November 29, 2003
SELF-REFERENCE ALERT:
Hell's 25-Year Echo: The Jonestown Mass Suicide: A reporter who was in the vortex of the cult catastrophe finds survivors still coping. (Tim Reiterman, November 19, 2003, LA Times)
On a grassy slope in Oakland, more than 400 take their final rest, mostly children who were unclaimed or unidentified.And across San Francisco Bay, a U.S. congressman is buried in a national cemetery not far from a park that bears his name.
Their lives converged 25 years ago Tuesday in a South American jungle clearing that has come to symbolize the worst that organized religion, cults and madness can reap.
"The people of Jonestown were a precious people, family people," the Rev. Jynona Norwood, who lost 27 relatives in Jonestown, told mourners in Oakland. "It is an injustice when people say they were unintelligent.... They had a natural desire for a better life for themselves and their children."
Jungle reclaimed Jonestown years ago. But even now I can see them together in the open-air pavilion there — Rep. Leo Ryan (D-San Mateo) on stage, microphone in hand, addressing a rainbow of Peoples Temple members from the heartland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Taking their cues from the Rev. Jim Jones, they applauded Ryan on the opening night of his mission to find whether the settlement was the brutal work camp described by escapees or the utopia extolled by supporters.
Within 24 hours, virtually all would be dead. Ryan was shot to death on a nearby airstrip, along with a church defector and three of my fellow newsmen. Then the temple members were killed at the pavilion in a ritual of mass suicide and murder. The final toll: 913.
"We need to remember to remember," Norwood said. "If you can say 1,000 people died and it can easily fall from your lips, you are remembering to forget."
I had the standardized Achievement tests the day the story hit the papers, including English with Essay. The essay question was:
"We have met the enemy and he is us" Discuss.
The Reverend Jones, tragically, gave me all the material needed to answer. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 29, 2003 7:46 AM
I am willing to bet you did not mention that without religious indoctrination his victims had absorbed beforehand, Jim Jones would have been a street ranter without a single disciple.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 29, 2003 3:29 PMOf course I mentioned the religious component. He confirms everything Christianity tells us.
Posted by: oj at November 29, 2003 4:07 PMAnd Jesus spoketh unto them and said "Don't drink arsnic, what are you, idiots?" And striking the cup from his hand he did turn the fool around and administer a most powerfull kick apon his backside, so that he fell to the ground and was sorely aflicted.
Posted by: Amos at November 29, 2003 6:20 PMFrom the "House of Representatives Report on Jonestown--Findings" http://www.rickross.com/reference/jonestown/jonestown1.html :
``Although People's Temple may have been a bona fide church in its Indiana and early California origins, it progressively lost that characterization in almost every respect. Rather, by 1972 and following in progressive degrees, it evolved into what could be described as a sociopolitical movement. Under the direction and inspiration of it founder and director and the Marxist-Leninist-Communist philosophy he embraced, People's Temple was in the end a Socialist structure devoted to socialism. Despite that fact, People's Temple continued to enjoy the tax-exempt status it received in 1962 under Internal Revenue Service rules and regulations. The issue of People's Temple's status as a "church" is also significant in connection with First Amendment protections it sought and received. Obviously, the latter issue is a difficult and complex matter beyond the purview of this committee and its investigation.''
Do a search|replace on Christian|Socialist in any discussion of Jonestown.
Posted by: Bob Hawkins at November 29, 2003 7:08 PMI listened to an NPR interview with a Jonestown survivor on the anniversary of the massacre. She was still pining for the socialist utopia they were so close to achieving.
Posted by: Jason Johnson at November 30, 2003 11:50 AMHarry:
If you want to know the difference between a religion and a cult, you simply have to look to see whether it demands or even values the abandonment or sacrifice of ties of family as a condition of membership. If it does, it's a cult and bears no relation.
Posted by: Peter B at November 30, 2003 1:58 PMIt's difficult to sympathize much with Jones's followers, since there are plenty of warnings against false prophets and false saviors, both in the Old Testament and the New. They are very easy to recognize: they shall rise, and shall show great signs and wonders, and shall deceive many. And the destiny of each of these is invariably the same: intrabit ut vulpis, regnabit ut leo, morietur ut canis ("he will come in like a fox, reign like a lion, and die like a dog").
Posted by: Josh Silverman at November 30, 2003 6:54 PMAnother chapter in the sorry way whites have mistreated blacks in the US
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at December 1, 2003 1:35 AMMy point is that sensible people, unless trained up in the milieu of Christian religious expectations, would have seen Jones for what he was.
While flipping on the football game Sunday, I paused to watch the pitch from Crystal Cathedral. Yeech. But's it's the most popular TV ministry in the nation.
People will buy gods from pitchmen they wouldn't buy socks from.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 1, 2003 7:21 PMHarry:
You still believe in Stalin, and you're irreligious. Why should those folk have been any smarter?
Posted by: oj at December 1, 2003 10:02 PMI never believed in Stalin.
Religion, especially American Christian religion, primes people to be suckers. Turn on your TV and see whether I'm right.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 2, 2003 2:13 AMHarry:
People are suckers--the religious for God; you for FDR, Stalin, Darwin, the steel advisor. What's the difference, except that their dupers have held up for several thousand years and yours prove wrong daily?
Posted by: OJ at December 2, 2003 7:50 AMHarry:
If you are right, why do these cults succeed in attracting so many victims of broken, irreligious homes? There was an article in the paper yesterday about the huge renewed interest in voodoo in New Orleans. The explanations are always the same: "People are looking for a spiritual meaning in their lives." Your argument would seem to suggest the opposite, that non-religious folk would be happily and safely immune but that the cults would be stripping convents and yeshivas.
Posted by: Peter B at December 2, 2003 9:17 AMWhy do you assume broken homes are irreligious? Most divorced people are Christians.
My experience is that practially all Americans get a good dose -- maybe not that coherent a dose -- of religious claptrap at an early age, and they have a hard, hard time shaking it all off.
The sinner on Sunday night who repents on Sunday was a stock figure in my boyhood South.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 2, 2003 5:23 PM