KAMPALA — Dr. Hyun Jin Moon, Chairman of the Global Peace Foundation, praised Africa’s traditional family values at the first inter-religious family festival in Kampala, Uganda.
He urged Ugandans to embrace the vision of “One Family under God” to spark a spiritual awakening and catalyze change in Africa and globally.
“For all great things happen with a great spiritual awakening. And that great awakening is that we have to be the owners of the vision of one family under God; thus, we need to start a movement that sanctifies and glorifies the ideal of marriage, the ideal of family, as an absolute truth,” Dr. Moon said.
Dr. Moon told the over 20,000 people gathered in Kololo that one of the key things that makes the Global Peace Foundation and its message, as well as its interfaith track, so significant and different from all the interfaith tracks of the past, is that it recognizes that there are universal truths embedded in all the religious traditions, that no one religion has the province over truth, and that God inspired all the religious traditions of the world.
“Based upon universal principles and values, people of faith, of all backgrounds, of all pretensions, can come together and identify and glorify God by uplifting His ideas in the world around us. And the greatest and the most significant of those ideals is family,” Dr. Moon said.
Dr. Moon noted that it is clear that the West, especially the developed nations, don’t understand the importance of traditional extended families, which are still held in high esteem in Africa.
“You Africans, with a beautiful extended family tradition, you have not abandoned God, and you still want to hold true to the eternal principles, universal principles, upon which God created mankind for,” Moon said.
He added, “I want to dream that the beginning of that blessed movement that sanctifies the ideal of marriage will start here in the heartland of Africa, the nation of Uganda, that sits on the greatest lake on this continent, that represents the womb of Africa, that a new rebirth can happen upon this continent based upon a new vision of one family under God.”
Dr. Moon called upon the people to rise up and own the vision of one Family under God, which great awakening can spark a renaissance across the entire landmass of the continent and eventually inspire the West, who have lost their Judeo-Christian heritage and have abandoned God.
Dr. Moon, together with Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, later signed a Family Vision Statement for an African Renaissance.
