I got married in a Moonie mass wedding: He was a public schoolboy from a wealthy family. So what made Mark Palmer spend seven years as a disciple of the cult?

Conversion: Mark Palmer was married in a Moonie mass wedding

The singing grew louder and more aggressive. Some people clenched their fists and thumped the air in time with the music. Others stamped their feet.
We were only minutes away from the arrival of Sun Myung Moon on stage in a vast hall at one of the Unification Church’s training centres in a place called Barrytown in upstate New York.
The men — or ‘brothers’, as they were known — were on one side of the room, the women — ‘sisters’ — were on the other.
A Japanese man with poor English then led everyone in prayer, during which we were reminded of what an honour it was to shortly be in the presence of the ‘True Father’.
Moon walked on to the stage with his interpreter and began speaking — and did not finish for four hours.
He was 55 years old; I was 19 and coming to the end of my gap year, which was to conclude in a way that amazed me then, and still amazes me now nearly 40 years later.
It was 1974 and I had met the Moonies a couple of weeks earlier in Boulder, Colorado. Richard Nixon had just resigned as U.S. president and I was about to make a radical departure from what the Unification Church used to call ‘the satanic world’.
There was nothing much in my disposition to suggest such a turn of events.
Certainly I had been a rebellious teenager, leaving my public school a year early to do my A-levels elsewhere because I couldn’t stand my housemaster, the petty rules or the uniform.
But I came from a stable, loving — and privileged — family.

Mass nuptials: Couples from around the world participate in a mass wedding ceremony arranged by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church at Sun Moon University in Asan

My father used to go down on his knees every night and pray before bed; my mother was not religious but was a stickler for form.
I had gone to Canada with a friend and worked in the Toronto factory of Peek Freans, a sister company of Huntley & Palmer — the famous biscuit firm where my father was managing director.
I used to enjoy writing and kept a diary as my friend and I hitch-hiked across Canada and into the United States.
Reading some of the entries today, I realise I was idealistic and, like so many young people, searching for something.
Communes were popular at the time. Plenty of us took seriously Bob Dylan’s line about the ‘times they are a-changin’.

Changed man: Mark at a Moonie concert at the Royal Albert Hall, left, and before his conversion in 1974

In October, my friend returned to Toronto and I continued in America on my own, fetching up in Omaha, Nebraska, where I met an American woman in her late 20s called Renee.
She was heavily into meditation and spiritual matters, talking a lot about the freeing of the mind.
Her brother had met and joined the Unification Church in Boulder, Colorado, and Renee wanted to find out why. I was intrigued, too.
The centre in Boulder was called Sunburst. Its members were clean-cut, enthusiastic and welcomed me as if I was the most important person in the world.
The atmosphere was Woodstock meets the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme, with lots of guitar playing, holding hands and clearing up rubbish from the streets downtown.
It worried me a little that the men all sported short hair and had ditched denim jeans for sensible trousers, but they seemed an infectiously happy lot.
There was hardly any mention of Moon.
I listened to the Divine Principle — as the teachings were known — and it made sense, especially the bit about Jesus wanting to establish heaven on earth but being thwarted by unbelievers who refused to change their wicked ways.
I liked the idea of families being at the centre of a new world, where people loved each other regardless of race, colour or class.
I was taken by the camaraderie, the sense of purpose.
Strangely, my only doubts came when I was in that hall listening to Moon himself.
He shouted a lot and gesticulated more in the manner of Adolf Hitler than Jesus Christ — but I was smitten, not by the man, but by the all-consuming desire to help him and his young followers achieve their mission.

Blessing: Moon and his wife bless the brides and the grooms in a mass wedding ceremony at Chamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul in 2000

When I finally returned to Britain I told my parents I was going to join the Unification Church. They were shattered.
They had good reason to be.
The movement in this country was led by a volatile couple called Dennis and Doris Orme.
She had been one of Moon’s earliest recruits and seemed to think this gave her the authority to chastise members who were not working hard enough, while finding it perfectly acceptable to shop at Harrods and be driven round in a flash car.
For the next six years, I fund-raised in this country, Germany, France and Italy as part of Moon’s One World Crusade; I lectured to potential new recruits, and on one occasion I spoke at a packed Royal Albert Hall where my job was to be the warm-up man and compere for a Unification Church concert, followed by a ranting speech from Orme.
The more doubts I had the more I committed myself, the more determined I was to overcome my ‘fallen nature.’ In an effort to get closer to God, I once fasted for seven days while sleeping on the streets of New York outside the UN building in protest for some cause or other.
I abstained from all alcohol and used to take a cold shower whenever I felt any carnal desires.
On Sundays, I rose at 4.30am and attended The Pledge, when at 5am we renewed our vows of obedience and bowed before a framed photograph of Moon and his wife.

