It still boggles my mind how a person can surrender their will entirely to a leader, religious or otherwise. It seems like such an abdication of personal responsibility and not a little cowardly — I guess I view it as akin to suicide. The two things, of course, merged at Jonestown 30 years ago. Robert King, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article on the anniversary of Jonestown.
King spoke with Gene and June Cordell who followed Jim Jones when he was a pastor in Indianapolis at a church on the south side, now occupied by I-65 near Keystone.
June Cordell said there was nothing spectacular that first Sunday at South Keystone — just a church of 25 people in a chapel with cracked windows. “You would have never known any reason to have thought there was anything out of the way,” June said.
The Cordells soon came to appreciate Jones’ devotion to the Bible, his food ministries for the poor, the music of his church choirs, congregations that became racially diverse and miracle healings that appeared genuine.
“The power of God was in those meetings,” Gene Cordell, now 79, remembers. “We thought he was preaching the truth at that time as we knew the truth.”
Soon they began to see something else.
In a People’s Temple bathroom, June discovered a box of chicken livers that looked amazingly like the “cancers” that Jones would pull from the mouths of sick people cured at healing services.
“I kept saying to myself to keep quiet,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to be a doubting Thomas.”
Eventually he became too demanding and eccentric for the Cordells causing them to break with Jones and his ministry. They did not follow him to northern California which ended up being a way stop for Guyana and mass suicide/murder. However, some of their extended family and 100s of others did follow him. So, apparently not that great an aberration for a person to abdicate their sense of self to another; particularly if he’s peddling salvation. Jonestown is a good reminder that ultimately, we have to think for ourselves and that others, even self-proclaimed religious leaders, don’t always have our best interests in mind.
Is it safe to assume you are baiting some people with this?
I used ‘to bait’ my students when I wanted to get a conversation started.It’s a postive quimmick to get people talking. With religion there’s always the chance any charismatic leader is playing God.Obama’s detractors already mockingly refer to him as ‘Messiah’,so they see a religious-like leader,that others of us don’t see.But I didn’t mean to change the subject from Jonestown .
Yeah, that’s exactly why I try to remain as humble as possible. Unlike the Wizard of Oz, I do let my members see “the man behind the curtain.”
After “surfing” a bit and reflecting, I have some personal insights to share about what happened in Jonestown and perhaps how such a thing could be avoided in the future:
1. We have a man here who has a long history of undiagnosed mental illness. As a young child friends thought he was strange because he would spend many hours in the barn preaching to no one. Those friends also said that he had frequent mood swings, going from happy to angry in a split-second over nothing. I also seem to recall reading (about 15 years ago) that there were some strange allegations about his time serving as an orderly at Reid Hospital; but don’t recall the details. His whole ministry was an example of a man slowly unraveling. In October 1978 Marceline Jones was back in Richmond and told her family that Jim was falling apart mentally. Her own parents left Jonestown three days before the suicide/murders and had to have seen that he was unhinged. On top of it he was a self-medicating junkie. Somehow Marceline thought she could keep him in control; which is often the role/view that many abused spouses take.
2. He started a church by just “hanging out a shingle.” There was no schooling, no interview process, no vetting process. (I OTOH had four years of post-grad work, one lengthy psychological exam and interview, numerous interviews of fiends/family/pastors/colleagues who knew me, at least three interviews with my synod’s candidacy committee, two interviews with seminary profs, a one-year internship, a three-month hospital internship, a nursing home chaplaincy, worked one day/week for two years at a congregation, and then a first-call process that was much like the NFL draft-only we didn’t have to strip to our “skivvies” and get weighed. A negative report in any of those steps would have ended the whole process for me-and that did happen to some of my friends.)
3. His ministry was personality-driven.
Need I say more on this point? It was now all about Jim and not about God. In fact Jim said he was god many different times; breaking the first commandment!
4. Because on the surface he was doing great social ministry, he ingratiated himself with local leaders. In fact he was highly praised by SF mayor Muscone (who was a social activist himself and was killed along with Harvey Milk-an openly gay city leader). When allegations of abuse started to arise, city and state leaders were reluctant to investigate. Only Leo Ryan had the balls to check out conditions, and we know how that turned out.
5. Not all his followers were religious fanatics. His earliest followers were like modern-day Fundies-but as the ’70’s progressed (and the nation faced the turmoils of Vietnam, the Cold War, Watergate, etc.) and the “ministry” grew in California, he drew a more socialistic crowd how were there to radically change the world-and not so much for religion. Jonestown especially appealed to these people as it was a chance to show the world that a “socialist utopia” could be created. I don’t know what the ultimate ratio between the two groups was in Jonestown-but suffice it to say that a SIGNIFICANT NUMBER who died there were SECULAR SOCIALISTS. And how he got these two groups to live side-by-side is anyone’s guess!
