Okay, so a bunch of people drank cyanide flavored Kool-Aid and died. Tragic. Crazy. Until I saw this documentary I just assumed they were a bunch of religious flakes waiting to be ferried off to another world and, well, there’s no accounting for those people.
Not so, it turns out. The church was founded on a platform of integration in Indianapolis, where that wasn’t too popular, necessitating a move to San Francisco. Once in SF, they were socially engaged, aware and progressive. They did more than talk: they mobilized, they marched, they canvassed— they were an activist church. The Peoples Temple was apparently critical in getting Mascone elected mayor in 1975. Jim Jones preached the here and now rather than some future, other world, and they were drawn together in a collective effort to shape that here and now, providing a sense of community and purpose to members. Old, young, black, white bound together, united to make a better world.
The church was, in essence, a traditional arm-swaying, gospel singing, tears and clapping black church. And like many black churches, the Peoples Temple did more than care for its members’ souls once a week. It worried about their bodies and minds, whether they have jobs, places to live, child care, elder care. The church constructed its own social institutions. Elderly people turned over their social security checks, but in return they received care as an integral part of an extended family and community. It is easy to see how the idealism in action of the Peoples Temple might draw people in.
There were signs of trouble. When a member of the congregation shares during a service that those wishing to be sodomized by Jim Jones should take an enema first, red flags should go up. When Jim Jones preached that all people are essentially homosexual and should remain celibate (except, as it turns out, with him), one would expect a little voice to start whispering concerns. As people increasingly become expected to hand over their earnings and receive an allowance, as people begin to call Jones ‘Father’, as honest talk between members becomes increasingly dangerous, or when after a communion he informs the congregation they had just drank cyanide, only to say ‘just kidding, it was a test of loyalty’… all these things might indicate something is not entirely right in the Peoples Temple.
But how does an individual member place the good and the bad into a balance? At what point does ‘this is weird’ outweigh the potentially profound sense of purpose and community?
It’s extremely easy to be self-righteous, to watch this documentary and feel confident that I would never fall into such craziness. It’s easy to psychologize about what sort of social or emotional dysfunction would lead people to become caught up in what we so easily label with hindsight a cult. But if I’m honest, I’m not so sure.
I don’t know when the expression ‘rat race’ came into currency, but it must have been during the 20c. Holding individual expression, choice and pursuit in high regard, our culture breeds anomie and disconnection. Often our romantic notion of The Individual devolves to the atomistic consumer striving for his/her share of the pie. It isn’t difficult to see how someone might feel themselves coming alive in a community like the Peoples Temple, to be part of something greater than oneself, something sustaining, emotional, meaningful, to become part of a community in which one is embraced, nurtured. Of course you have to give something up, adjust your world view, accommodate individuality to group norms and beliefs.
Isn’t this just an extreme version of our lives everyday? Is it only cults in which individual thought is sacrificed to group think? Do we not give up individual beliefs and perspectives all the time to conform to a collective, normative set of values? How many college students, after reading Nietzsche, Kafka, studying art and music and having deep and broad philosophical, political and social discussions becomes prematurely middle-aged at 24? How often are we driven to take jobs, buy homes, marry spouses because it is what we feel we should do? How often do we trade dreams and aspirations for security, electronic gadgetry and inane entertainment?
Of course, our trade-offs don’t lead to mass suicide, but we shouldn’t underestimate the potential damage. From segregation to fag-bashing to war to more subtle forms of damage and destruction, is our ‘normal’ capitulation to group think any less deleterious, if perhaps not so obvious?
We can look back at the Peoples Temple and endlessly analyze ‘what the hell went wrong here.’ And we should. But if we approach it asking ‘what was wrong with these people,’ distancing ourselves and pathologizing the members, we miss the richness of their story. They set aside individual, critical thought to be part of something greater and larger than themselves. It ended badly, but there was nobility in their aspirations. Recognizing ourselves in their choices— in a million little ways every day— is the gift of their story. What are we reaching for when we capitulate?
