devised a plan to have her run away from home as soon as she graduated.

"One wrong move could have resulted in kidnapping charges, but I was prepared for that. I was thinking of hiding her in a shelter like the one I showed you. Then her grandfather came to the rescue. She was able to temporarily take shelter with her grandparents."

After that, she moved to Tokyo and started living alone, keeping her whereabouts a secret from her parents.

"After moving to Tokyo, I saw her several times. I saw her several times after she moved to Tokyo. She seemed to be having a hard time making ends meet, but she looked radiant. Even though she was struggling with money, I think it was a good opportunity for her to learn general economic sense, which is not easy to learn in the Unification Church."

The year before last, Mr. Takesako received a call from a girlfriend for the first time in several years.

"She told me that she had married a man she met at her part-time job, had a child, and started a family. Although her dream of becoming a beautician did not come true, she was able to achieve a happiness that is quite ordinary to most people, but a dream come true for a 2nd generation."

■ Encouraging 2nd-gen to leave the Church may be denying the existence of 2nd-gens Themselves.

Ms. Takesako says, "We need to be especially sensitive to the 2nd-gens."

There are two main types of 2nd-gens: the second generation of believers, like Yamagami, whose parents joined the church after they were born, and the Blessed Second Generation, who are born to couples who were married in a Mass Wedding. Especially in the case of the Blessed Second Generation, urging them to leave the church would mean denying the existence of the Church, which in turn would mean denying the existence of the Blessed Second Generation themselves.

Mr. Takesako also said that "leaving the Blessed 2nd Generation is like being thrown out on the streets of a foreign country, where you don't understand the language or customs."

"The first generation who joined the church themselves, so to speak, can go back to their original selves after leaving the church. But the Blessed Second Generation has no self to return to. So, when I receive a request for help from a second-generation Blessed Families, I always tell the person who is their grandparent. Whenever I receive a consultation for support for ex-members involving Blessed 2nd generations, I always tell the grandparents, "Please intervene in their homes more than ever before and build a good relationship with your grandchildren. We want the grandparents to be a safe haven for the 2nd-gens, and a place for them to escape to when the time comes."

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)