6. He used fear and intimidation to break down members. He forced them to break all ties with their former lives. Then he made it to where they only had him to rely on. (For those who are going through tough times in life, this works easier than most would want to admit. Trust me, I’ve had people come to me who were so beaten down by their present situation that they want nothing more than for me as their pastor to micro-manage their life back on track. I refuse to do that-but do refer them to the right resource people to help get their lives back on track. That doesn’t mean I don’t give them nudges nad encouragement along the way-but I do not seek nor do I want that kind of power in my life.)
7. He made public examples of anyone who tried to double cross him with public beatings, etc.
8. He taught the people to fear the outside world. He planted the seed of mass suicide in their brains long before Nov. 18, 1978.
This one man had nearly 1,000 people so cowed that in the end they could not stand up to him.
Sad, sad, sad….
Okay-I don’t give them “nad” encouragement-that would be sexual harrassment;-)
And I forgot to add in point #2 that one of my concerns with independent churches run by “shingle hangers” is that there is no heirarchy for members to turn to with concerns of abuse of power, etc. I have people above me that I do need to report to on a regular basis; and that I have to answer to if any allegations arise about me.
When the followers follow too far, is that a bug? Or a feature?
Discuss.
What is a “bug?” What is a “feature?”
Belief can be secular or it can be religious,but with a charismatic leader we often don’t know or don’t care because this leader promises a much improved future and we don’t want the belief destroyed.
Compare these 3 charismatic men: Obama, Reagan and Hitler,and explain how they were different and how they were the same.
This is a typical final exam question one would find on an end-of-term baccalaureat test in France for 16 yr olds: one question and 4 hours to answer it and the only exam for the course.The object is to see how much you really can use what you know,and you can approach the question any way you want.
But being able even to attempt to answer such a question would (perhaps) make us immune from false prophets because we would be thinking about everything the leader said from the very beginning.But that’s probably also one reason the French are so cynical as a culture.And they did go from Louis xvi to the Guillotine to Napoleon in a short period of time.
AJB–
It’s in reference to computer programs that foul up so much that the bugs almost seem to be built-in features, intentionally created for ill.
A lot of the Bush years have been like that, for example. When you have a government that is made of up people who worship the guy who said, “The eight scariest words are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'”, you end up with an attitude that government can’t be competent or will never be competent. So then when you have the fouled-up Katrina response and the press acts like the screwups were a bug, or an aberration, I would instead argue that the screwup was a feature of their response. That is, it was an expected outcome given the inputs.
So that’s the bug vs. feature argument.
As it pertains to religion… You have a system where there is worship or a historical figure (Jesus), who is the earthly embodiment of a mythological entity (“God”). The conduit for flow of information to and from that god is the minister/priest/etc. And not to pick on Christianity, but same was true for the Mayans, etc. Pick a religion. Anyway, the system is set up to encourage conformity, devotion, etc. In most cases all is well. But in several noteworthy examples, “bugs” are revealed. Think the crusades, the Inquisition, Mayan priests engaging in human sacrifice, the witch trials, Jonestown. Think as recently as some “buggy” individuals believing Bush was hand-picked by a god, and that god assigned him to invade Iraq. Now at a certain point, there can be so damn many consequential bugs that it ends up looking like a feature. It ends up looking like the design of the system naturally leads to stupidity and carnage every so often.
If religion were a household product, it would have been recalled by now (imagine if a floor wax killed 900 people in one location in one day).If it were a pharmaceutical, it would have either gotten withdrawn from the market, or at least given a black box warning restricting its use.
Speaking about bugs—Doug is now the guardian of a Praying Mantis. T & Rev. do you remember how long we kept Henrietta Mantis alive? I remember when we ran out of crickets the Mantis lived a long time on raw hamburger. We actually kept two for quite a long time but I don’t remember what you named the last one.
That praying mantis is not my project. Amy is having a suspiciously good time watching Prayer eat those crickets. I think I got most of that out of my system in college when we’d kick off the weekend by feeding a mess of goldfish to the Oscars and assorted other fish in the tank.
They were Gladys and Francis. One of them lived long enough to have its picture taken on the Christmas tree.
The twins’ preschool also has a praying mantis; although I’m not sure if she is still among the living.
T-thanks for the explanation; although the same argument you made against religion could be used against any form of government, too.
Well…here’s at least ONE difference with Hitler!
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1945960.ece
*Snort* — I was gonna say “mustache.” Incorrect.
Ha! The war didn’t go his way, so Hitler took his ball and went home.
The first mantis made it to December. The second one actually made it mid-January. Near the end, she would look dead, only to then get lively for a day or so. Raw ground beef dangling on a string kept her going. I used to watch those things hunt for hours.
I remember my grandparents discussing Jim Jones after the Guyana tragedy. My grandfather, who was a farmer in Southern Randolph County, used to go the grain elevator in Crete, and my cousin and I used to go with him there during summer vacation when he delivered grain there. Crete, like most small towns was a place where everyone knew everyone else, my grandfather knew who the Jones family was, grandpa was deeply shocked as was everyone else.