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Saturday, November 22. 2008
Taking a Break
It’s Friday Night, after a long day and there’s nothing to write about. Just watched the MSNBC special about the Jonestown Massacre. You remember Jim Jones, if you’re over 40. Jones started a church in the late 50’s that in the 60’s became the Peoples Temple and a large political force in the San Francisco Bay area. Then the cracks began to appear in the veneer.In 1977, after a critical article in New West magazine, Jones moved his congregation to Guyana to a piece of land he was leasing from the government there. Guyana was chosen because the citizens are dark skinned and speak English and Jones felt his Black followers would feel much safer and comfortable in such a society. More importantly, Guyana was a Socialist country and the theology of Jim Jones was one of “apostolic socialism.” After moving his flock to Jonestown, Jim Jones began to control the place and all its inhabitants as the Soviet Union, Cuba and Maoist China did: forced labor, intensive “brainwashing,” restricting movement and refusing to let inhabitants leave.
Enter Congressman Leo Ryan and his delegation. Ryan began a Congressional investigation of the Peoples Temple, concerned that many wre being held against their will. So, Ryan and his entourage flew to Guyana with concerned family members of Jonestown residents as well as a crew from NBC News and various other news organizations; the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner and the The Washington Post.
When several members tried to escape with Ryan, and then a flood of residents decided to follow, Jones, who was addicted to prescription drugs, went over the edge. Several of his most loyal followers followed the people in Ryan’s party to a nearby airstrip and killed five there, including Congressman Ryan and most of the NBC crew.
While those murders were taking place, Jones implored over 900 of his followers to drink the Kool-Aid, a concoction mixed with cyanide.It would be easy to portray this as yet another reason to discard religion altogether, but there was more going on than religion. In fact, religion had all but disappeared from the Gospel according to Jim Jones. In the beginning of his ministry, Jones reached out to the poor, those left behind by society, those who were lost, especially after the crash of the 1960’s counter-culture. Jones preached a revolution of the spirit that empowered each of his followers in the most personal ways.
Jim Jones became their savior. Once that was achieved, his followers would follow Jones into Hell. The Peoples Temple made the leap from religion to fanaticism, firm in the belief that their savior was leading them to freedom and on November 18, 1978, drinking the Kool Aid was liberation.
Dead is just dead and all that is left for the survivors and the families of the dead are sad memories, a solitary confinement of grief revisited with every anniversary.
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