'In one his speeches he came out with the scary line: "I am your brain!" '

The dangerous aspect of all this was how Moon and his senior lieutenants took a dim view of anyone who thought for themselves. In fact, in one his speeches he came out with the scary line: ‘I am your brain!’
At the time, I put this sort of outburst down to cultural differences or Moon’s words being lost in translation, but it was far harder to justify his lavish lifestyle and vacuous affection for those who lined his pockets.

Unification Church: The movements founder Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his wife Hak Ja Han Moon join hands to bless couples during a mass wedding ceremony

I know for a fact that there was a Rolls-Royce sitting in a garage in Chislehurst in case he was around, while members received nothing except board and lodging.
During all of this, my parents showed extraordinary patience.
Rather than outright confrontation or, as some parents chose to do, kidnapping me and hiring  de-programmers to deconstruct the Moon mirage, they quietly pointed out the inconsistencies.
They reminded me that it was odd for a ‘messiah’ to be investing in the manufacture of guns and munitions (including a Korean arms factory); they stressed, correctly, that Moon had had several wives and that his sexual past was far more lewd than anything he was trying to combat in the U.S. or Britain, and they gently pointed out that faith should not be confused with certainty.
By that stage I had put myself forward for a Moonie wedding.
It’s not completely true that all Unification Church members marry total strangers chosen for them by Moon — although some certainly do.

'We first met at a so-called ‘matching ceremony’ attended by Moon himself in New York.'

There was a gap of at least a year between meeting my future wife and taking part in one of those mass weddings.
She was American and a few years younger me.
She was from Los Angeles and had joined the Moonies while at university.
We first met at a so-called ‘matching ceremony’ attended by Moon himself in New York.
We discussed our possible future together and married in Madison Square Garden a year later along with 2,074 other couples, shortly after I had moved to New York to work on Moon’s newspaper.
My section editor was not a member of the Unification Church.
In fact, he was an Italian-American alcoholic who used to be a highly respected journalist at a major news agency, and without whom I would never have become a journalist myself. 

Thousands participating in a ceremony in a Washington stadium are blessed by Moon and his wife during the arranged marriages of 3.6 million couples around the world, linked by satellite

I ended up listening far more to him than Moon.
Shortly after getting married, my wife and I independently — but almost at the same time — decided we no longer could remain in the church.
I had done too many intellectual somersaults. I had witnessed too many sleights of hand, too many occasions when the ends could not justify some dubious and outright dishonest means.

'Some people think today’s religious leaders should be more strident. I am not one of them.'

One of the last straws for me was a meeting with a Korean called Colonel Pak, one of Moon’s closest disciples.
He was a slippery bully distinctly lacking in any humility and with a penchant for supporting Right-wing dictators in Central America, where later the Moonies bought up huge tracts of land. ‘By his fruits you shall know him’ came to mind.
Extricating myself was difficult, not because of pressure from Unification Church members but because I had gone out on a limb, trodden a particular path and now it was time to retrace my steps, start all over again.
My wife and I moved to London and we had two children together.
The marriage did not survive but we remain on good terms and are immensely proud of our children.
I was then single for a long time but was fortunate enough to meet someone and fall in love.
My wife Joanna and I were married five years ago.
I am less proud of allowing Moon to lord it over so many young people’s lives over such a long period of time (although the numbers of people he influenced is vastly exaggerated).
As I understand it, his own family is largely dysfunctional.
Following his death at the age of 92 at the weekend, rival churches under the control of various Moon children are already squabbling.
Then there are the businesses, the houses, the trappings of conspicuous consumption.
Me? I think the reason I like sitting near the back of my parish church on a Sunday morning is because the Church of England does not claim to have all the answers.
Some people think today’s religious leaders should be more strident. I am not one of them.