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