They all seemed happy.
They all seemed happy in the photos and film
footage. The images give the impression
that Jonestown was the earthly paradise Peoples Temple propaganda made it out
to be.
The reality, as we know, was different. The murder-suicide of 909 people at Jonestown
in November 1978 led to the unmasking of what Peoples Temple had become in its
final years and the true character of its charismatic pastor, Jim Jones. The congregation had fled from its base in San
Francisco to Guyana the previous year as media revelations surfaced of Jones’ erratic
behavior and abuse within the church.
The day of the massacre Temple gunmen had killed
Congressman Leo Ryan, several members of his party, as well as a few Temple defectors
attempting to leave Jonestown at a nearby airstrip. Ryan had been on an official visit to
investigate allegations made by relatives of Temple members. The prospect of losing even a handful of
members and possible legal action against him back home pushed Jones over the
edge. After Ryan’s murder Jones told his
followers that they faced attack from the Guyanese and U.S. militaries and that
there was only one way out. Those who
did not willingly drink the cyanide-laced grape punch were forcibly given the
poison.
Followed days later by the assassinations of
George Moscone and Harvey Milk, an uneasy pall fell upon those of us living in
Northern California. I was twelve and
just becoming aware of the wider world. I
did not fully understand what had happened, only that I felt troubled whenever the
story came up on the TV news or in conversation among the adults.
It certainly was an odd time. David Talbot captures the zeitgeist in The Season of the Witch, parts of which cover Peoples Temple’s time
in the Bay Area and the Moscone mayoralty.
Reading Talbot brings back the same feelings of forty years ago. Like most people outside San Francisco, I’d
never heard of Peoples Temple until after the suicides. Thinking back on it, though, I’m a little surprised
I hadn’t.
Certain aspects of my childhood were a trifle unconventional. My parents were still together then and even
though we lived in a small town with conservative values they experimented with
religion. We kids were not reared in any
particular faith outside a nominal adherence to Protestant Christianity. Nevertheless, our mom and dad searched
fruitlessly for a spiritual home. Perhaps
they were grasping for something to save their failing marriage; I don’t know
and it really doesn’t matter at this remove.
For a while we sampled a variety of churches,
most outside the mainstream. My sisters
and I were subjected to an evangelical Baptist Sunday School for a few
weeks. We looked into the Seventh Day
Adventists and Christian Science. Mom renewed
ties with some of her Mormon relatives with a mind toward conversion. Dad pursued an interest in faith healing for
a spell. Mom dragged him to seances and “channelings.” She eventually settled on a cherrypicked mishmash
of New Age ideas as her professed belief.
I’m not sure where Dad ended up.
I sleep in Sunday mornings.
Histories of Peoples Temple in the 1970s list
several satellite congregations in addition to its homebases in San Francisco
and Los Angeles. One purportedly was in the
city nearest our home. Jim Jones’
charisma and the Temple’s emphasis on such woo as miracle cures through laying
on of hands should have made it a natural choice for my parents. Nevertheless, we never attended and it was
never mentioned by my folks until the Temple became headline news.
The only reference to this satellite church
near my childhood home was a passing reference by Jones in a radio
interview. A search of city directories
yields no clues. Jones was given to
hyperbole; perhaps the congregation was just in his mind.
The real tragedy of Peoples Temple, aside from the
obvious, is that it was a truly positive force in the lives of its
members. The prevailing discourse surrounding
the Temple emphasizes Jones’ mental unraveling and his abusive behavior. Something clearly had gone awry in those last
years. But if we look at the Temple’s pursuit
of racial harmony and social justice and its devotion to its congregants’
material welfare in sickness and old age, it compares very favorably not only
to other New Religious Movements but to established churches as well.
I once made this claim in a paper I presented
at an academic conference. The panel
discussant’s comments were generally favorable and she offered up the customary
suggestions for improvement. The
subsequent audience Q&A was not as friendly. “How can you say anything good about a man
who killed his followers?” and so forth.
You can’t win ‘em all. I’ve had
worse presentations. I still think I’m
right.
Peoples Temple’s legacy is enshrined in
offhanded cultural references like “drinking the Kool Aid.” I’m uncomfortably amused by the name of San
Francisco rock band The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Serious depictions fixate on the mass suicide in the jungle to the
exclusion of a deeper look at the events and forces leading up to it. The reason we don’t discuss the implications
of the Temple’s fate is that it hits too close to home.
As a society we are seized by bouts of
irrationality. Remember the evil clown sightings around public schools and playgrounds a couple of years
ago? The news media covered the story
without a smidgen of skepticism, fueling the hysteria. How about the fears over Satanists during the
1980s and 90s? People went to prison because
prosecutors and juries bought into fantastical stories. Drivers looking at rather than through their
windshields in the early 1960s were convinced that the tiny pitting in the glass
was caused by atomic fallout instead of normal wear and tear. Women in Mattoon, Illinois, during the Second
World War suffered fainting spells said to have been caused by an unknown man
spraying a mysterious gas through their open windows at night.
We’re unnerved by the ways cults hook and hold
on to their adherents because deep down we recognize our own credulity. Peoples Temple is commonly remembered as a
cult, even though it was formally part of the mainstream Disciples of Christ. In its time, the Temple must have been an
unsettling presence in the midst of changing mores.
The trajectory of Peoples Temple from a small
midwestern church to a West Coast political force to a utopian agricultural
settlement in the wilds of South America was an unlikely one, even with the weird
vicissitudes of American life. The ensuing
tragedy bears an occasional retelling that goes beyond the customary shrugs and
clichés.
© 2018 The Unassuming Scholar
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