Claim. Personhood — not abstract law, ideology, or doctrine — is the absolute value in Unification thought, because God is a person and reveals Himself through persons and personal relations.
Elaboration. Hendricks frames the argument structurally: God is a person; we are persons; the purpose of creation is the love relationship between persons; therefore the core mission of religion is to facilitate personal relationship between each of us and God and with each other. Everything “boils down to personhood.” See The Unificationist Message.
The corollary Hendricks draws is empirical-historical: the most powerful religious movements have arisen in the name of a person (Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna, Confucius, Lao Tse, Zoroaster, Guru Nanak — the Divine Principle’s “central figures”). The Unification Church is no exception: public recognition came as “Moonies,” associated with Reverend Moon, not with abstract Unification doctrine.
This is foundational to the populist case: an organizational form that empowers ordinary persons to mediate God to other persons is structurally aligned with the doctrine that personhood is what God values most.
See also. true-parents