#Oakland Church

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Papasan Choi died on Feb 23, 2023. Boonville was founded by him but taken away by Sun Myung Moon

Updated March 5, 2023

▲ Papasan Choi (aka Choi Sang-Ik, Choi Bong-Choon and Masaru Nishigawa) and Mamasan in Tokyo.

Sang-Ik Choi was born in 1925. At the age of two he had moved to Japan with his family, returning to Korea when they were forced to repatriate in 1945. His father gave him the name Bong-choon when he was in his twenties. He realized the significance of the name only after joining our church in April 1957 and thereafter adopted it. During his missionary days in Japan, he went by the Japanese name Masaru Nishigawa.

Mutual hostility contributed to Korea and Japan not restoring diplomatic relations until December 1965. In 1958, severe travel restrictions existed between the two countries. Talks recommenced in December that year only after Japan dropped its long-standing claim to about 80 percent of all property in Korea and its claim that Korea was the beneficiary from 1910-1945. Antiquities had been spirited away from Korea. Japan called this archeology; Korea called it theft. Any concessions on Japan’s part led to riots in Tokyo. Even in 1965, in both countries, riots and histrionic statements by politicians preceded the ratification votes.

He planted the seeds for the Unification Church in Japan from 1958 to 1964. Because Korea and Japan did not have diplomatic relations, he was arrested upon arrival in July 1958. Escaping confinement, he made his way to Tokyo where, after six months of struggle, he got a job as a salesman for a watch shop in the Shinjuku section. During the morning he worked. In the afternoon he witnessed. Once a week he rented the second floor of the shop to preach. On Sunday, October 2, 1959, he conducted the first Sunday service. The Unification Church of Japan commemorates this as its founding day.

Sang-Ik Choi was married in the 36 couples under the name of Bong-Choon Choi. His wife, Mi-Shik Shin, had been expelled from Ewha Woman’s University in 1955 during the UC sex scandal. The young women did not want to testify in court. However, Moon admitted to the judge that he had lied about his age to avoid the military draft. He was sentenced to two years in jail, but was released after a few months after some “special arrangements” were made. Papasan Choi was always reluctant to talk about how his wife was “womb-cleansed” by Sun Myung Moon.

▲ Papasan Choi with Japanese members

In 1964 he was deported from Japan to Korea; the following year he traveled to the US where he was known as Papasan Choi. He established a community in the Bay Area, but there was conflict between his group and that of Young-oon Kim who taught the Divine Principle in a more orthodox way.

▲ Boonville, also known as New Ideal City Ranch

Boonville was purchased in 1970 by Papasan Choi. He and his wife, known as Mamasan, led the Re-Education Center which he had founded in San Francisco. Mamasan’s role in the community was significant. Yeon-Soo Lim (or Onni Durst as she was later known) ran an outpost of Papasan Choi’s community in Berkeley.

Papasan Choi’s secular teachings, The Principles of Education, were the foundation for the teaching methods used in the Bay Area and Boonville by Mose Durst, Kristina Morrison Seher and the Creative Community Project team.

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▲ Papasan Choi, Mamasan and San Francisco members, January 1, 1969

“Furthermore, the International Re-Education Foundation had owned some land in Boonville, California, sometimes known as [the New] Ideal City Ranch, which it turned over in a simple transfer of title in 1974 to the Unification Church.” (page 111) Rev. Sun Myung Moon (1978) by Chong-Sun Kim. University Press of America

In December 1974 Yeon-Soo Lim was married to Mose Durst by Sun Myung Moon in Pasadena. From then she was known as Onni Durst. At the same time Moon made her the Unification Church leader of California (excluding Los Angeles). In this way she inherited the Boonville property. Papasan Choi was sometimes described as a failure by leaders of the Creative Community Project, however, that had not been the case.

Link to an extended report on Papasan Choi and the early UC in California.

Papasan Choi made a public declaration about leaving the Unification Church on January 15, 1987 in Saitama, Japan.

統一教会問題と私、及びその未来 – 西川 勝氏

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Creative Community Project brochure

From a talk given by Dr. Mose Durst, President of the Creative Community Project.

Childcare in the Unification Church of Oakland

Boonville – Is this how the Family cared for its children?

Recruitment – The Boonville Chicken Palace by David Frank Taylor, M.A., July 1978, Sociology

Moonwebs by Josh Freed

Crazy for God: The nightmare of cult life by Christopher Edwards

Ford Greene – the former Moonie became an attorney

Chant 10,000 times – instruct Onni Durst and Kristina Morrison Seher, June 2014

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Thomas W. Case:

Boonville in the spring of 1974

Inside Look at a Boonville Moonie Training Session

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[caldrive]

The Beautiful Gate Church, Oakland, California, back in 2010. What it looks like now (2023): https://goo.gl/maps/gUiUdSxkkdzg7A4E8

[newtownpentacle]

God almighty

Thursday – photo by Mitch Waxman Scuttling about in Pittsburgh’s Oakland, along a fairly random path, one encountered several amazing religious buildings. Pictured above is a Jewish Synagogue, dubbed “Rodef Shalom,” which was designed by Henry Hornbostel – who is better known back in NYC as the designer behind the Manhattan Bridge’s accoutrements. Hornbostel also worked on Queensboro, Hell…

