God's Rap Kingdom: King Bullethead, the Music Video, and Unification Theology.

Pastor Hyung Jin (Sean) Moon’s music videos provide a case study in the role of new media in the development of new religious conservatisms. These videos are evangelical broadcasts that “King Bullethead”, a persona of Moon’s, uses to disseminate his doctrine. Using digital platforms, Moon mass distributes the videos to those open to his gun-toting and bullet-crowned “royal mission.” These rap homilies serve as sermons for an online age and carry theological messages central to his messianist father’s (Sun Myung Moon) Unification Church. As a claimant to his father’s heavenly kingdom, Sean Moon has intentionally constructed new theology and aesthetics to separate himself, and the Rod of Iron Ministries, from the contemporary Unification Church, now led by his mother, Hak Ja Han, after discrediting “her…as a desecration of [his] father’s legacy.”(1) As King Bullethead, Sean Moon articulates these doctrines in a homiletic style defined by Christocentric verse (captioned in both English and Korean), AR-15s, Trump paraphernalia, and American flags. These videos fall into three primary and overlapping theological camps: the political as spiritual, salvation the ideal family, and divine kingship. A central tenet of The Rod of Iron Ministries’ doctrines is the collapse of the spiritual and political. This manifests through a worldview in which “conservative” and “liberal” political parties, individuals, and ideologies are explicitly conflated with heavenly and infernal forces. In this culture-war theology, “Communism” and “The Left” are divergent demonic entities to be battled using the ‘Godly’ alternatives of “pro-freedom” and “family-forward” ideologies. This “political made spiritual” theology stems from the Unification Church’s reaction against the presence of Communist powers in the Korean political landscape of the mid-twentieth century. This theology draws a territorial line between the ‘Godly’ and the ‘Worldly’; a line which generally falls along the conservative policy of the time. However, as the focus of the American right has shifted, so too has the political/doctrinal material culture between the late Sun Myung Moon and his son. Although the Unification Church employed strategies of garnering political influence through traditional media outlets, conferences, and coalitions, the Rod of Iron Ministries seems to have found an alternative. King Bullethead’s videos take full advantage of the contemporary political backdrop and make theological currency of stereotypes, buzzwords, extremism, and gold-plated AR-15s. Adoption into the “True Family” is key to Unification doctrine and serves as its primary sacrament, allowing one to share in Sun Myung Moon’s Christological lineage. This doctrine is contingent on emulation of the “True Parents”—an idealized family unit which has gone through a tumultuous evolution in The Rod of Iron Ministries' schismatic path. The Rod of Iron Ministries’ reformation of the “True Parent” doctrine carries new implications on gender roles and hierarchies within the ministry, most notably around conceptions of “True Mother”, spiritual kingship, and inheritance. This complex parental narrative and the accompanying gender theology can be identified in King Bullethead’s rap videos as he constructs exemplars and counter-exemplars of its central figures. Participation in these idealized ‘family values’ becomes the ultimate tool through which one can battle the demonic left, and, through his videos, King Bullethead provides tangible archetypes of emulation which often simultaneously repress and empower the individual through aesthetics of aggression and militarization. Costuming, lyricism, choreography, and graphic effects are used to encourage service to a new ideal of the American, conservative, and holy family-military unit to wage war against a spiritually divergent progressive other. King Bullethead’s repeated invocation of monarchical language is not simply a self-inflated boast, but rather a theological claim to his divinely appointed role as “the Crowned Successor and Representative Body of the Cosmic True Parents of Heaven and Earth and full Inheritor of the Kingship of God,” “ a real and sovereign, future nation.”(2) King Bullethead’s identity is defined by his claim as Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s heir. Having been denied the power of the South Korean Family Federation’s widespread influence and resources, Sean Moon instead turned to digital media and American conservative policy to proclaim his place as the rightful heir of Sun Myung Moon’s theology and to rebuilding a dominion unifying the world under the True Parents. This dominion is simultaneously spiritual-symbolic and political-physical. Underneath their entertainment and devotional natures, his music videos hold an imperialist missionary agenda to establish and advance this heavenly, and earthly, kingdom. The goal of this work is to analyze the videos of King Bullethead as a case study in the ways religious conservatisms take material shape. To this end, the links between specific theological positions and their aesthetic manifestations in Sean Moon’s “King Bullethead” music videos will be clearly identified and further contextualized within the broader historical narrative and theologies of the Unification Church.  Further, this paper seeks to interrogate the specific employment and reception of the new media works in the evangelization of these doctrines. A large part of the sources used in this work come from within the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary Church and Family Federation for World Peace and Unification institutions, including a sampling of King Bullethead music videos (3), Sun Myung Moon’s The Divine Principle (4), Sean Moon’s Rod of Iron Kingdom (5) and The Constitution of the United States of Cheon Il Guk, and additional institutional media and publications. Secondary sources include Passport to Heaven: Gender Roles in the Unification Church (6), and Moonies in America : Cult, Church, and Crusade (7), among others.

1 Mickler, Michael. The Unification Church Movement. Cambridge University Press: 2022. 44.

2 Moon, Hyung Jin. The Constitution of the United States of Cheon Il Guk. 2015. 1.

3 Moon, Hyung Jin. “Kingbullethead Official.” YouTube, January 22, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/@KingBulletHeadOfficial. 

4 Moon, Sun Myung. Exposition of the Divine Principle. The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 2006. 

5 Moon, Hyung Jin. Rod of Iron Kingdom. Rod of Iron Ministries, 2018. 

6 Lowney, Kathleen S. Passport to heaven: gender roles in the Unification Church. Routledge library editions. Women and religion. Routledge, 2015.

7 Bromley, David G. Moonies in America: cult, church, and crusade. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1979.