Before the movement became institutionalized, Moon’s early community looked nothing like a denomination. No dedicated buildings. Casual clothes. He ate with members, slept at their homes, worked alongside them farming. Spiritual experience took precedence over doctrinal instruction. Extended worship — singing, fasting, prayer — was the culture, not programs.
Members called each other shik-ku (식구 — family, literally “people who eat together”). The language reflected the reality: this was a family unit, not an organization.
Hendricks argues that the early UC was populist by design — not by accident or poverty, but because Moon understood that the church form matched the theological moment. The age of believers’ responsibility required a church where believers had genuine responsibility, not one where they attended programs run by institutional staff.
The shift to larger institutional structures was partly forced by external pressure (persecution, scale), partly by the need to coordinate global mission. But the populist original form didn’t disappear — it reappeared as Home Church.
The historical continuity matters: returning to the populist model isn’t innovation for Unificationists. It’s memory. The question is whether modern members know what Moon’s original community actually looked like, and whether they want to reconstruct it in their context.