John Gorenfeld puts Obama’s alleged “problem pastor” in perspective by shining a light on another religious figure with even deeper and longer-standing connections to national politics: that’s right, the “True Father” Reverend Sun Myung Moon. In a chart convenient for clipping and carrying in your wallet, Gorenfeld compares the two men. Wright’s religious views? Black liberation theology. Moon’s? “Kneel before Moon!” Wright’s outrageous statements? “Hillary never been called a nigger!” and assorted AIDS paranoia. Moon’s? “”Homosexuals and fornicators are like dirty, dung-eating dogs.” Also, a proposal that women who have sex outside of marriage should have their “concave organs” (Moon’s term, not mine) “sealed with concrete.” Who’s crazier now, Washington Times?

Gorenfeld, the reporter who broke the story of Moon’s divine coronation as messiah in the Dirksen Congressional Office Building, is the author of an excellent new expose of Moon called Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom If Don DeLillo had taken a lot of acid and grown a funny bone before he wrote Mao II, this is the book he might have written. What’s scary is that it’s true. Gorenfeld isn’t a sensationalizer; indeed, with material such as Moon provides, he can more than afford understatement. Gorenfeld didn’t write this to poke fun at “Moonies,” a derogatory term for followers of Moon, some of whom are indeed hapless victims of some very bad theology and many of whom are ordinary, reasonable people involved in a religion that’s neither (no news there) and a few of whom, those close to Moon, are involved in a massive power grab with very serious implications for international politics.

The Washington Times, usually treated as a perfectly respectable paper, is one small part of that effort, but one of the most visible. The paper’s first editor, James Whalen, denounced it in no uncertain terms after leaving in frustration over Moon’s control of the paper: “They are subverting our political system. They’re doing it through front organizations — most of them disguised — and through their funding of independent organizations — through the placement of volunteers in the inner sanctums of hard-pressed organizations. In every instance — in every instance — those who attend their conferences, those who accept their money or their volunteers, delude themselves that there is no loss of virtue because the Moonies have not proselytized. That misses the central, crucial point: the Moonies are a political movement in religious clothing. Moon seeks power, not the salvation of souls. To achieve that, he needs religious fanatics as his palace guard and shock troops. But more importantly, he needs secular conscripts — seduced by money, free trips, free services, seemingly endless bounty and booty — in order to give him respectability and, with it, that image of influence which translates as power.”

Alternet has published an excerpt. And the progressive megablog Firedoglake featured Gorenfeld in this past Sunday’s “Book Salon.”