[sadinitials]

[singeratlarge]

SUNDAY MATINEE MUSIC VIDEO: “Blessed Assurance” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuzWLy_4sjc ...This well-known hymn was written by blind songwriter Fanny Crosby with music by Phoebe Knapp. Originally published in 1873, it’s still sung around the world in hundreds of churches at a time. It’s been covered many times, usually with the familiar arrangement, which I learned years ago. One day I was tinkering in the studio and developed my own arrangement, wrapping new chords around the standard melody and giving it a Philly Soul feel. Here I am in Oakland CA, playing it at a memorial service for a remarkable family friend (who is described in the video). Jimmy Touzel was at the mixing board and Uma Robin Mackey captured this video. Be blessed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuzWLy_4sjc

#blessedassurance #hymn #singersongwriter #FannyCrosby #PhoebeKnapp #church #phillysoul #oakland #california #jimmytouzel #johnnyjblair #singeratlarge

[avonlady44]

[serious2020]

(via Mme. Mildred Aristide is coming to the Bay Area!)

[dot-gov]

obsessed w vantana row rn

[reportwire]

The oldest Black church in California's East Bay burns in three-alarm fire | CNN

CNN  —  The oldest Black church in California’s East Bay was devastated by a massive fire Sunday night that the church’s pastor said gutted its interior structure. Video showed heavy smoke and flames shooting from the roof of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Oakland, where the fire erupted shortly before midnight, according to a tweet from the Oakland Fire Department. It quickly…

[readyforevolution]

In January, 1969, the Free Breakfast for School Children Program was initiated at St. Augustine's Church in Oakland by the Black Panther Party. The Panthers would cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the area. Initially run out of a St. Augustine's (Episcopal) Church in Oakland, the Program became so popular that by the end of the year, the Panthers set up kitchens in cities across the nation, feeding over 10,000 children every day before they went to school

Photo: Nancy Thompson ,Black Panthers' Free Breakfast for Children' program (Oakland, 1971)

[photoarchive]

Kenneth P. Green Sr., Multiple woman dressed attending West Oakland Methodist Church, 1967

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Mose and Onni Durst – their legacy

I remember when the Dursts were a big deal, what with her being the notorious Onni, and him becoming the UC president in the U.S.

Dr. Durst used to be seen a lot on TV, and even when I was still in the church in the mid 80’s, I thought his TV manner was just a little too inauthentic to be believed by a lot of folks who might watch him. For example, his oft-repeated “If our eyes are glazed, they are glazed because we are crying for the world”, just came across as practiced and obvious. After the Oakland church was no longer the recruiting powerhouse it had been in the 70’s, it seems like its time had just sort of passed. It had been sort of a cult within a cult, with some of the older members, especially women, speaking in near-worshipful terms about “Omma and Oppa”. I always thought it was kind of weird, the level of admiration those members held, with the Dursts (and Kristina Morrison/Seher) being regarded as infallible. I wonder how the Dursts got along with all the later changes: becoming rather marginalized, the loony stuff like Black Heung Jin and the Hyo Jin revelations, the fractures in the so-called “True Family”, and the developments of the last year or so. I wonder what they think now? What is their relationship with the present and recent UC leadership really like? Do they (or Dr. Durst, anyway) see the deficiency of the Korean and Japanese leadership’s understanding of how to reach Americans? I wonder what they really think of the (ahem) “True Children”. They brought a lot of people into the church. They must know how many longtime members have left, and why. Do they ever wonder how it is that all their grand ideas for an “ideal city”, all the pie-in-the-sky they promised the members, all the statements of how things would be by now, have come to naught? Do they ever lie awake at night and wonder if drawing people in with big ideas and big words (and all the deception, dissembling, and subterfuge they used to retain recruits), was a mistake? That their lives have produced little of lasting substance? That they hurt people?

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“Onni Durst is a woman of guts. While she was at a slot machine in Las Vegas, she completely ran out of coins; she went to the next person, smiled, and borrowed some coins.”

Sun Myung Moon (May 19, 1980, New York City)

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Onni Durst’s trips to Las Vegas casinos, New York, and Seoul – and her luxurious lifestyle.

Childcare in the Unification Church of Oakland

$27,000 Mercedes for Onni Durst – “Take it back”, she said, “It’s the wrong color.”

Onni Durst lied under oath

Onni Durst is a supporter of the Woo group – led by another illegitimate son of Moon

The “sophisticated honey of 1960’s counterculture jargon” by Mose Durst

Boonville – “It was a very complex set of manipulations”

UC/FFWPU Recruitment – The Boonville Chicken Palace

Barbara Underwood and the Oakland Moonies

Ford Greene – the former Moonie became an attorney

Inside Look at a Boonville Moonie Training Session

Papasan Choi and Boonville’s Japanese origins

Moonwebs by Josh Freed (the book was made into a movie)

Crazy for God: The nightmare of cult life by Christopher Edwards

Camp K, aka Maacama Hill, Unification Church recruitment camp

The Social Organization of Recruitment in the Unification Church PDF  by David Frank Taylor, M.A., July 1978, Sociology

[caldrive]

St. Paul Primitive Baptist Church, 63rd Street, Oakland, California, back in 2008. What it looks like now(ish): https://goo.gl/maps/c1U3HR2hrPCp6uKD (I couldn't get a better pic because there was a van parked in front of the place last week).

