By Amy Joi Bryson
Deseret News staff writer

      Calling on families to unite so they can achieve the true love of God, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon delivered an animated and entertaining speech Saturday evening to a crowd of hundreds at an inter-faith conference in Salt Lake City.

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon

      The Rev. Moon was in Utah as keynote speaker for the "We Will Stand Tour," which is visiting 50 states and spreading the word for religious harmony, racial reconciliation and family renewal.
      At 81, the Korean-born evangelist, founder of the Unification Church, is one of the world's most widely known religious figures. He also formed the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, founded the daily Washington Times and directs a worldwide food distribution effort.
      Perhaps best known for his mass blessing ceremonies for couples, the Rev. Moon orchestrated a June 1998 event in Madison Square Garden for 120 million couples worldwide.
      Seizing on the ideal of the faith-based couple Saturday, the Rev. Moon told a gathering in the Salt Lake Hilton that the true love of God cannot be achieved alone without help from another.
      "No matter how famous you may be as a man, you're only half a human being," he said. "You're only half as a woman, no matter how great a woman you are."
      He said it is only when people are united as couples in true love that they achieve God's love.
      Using long pauses of silence to underscore his remarks, the Rev. Moon also worked the crowd with humor, halting several times after an animated lecture to ask if he should end his speech.
      "Should I stop? I could go on for two hours more. We might be here all night."
      The Rev. Moon said humanity's relationship with God has suffered because of the fall of man. As a parent, God was disappointed with his children, Adam and Eve, when they disobeyed him, he said.
      As a result, mankind has been struggling since to restore a true relationship with its father.
      "How many of you are living in God, uniting in God. Do you want to meet God? This is why we are still longing for a meeting with God."
      Noting he had visited Utah several times the past two decades, the Rev. Moon acknowledged the religious character of the state and also its Caucasian majority.
      "Utah is well known around the world, and many people want to come here," he said. "As an Oriental man when I come to Utah, you may look down on me, but when I share the love of God, you all give a round of applause for God, and I like that."
      The Stand Together tour is part of an inter-faith effort to build community by attacking religious intolerance and bigotry. By demolishing those barriers, tour sponsors say it is possible to focus on healing families and stifling the corruption of youth.
      The Rev. Moon's speech was preceded by a video that detailed his life, beginning at age 16 in the farmland of Korea where he said he was visited by Jesus Christ and referencing the period he was imprisoned in Japan for being a Korean freedom fighter.
      It also touched on the five months he spent in a U.S. federal prison in the mid-1980s for tax fraud. His release was celebrated at a banquet in Washington, D.C., attended by 1,700 leaders of religious faiths and denominations.
      The video pointed out Utah's own Sen. Orrin Hatch decried the Rev. Moon's imprisonment and said it was a violation of his civil rights.
      On Saturday, the Rev. Moon reiterated the need to unite and the blessings that would follow.
      "If in all the world, if in all the universe we were absolutely united to form a grand family centered on God and his true love, if such a world were formed, how many think there would be conflicts and battles and wars?"