Vice: "conspiracy theory-obsessed fringe offshoot of the Moonies". From SPLC: Rod of Iron Ministries is aka Sanctuary Church in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania. ‘Rod of iron’ refers to AR 15 or AK style weapon. It is a splinter offshoot of the Unification Church, or “Moonies,” founded by the late Sun Myung Moon in the 1950s. The Unification Church’s ideology is racist, homophobic and antisemitic. At a ceremony in 2008, Sun Myung Moon transferred leadership of the Unification Church to his youngest son, Hyung Jin Moon. After Sun Myung Moon died in 2012, a power struggle erupted between Hyung Jin Moon and his mother, Hak Ja Han, who ordered Hyung Jin to go to Korea. Hyung Jin refused, and instead relocated to Newfoundland, Pennsylvania and founded the Sanctuary Church with the support of his older brother, Kook Jin Moon. Hyung Jin declared the Unification Church invalid since his father’s death, and continued to espouse his father’s teachings while declaring himself the “Second King,” after his father. Kook Jin also relocated his firearms manufacturing company, Kahr Arms, to a nearby county in Pennsylvania. At the core of the Sanctuary Church’s beliefs is the establishment of “Cheon Il Guk,” a sovereign kingdom of heaven on earth, which is where the assault rifles come in. The missive calling followers to purchase the weapons explains, “To fulfill the ideal of kingship and the nation, we need people, land (property) and sovereignty. Sovereignty means that we are able to defend ourselves against an aggressive satanic world, when we are threatened. We should be able to defend ourselves, not only in an abstract but in a substantial way, as we would do in a sovereign nation. A minimum expression of such sovereignty is a crown and a real gun for defense (the biblical ‘rod of iron’) like a legal AR15.”
| Types | Organization |
| Aliases | Sanctuary Church |