Japan’s dispute with church a test of liberty everywhere

The bedrock principle of religious liberty faces a historic test right now in Japan, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told an audience at a major summit in Washington this week, warning that a dangerous, communist-backed effort to punish the Unification Church could carry severe consequences for people of all faiths around the globe.

Mr. Gingrich and other speakers at the International Religious Freedom Summit 2024 cast a bright spotlight on the Japanese government’s push to strip the tax-exempt religious status of the Unification Church, which has operated in the country since the late 1950s. Mr. Gingrich and others say the roots of the campaign against the Unification Church can be traced back decades, but the most recent spark started after the 2022 assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The killing of Abe and its aftermath seem to have emboldened fringe Japanese communists. Critics say they have since tried to smear and discredit Abe’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party over its links to the Unification Church. The gunman who shot Abe allegedly was motivated by the former prime minister’s links to the church, which he blamed for bankrupting his family two decades ago.

The effort reached new heights in October when the Japanese Education Ministry asked a Tokyo court to revoke the church’s legal tax-exempt status. If that effort succeeds, Mr. Gingrich said, the fallout will be swift and severe.

“The core value of being able to approach God without interference really underlies all freedom. A government which can block you from approaching God can block you from anything,” the Georgia Republican said in a video address that aired at the conference Wednesday during a luncheon sponsored by The Washington Times Foundation and the Universal Peace Federation.

“We have to make sure that the Japanese government understands that this is a key test of the future of Japan [and] a key test of the future of religious liberty,” Mr. Gingrich said. “And that to close down an organization as a deliberately political act of retribution is a profound undermining of the very basis of freedom.”

Mr. Gingrich and other speakers warned that such a step, if allowed to proceed, could make Japan the first domino to fall in a much broader, more dangerous crackdown against churches and faith-based groups of all types around the world.

Protecting religious freedom

The IRF Summit in Washington featured remarks from various international and U.S. religious and political leaders, including some from the Biden administration. It was co-chaired by Sam Brownback, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, U.S. senator and Kansas governor, and Katrina Lantos Swett, co-chair of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and a former Democratic congressional candidate.

Many of the speakers drew attention to the threats to religious freedom posed by China, North Korea, Iran and other hard-line regimes.

Some of the sharpest comments came in response to the unfolding situation in Japan and the attempted crackdown on the country’s branch of the Unification Church, formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

Ms. Lantos Swett likened the U.S. government to an individual trying to persuade an inebriated friend not to get behind the wheel of a car as the Japanese government presses ahead against the Unification Church.

“Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. Right now, Japan is in the process of getting into the car drunk when it comes to their treatment” of the church in Japan, she said.

“It is not OK to engage in collective punishment. It is not OK to target a particular faith community,” she said during a panel discussion moderated by Charles Hurt, opinion editor of the Washington Times.

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon founded the Unification Church in 1954. Rev. Moon’s wife, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, has headed the Unification movement since Rev. Moon died in 2012. They founded The Washington Times in 1982.

In a pre-recorded video address that aired at the summit Wednesday, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed back on the claims of some critics in Japan that the Unification Church exercised improper political influence and represented a threat to society.

Nothing could be further from the truth,” Mr. Pompeo said. “The church, founded by Rev. Moon, has long stood against communism and has always championed stronger ties between Japan, Korea and the United States. If there is anything the Unification Church undermines, it indeed is communism.”

“None of us can allow this to happen,” Mr. Pompeo said of the efforts in Japan. “America and other free, democratic and God-affirming nations must set the example. The surest way we can achieve this is by being steadfast champions of religious freedom and religious liberty.”

The church could still operate if it is stripped of its legal status, but it would lose the tax-exempt privileges that other recognized religious organizations have. It also could lose other assets, including physical places of worship, leading some scholars to warn that the legal dissolution would be a crushing blow for the church.

Escalating attacks

The fallout from the Abe assassination in July 2022 has been politically tense in Japan. Left-leaning media outlets and the small Communist Party, which oppose the generally centrist-conservative LDP, launched a campaign highlighting what they said were close and improper ties to the Unification Church.

The country’s oldest opposition party, the Japanese Communist Party, has been steadily declining in recent decades and now holds just 21 seats in the upper and lower chambers of the 713-seat National Diet.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has denied that the church has ever influenced his party’s policymaking, but he has responded to the pressure campaign by strengthening internal controls on financial links between LDP members and the Unification Church.

Japan’s parliament enacted a law in December 2022 to restrict donation solicitations to politicians by religious and other groups. That law has triggered warnings from faith advocacy groups around the world, among them the International Religious Freedom Roundtable, which has representatives in dozens of countries.

The law prohibits religious groups from engaging in “spiritual sales” of items said to carry religious significance and allows believers, other donors and their families to seek the return of money given to religious organizations.

Members of the Unification Church say the church has overhauled its fundraising operations and has not engaged in spiritual sales for more than a decade. Critics of the Japanese law say it has unjustly targeted the church in the face of a Communist Party-fueled public relations campaign about the Unification Church’s alleged political clout.

On the legal front, a lawyer representing the church, Tatsu Nakayama, told the Washington gathering Wednesday that “the legal requirement for dissolution of the religious corporation is very high” and stressed that he believes no evidence could warrant such an extreme step. He said “left-wing lawyers” and other anti-Unification stakeholders have tried to legally dismantle the church for 30 years without success.

The luncheon also included video clips from church members offering their personal experiences with the organization, what it means to them and how deeply recent accusations have hurt them.

“My church has always been an inspiration for me to strive to become a source of positive change in my family and society. However, it has been painful seeing the Family Federation, which I regard like my family, being spoken of as an evil cult in newspapers and social media,” one church member, Seijin Anthony Shirotori, said in a brief video address.

“I feel anger towards those who mock and slander my church, but I make it a point to pray for them and wish that they can find true happiness as well,” he said.