Black Heung Jin (Cleophas Kundiona) by Nansook Hong
excerpt from: ‘In The Shadow of The Moons’ pages 150-153
by Nansook Hong
Black Heung Jin
“If the deification of Heung Jin and the crowning ceremony tested my faith, the emergence of the Black Heung Jin nearly destroyed it. Many of the reports of possession by Sun Myung Moon’s dead son came from Africa. In 1987 the Reverend Chung Hwan Kwak went to investigate reports that Heung Jin had taken over the body of a Zimbabwean man and was speaking through him. The Reverend Kwak returned to East Garden professing certainty that the possession was real. We all gathered around the dinner table to hear his impressions.
The Zimbabwean was older that Heung Jin, so he could not be the reincarnated son of Sun Myung Moon. In addition, the Unification Church rejects the theory of reincarnation. Instead, the African presented himself to the Reverend Kwak as the physical embodiment of Heung Jin’s spirit. The Reverend Kwak had asked him what it was like to enter the spirit world. The Black Heung Jin said that upon entering the Kingdom of Heaven, he immediately became all-knowing. The True Family need not study on earth because they were already perfected. Knowledge would be theirs when they entered the spirit world.
That rationale appealed to Hyo Jin as much as if offended me. He had flirted with some courses at Pace University and at the Unification Church seminary in Barrytown, New York, but my husband was more interested in drinking than in learning. I was put off by the suggestion that we did not have to work to earn God’s favor. We in the Unification Church might be God’s chosen people, but I believed our efforts on earth would determine our place in the afterlife. We had to earn our place in Heaven.
The Reverend Moon was thrilled with the news from Africa. The Unification Church had been concentrating its recruitment efforts in Latin America and Africa. Clearly a Black Heung Jin could not hurt the cause. Without even meeting the man who claimed to be possessed by the spirit of his dead child, Sun Myung Moon authorized the Black Heung Jin to travel the world, preaching and hearing the confessions of The Unification Church members who had gone astray.
Confessions soon became central to the Black Heung Jin’s mission. He went to Europe, to Korea, to Japan, everywhere administering beatings to those who had violated church teachings by using alcohol and drugs or engaging in premarital sex. The Black Heung Jin spent a year on the road, dispensing physical punishment as penance for those who wished to repent, before Sun Myung Moon summoned him to East Garden.
We all gathered to greet him at Father’s breakfast table. He was a thin black man of average height who spoke English better than Sun Myung Moon. He seemed to me intent on charming the True Family, in much the way a snake encircles and then swallows its prey. I was anxious to hear some concrete evidence that this man possessed the spirit of the boy I once knew. I was not to hear it. The Reverend Moon asked him standard theological questions that any member who had studied the Divine Principle could have answered. He offered no startling revelations or religious insights. Maybe what most impressed Father was his ability to quote from the speeches of Sun Myung Moon.
The Reverend and Mrs. Moon suggested that we children meet with the Black Heung Jin privately and report back to them on our impressions. It was an amazing meeting. Hyun Jin, Kook Jin, and Hyo Jin kept asking the stranger questions about their childhood. He could not answer any of them. He did not remember anything about his life on Earth, he told us. Instead of inspiring skepticism, the Black Heung Jin’s convenient memory loss was interpreted as a sign of his having left earthly concerns behind when he entered the Kingdom of Heaven. Everyone in the household embraced him and called him by their dead brother’s name. I avoided him and found myself thinking that I was living with either the stupidest or the most gullible people on earth. There was a third alternative I did not consider at the time: the Reverend Moon was using the Black Heung Jin for his own ends, just as he had used the American civil liberties community before him.
Sun Myung Moon seemed to take pleasure in the reports that filtered back to East Garden of the beatings being administered by the Black Heung Jin. He would laugh raucously if someone out of favor had been dealt an especially hard blow. No one outside the True Family was immune from the beatings. Leaders around the world tried to use their influence to be exempted from the Black Heung Jin’s confessional. My own father appealed in vain to the Reverend Kwak to avoid having to attend such a session.
The Black Heung Jin was a passing phenomenon in the Unification Church. Soon the mistresses he acquired were so numerous and the beatings he administered so severe that members began to complain. Mrs. Moon’s maid, Won Ju McDevitt, a Korean who married an American church member, appeared one morning with a blackened eye and covered with purple bruises. The Black Heung Jin had beaten her with a chair. He beat Bo Hi Pak – a man in his sixties – so badly that he was hospitalized for a week in Georgetown Hospital. He told doctors he had fallen down a flight of stairs. He later needed surgery to repair a blood vessel in his head.
Sun Myung Moon knew when to cut his losses. When you are the Messiah, it is easy to make a course correction. Once it became clear that he had to disassociate himself from the violence he had let loose on the membership, Sun Myung Moon simply announced that Heung Jin’s spirit had left the Zimbabwean’s body and ascended into Heaven. The Zimbabwean was not quite so ready to get off the gravy train. At last sighting, he had established a breakaway cult in Africa with himself in the role of Messiah.”
A review of Nansook Hong’s revealing book
Black Heung-jin (Cleophas Kundiona)
Moon’s Son, 17, Dies After a Car Accident in 1984
Spirit Revelation and the UC by James A. Beverley
Black Heung Jin – The Victory of (All You Need Is) Love by Dan Fefferman
Black Heung Jin Nim in DC by Damian Anderson
Heung Jin Nim’s Spiritual Work by Michael Mickler
Black Heung-jin fled because he committed felony assault
An interview with Black Heung Jin after he parted from Moon
Black Heung Jin Timeline by Graham Lester
Theological Uproar in Unification Church – Reincarnated Son
Hoon-sook was married to Moon’s dead son, Heung Jin
Book in four parts, English:
Nansook Hong – In The Shadow Of The Moons, part 1
Nansook Hong – In The Shadow Of The Moons, part 2
Nansook Hong – In The Shadow Of The Moons, part 3
Nansook Hong – In The Shadow Of The Moons, part 4
Book in four parts, French:
« L’ombre de Moon » par Nansook Hong, partie 1
« L’ombre de Moon » par Nansook Hong, partie 4
Book in four parts, German:
