Clergyman's

It’s frightening what these Moonies can do to the family unit … I get letters from parents all over the country telling me the same story … The kids are swept along by his outfit and then taken away for a few days to a ""workshop."" By the time the parents see their kids again — if they can manage to see them — the kids are starry-eyed and ready to take on anyone who disagrees with them. It’s a form of hypnotism. There is something very unhealthy going on.
- Maurice Davis

It’s frightening what these Moonies can do to the family unit … I get letters from parents all over the country telling me the same story … The kids are swept along by his outfit and then taken away for a few days to a ""workshop."" By the time the parents see their kids again — if they can manage to see them — the kids are starry-eyed and ready to take on anyone who disagrees with them. It’s a form of hypnotism. There is something very unhealthy going on.
- Maurice Davis

I do not address myself to the responses in the audience. I do not address myself to their religious beliefs. That right they have, and I defend it; but I will not defend their right to violate the law of this land or the mind of the young.
During the last five years I have helped rescue 128 young men and women without ever once violating the law, without ever once resorting to force or restraint; but I tell you what I have done: I have peeled off the surface and entered into an underworld of madness, and you have to see what I have seen to understand the horror of it all.
- Maurice Davis

I am a Jew, and I am a Rabbi, and I cherish — as do my people — the grandeur of the First Amendment. That amendment prevents, and properly so, the government from investigating the beliefs of any group that calls itself religious; but it does not prevent the government from investigating the activities of any group, whatever its name might be.
No man and no group in this country is above the law. Indeed, for 1000 years and more my people have lived with the Hebrew phrase, ""נָא דְּמַלְכוּתָא דִּינָא ."" — ""The law of the land is the law.""
Unless that law is upheld and enforced, we all of us are victims and we Jews know this very well.
- Maurice Davis

I am a Jew, and I am a Rabbi, and I cherish — as do my people — the grandeur of the First Amendment. That amendment prevents, and properly so, the government from investigating the beliefs of any group that calls itself religious; but it does not prevent the government from investigating the activities of any group, whatever its name might be.
No man and no group in this country is above the law. Indeed, for 1000 years and more my people have lived with the Hebrew phrase, ""נָא דְּמַלְכוּתָא דִּינָא ."" — ""The law of the land is the law.""
Unless that law is upheld and enforced, we all of us are victims and we Jews know this very well.
- Maurice Davis

I am a Jew, and I am a Rabbi, and I cherish — as do my people — the grandeur of the First Amendment. That amendment prevents, and properly so, the government from investigating the beliefs of any group that calls itself religious; but it does not prevent the government from investigating the activities of any group, whatever its name might be.
No man and no group in this country is above the law. Indeed, for 1000 years and more my people have lived with the Hebrew phrase, ""נָא דְּמַלְכוּתָא דִּינָא ."" — ""The law of the land is the law.""
Unless that law is upheld and enforced, we all of us are victims and we Jews know this very well.
- Maurice Davis

At 7:00 A.M. I flew into Indianapolis.
Reporters and television men interviewed me most of Monday. Monday night my life was threatened. Not in Selma. Not in Montgomery. Not in Atlanta. In Indianapolis. Protective measures has to be taken for my children, and my home. On Tuesday night the phone began to ring at 2:00 A.M. Each time I answered it, I was greeted with silence, until I took the phone off the hook and fell asleep. Some of the mail I have received is filled with unbelievable filth, ugly statements, and — interestingly enough — disclosing knowledge about my life, including my previous pulpit in Lexington, Kentucky.
Some of the letters I have received are beautiful beyond the power of words to describe, and some of the phone calls have been so moving that they brought tears to my eyes.
Brotherhood postponed. Dear friends, brotherhood has been postponed for a very long time. Not by the coldness of the weather, but by the coldness of the heart. The task of religion, your religion and mine, is to practice brotherhood, not talk about it.
- Maurice Davis

We are concerned, gentlemen. We are deeply concerned with cults. So let me begin by offering not a definition of cults since everyone has said you must not do this, but let me offer you a description of cults.
It seems to me that any cult has to have the following characteristics:
One, a dictatorial leader, often called charismatic, who has total and unlimited control over his group.
Two, followers who have abdicated the right to say no, the right to pass judgment, the right to protest, who have sold their souls for the security of slavery.
Three, possibly the most dangerous doctrine known to our civilization, that the end justifies the means; therefore, any thing from the Moonies' heavenly deception to the violence of Synanon to the theft of government documents by Scientology, to the brutality of the Children of God, all the way to the murder-suicide of Jonestown, all is permitted because the ends justify the means and there is no one there to tell them no.
Four, unlimited funds. The Unification Church with its some $50 million brought in each year by its mobile fund raising teams is duplicated by the Hare Krishnas dressing as Santa Claus or the Children of God sending out their women as fishers of men.
Five, the instilling of fear, hatred, and suspicion of everyone outside the camp, of the entire outside world in order to keep the victims in line.
You put them all together gentlemen … You have a prescription for violence, for death, for destruction. It is a formula that fits the Nazi Youth Movement as accurately as it describes the Unification Church. … Or the People's Temple.
- Maurice Davis

We are concerned, gentlemen. We are deeply concerned with cults. So let me begin by offering not a definition of cults since everyone has said you must not do this, but let me offer you a description of cults.
It seems to me that any cult has to have the following characteristics:
One, a dictatorial leader, often called charismatic, who has total and unlimited control over his group.
Two, followers who have abdicated the right to say no, the right to pass judgment, the right to protest, who have sold their souls for the security of slavery.
Three, possibly the most dangerous doctrine known to our civilization, that the end justifies the means; therefore, any thing from the Moonies' heavenly deception to the violence of Synanon to the theft of government documents by Scientology, to the brutality of the Children of God, all the way to the murder-suicide of Jonestown, all is permitted because the ends justify the means and there is no one there to tell them no.
Four, unlimited funds. The Unification Church with its some $50 million brought in each year by its mobile fund raising teams is duplicated by the Hare Krishnas dressing as Santa Claus or the Children of God sending out their women as fishers of men.
Five, the instilling of fear, hatred, and suspicion of everyone outside the camp, of the entire outside world in order to keep the victims in line.
You put them all together gentlemen … You have a prescription for violence, for death, for destruction. It is a formula that fits the Nazi Youth Movement as accurately as it describes the Unification Church. … Or the People's Temple.
- Maurice Davis

A seven year old boy joined my line. I asked him, ""What are you doing?"" He said, ""Marching."" I asked him, ""Why are you marching?"" He looked up at me and said, ""For my freedom.
- Maurice Davis