Blessing ceremony of the Unification Church

The Holy Marriage Blessing Ceremony is a large-scale wedding or marriage rededication ceremony sponsored by the Unification Church. It is given to married or engaged couples. Through it, members of the Unification Church believe that the couple is removed from the lineage of sinful humanity and engrafted into God’s sinless lineage. As a result, the couple’s marital relationship—and any children born after the Blessing—exist free from the consequences of original sin. (Children born into Blessed Central Families are known as Blessed Children or second generation, third generation, etc.)

For Unificationists, these interracial, interreligious and international mass marriage ceremonies symbolize the family as the hope for peace. The Blessing ceremony has become the most famous ritual of the Unification Church. The men and women who receive the Blessing are called "Blessed Central Families" who are conducive to the establishment of Cheon Il Guk (the Kingdom of Heaven.)

Frank Kaufmann, a leading Unificationist scholar, wrote:

We do not have mass weddings because Reverend Moon doesn't know any better, doesn't know how Americans react to things, or that he stubbornly adheres to some odd Korean habit. Our matchings and weddings are a direct and perfect manifestation of a profound theology and world view. You see, Unificationists believe that all the problems on Earth, from the Gulf War, to child abuse, to the crumbling school system (you name it) are fruits of the fact that self-interest crept into the family, the love between husband and wife, reproductive affairs, and parent-child relationships, thus since the beginning there has never been even one family whose members were not dominated by some significant degree of self-interest.

Scholars have noted the Blessing ceremony allows Unification Church members to express their belief in an international, inter-racial "family of God." In the words of the Reverend Moon, he once described the meaning of the Marriage Blessing:

Then what is the ultimate reason why we need to do it? It is because our human ancestors fell. If our first ancestors had not fallen, it would not be necessary for us to receive the Blessing. But we have to reverse the fallen process. We have no other way to return to God's realm of authority than through a course that restores the fall. That is why human beings until now have pursued religion, for this is the direction and purpose of human history.

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