A Struggle For Power And Money

The dispute between claimants to leadership of the church founded in 1954 by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon has been punted by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

The combatants are Moon’s eldest living son versus his widow and her younger son

Both of them have claimed to be Rev. Moon’s successor as spiritual leader of the Church and, at different times, each has led the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification International. They believe the Family Federation is the institutional embodiment of the Unification Church, effectively synonymous with it, and that UCI is bound to support it.

The court

The central issue in this appeal is whether this dispute is one for civil courts to resolve. The First Amendment generally precludes civil courts from resolving religious conflicts, in what is sometimes called the religious abstention doctrine. Whether that doctrine bars the District’s courts from resolving the present dispute, or whether it instead can be resolved through the application of neutral principles of law without wading into religious questions, has proven a vexing question. The Superior Court initially dismissed the underlying suit on religious abstention grounds, concluding that it could not be resolved without “venturing into religious questions forbidden by the First Amendment.” Family Fed’n for World Peace & Unification Int’l v. Hyun Jin Moon (Moon I), 129 A.3d 234, 239 (D.C. 2015). We reversed, reasoning that dismissal was “premature” at the motion-to-dismiss stage because it was possible that evidence might be adduced that would permit the dispute to be resolved through neutral principles of law. Id. at 248-52. On remand, and after extensive discovery, a newly assigned judge concluded that the conflict could indeed be resolved by applying neutral legal principles. In the orders now on appeal, the court granted summary judgment in the Family Federation’s favor and directed that the UCI directors be removed from their posts and held personally liable to UCI for more than half-a-billion dollars. In doing so, the court described this case as less a quarrel over church doctrine and more “a struggle for power and money.”

It is certainly that, but this struggle for power and money cannot be resolved without answering core questions about religious doctrine. And we are precluded from providing those answers. It is not for the courts to pronounce, as the trial court did, that the Family Federation is the “authoritative religious entity” that ordains what does and does not benefit the Unification Church. Nor can we say that UCI’s directors fundamentally altered its articles of incorporation without first addressing religious questions that we cannot entertain. UCI’s articles could have vested final decision-making authority in a particular institutional actor like the Family Federation, but they have never done that. See Jones v. Wolf, 443 U.S. 595, 603 (1979) (“[R]eligious societies can specify . . . what religious body will determine the
ownership in the event of a schism or doctrinal controversy.”). Absent that, it is not for us to pass judgment on whose vision of the Unification Church, or Unification Movement, is more faithful to the purposes UCI was established to advance. That religious question is outside of this court’s purview.

(Mike Frisch)