[newtownpentacle]

a church on Polish Hill

a church on Polish Hill

Thursday – photo by Mitch Waxman On the 28th of December, one had an errand to run. It’s seems that the ubiquitous ATM machines of a certain NYC based bank which my accounts are with are not so commonly found here in Pittsburgh. That meant that in order to avoid paying a fee when withdrawing some cash, I needed to drive for a bit in order to do so. I will crawl through broken glass to avoid…

[fenharel-is-so-swell]

While I’m on my ✨Race in Thedas✨ rant let me just explain why the blending of Dalish and City Elves bothers me personally.

As I said previously, I’m mixed. I’m specifically black in the ‘descendants of enslaved people’ way. I grew up in a predominantly white area but finished out highschool in a diverse school with a high number of first gen African immigrants.

(I promise this is pertinent) My relationship with race has always been complex. I benefit from a proximity to whiteness due to being mixed, but I of course still experienced rampant racism and an identity crisis.

In elementary school we had to do a yearly genealogy project. In some ways, mine was easier than the few other black kids in my class. While their families were nearly untraceable past 2-3 generations, I could just focus my effort on my mother’s side. Though, I faced ridicule because OBVIOUSLY I wasn’t white, so obviously I couldn’t be German. While I may have shared DNA, I felt much less experientially connected to the ‘family tree’ I did my reports on because their lives could look nothing like mine. They walked through world without the color of their skin first. So, of course the next year when a culture week came up and we were encouraged to wear clothing representative of our heritage I went the other way—I asked my dad to buy me a dashiki. I still I faced ridicule and still it felt foreign. I had no cultural ties to the patterns, my family never wore them, I’d never heard of the foods we looked up that were mainstays on the Ivory Coast. I may have shared DNA, I may have shared racial trauma, but my culture was different. I was black I wasn’t African.

Playing dragon age origins as a City elf I saw myself for the first time. I saw a woman divorced from her original culture, ripped from her roots by an imperial force but still incredibly steeped in a rich world created by survival and painstaking effort to hold onto oral tradition and what blended history the alienages could. I saw my grandmother singing gospel on the weekends, the church ladies in their outfits, the greens, the pecan pie, the stories of struggle the community shared, the village it took to raise all my cousins and get our older family and friends through chemo and childloss and hard financial times. In hearing about different alienages I saw the distinct cultural differences between Harlem, Oakland, Birmingham, Houston, Atlanta.

Playing as a Dalish elf I saw a facet of the African-Immigrant experience I came to know in high school from my friends who immigrated. I saw the culture more closely connected to the various countries they came from, but still scared by the vestiges of imperialism and colonialism. They were all unique, just as Dalish clans are. My Nigerian friends ate different food, had different rules, wore different clothes, had different cultural practices than my Kenyan or Nigerian friends. I had a couple of North African friends from Morrocco and Egypt that still felt grounded in the history of Africa but were so different. I saw the physical differences in them like I saw them in further DA entires in the Dalish from Antiva or elves from Tevinter.

(And better yet to see this dichotomy in culture I didn’t have to face more trauma porn on black bodies)

As I continued digging into elven cultures in southern Thedas I saw even more complexities of the diaspora that matched my experience. They way both city and Dalish elves looked down upon each other one for ‘assimilation’ and being ‘weak’. The other for holding on to ‘strange’ cultural practices and being ‘primitive’.

Growing up at a crossroads of many racial and cultural experiences I relished in the nuance, the way both cultures were painted as a people just trying to survive and hold onto themselves. A people distinct and resilient, a people not too unlike from each other and while aloof still marginally less wary in solidarity. They were both full of individuals that interacted so vibrantly with the world and life they lived in.

Flattening that in Veilguard initially devastated me, then enraged me. That’s not just poor writing, that’s borderline racist. It indicates that the differences don’t matter, the pain, the struggle, the culture, the history none of it matters because ‘an elf is just an elf’ at the end of the day. And that’s fucking gross.

[singeratlarge]

SUNDAY MATINEE MUSIC VIDEO: “Blessed Assurance” This well-known hymn was written by blind songwriter Fanny Crosby with music by Phoebe Knapp. Originally published in 1873, it’s still sung around the world in hundreds of churches at a time. It’s been covered many times, usually with the familiar arrangement, which I learned years ago. One day I was tinkering in the studio and developed my own arrangement, wrapping new chords around the standard melody and giving it a Philly Soul feel. Here I am in Oakland CA, playing it at a memorial service for a remarkable family friend (who is described in the video). Jimmy Touzel was at the mixing board and Uma Robin Mackey captured this video. Be blessed.

#blessedassurance #hymn #singersongwriter #FannyCrosby #PhoebeKnapp #church #phillysoul #oakland #california #jimmytouzel #johnnyjblair #singeratlarge