Screening: Life and Death of Peoples Temple
live-tweet #2
I won’t lie to you, friends: this is a challenging film. I’ve taught it at least five times, and it never gets any easier to watch. I find it challenging not only because of the mass murder that ended this beautiful utopian movement, but precisely because its members worked so hard for so long to make the world a better, safer, more just place.
We’re doing a deep dive on Peoples Temple, so I’ll try to keep this one short. But as I said on twitter, the space between the promise and intentions of this movement and the way it ended is just heartbreaking. I honestly think we could spend this entire class just talking about Peoples Temple.
Remember: we’re live-tweeting the film during our scheduled meeting time on Friday. Don’t forget to use the course hashtag (#NUcults) so the rest of your classmates can read your reactions. If you can’t join us Friday morning, no worries! But try to read through other students’ responses as well as offering your own.
What we’re reading/watching
- Moore, Pinn, & Sawyer, “Introduction,” from Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America (2004)
- Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (Firelight Media 2006)
Smith, “The Devil in Mr. Jones”
We’re not reading this piece, but JZ Smith was a foundational theorist in the study of religion, and I can’t engage this material without thinking about his words. You heard Prof. Morgenstein Fuerst and I discuss this essay in the “Cults” episode of Keeping It 101.
This is the part that always gets me:
One might claim that Jonestown was the most important single event in the history of religions, for if we continue, as a profession, to leave it ununderstandable, then we will have surrendered our rights to the academy.”
(Smith 1982, 104)
Smith urges us, as scholars of religion, to push past “the pornography of Jonestown” and think critically about Peoples Temple as a movement, as a community, and as a logical if unusual — and ultimately tragic — way of being in the world (1982, 112). That approach is at the core of this course.
The way Smith tries to make sense of what happened in Jonestown doesn’t really work for me, I’ll be honest. (That’s why we’re not reading it as part of this unit.) But the fact that he tries to make sense of it — that he doesn’t just write off the movement or the community or the worldview or even Jones himself as too stupid or too weird to take seriously or treat as human — is invaluable.
Mostly, I’m hoping that this film will help you recognize the full humanity and inspiring vision of Peoples Temple. Too often we can’t see the complexity of these people and their labor past the pornographic horror of their deaths.
Moore, Pinn, & Sawyer, “Introduction”
One of the authors of this piece, Dr. Rebecca Moore, lost two family members in Jonestown. Another, Dr. Anthony Pinn, is one of the biggest names in African American religions. I had you start with this broad overview of Peoples Temple as a movement so you can get a sense of its history, location, and context.
Pay attention to the specifics Moore, Pinn, and Sawyer are providing here:
- Peoples Temple had deep roots in Black church communities and was a majority-Black movement: PT “cannot be treated as if it were a white movement,” (Moore, Pinn, and Sawyer 2004, xiii)
- Peoples Temple quickly grew into a significant religious and political force in the San Francisco community
- members were committed to racial and economic justice and engaged in “social protest and social service activities,” (Moore, Pinn, and Sawyer 2004, xii)
- many members were women, and Black women account for the majority of casualties at Jonestown
- Peoples Temple emphasized spiritual healing, as have many of the movements we’ve studied this semester
- the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project — they did not call it Jonestown — shared a “utopian vision of a racially integrated and economically equitable community,” (ibid.)
- despite best intentions, this “racially mixed movement” did not fully live into racial equality; movement leaders were primarily white
- like Weisenfeld, the authors reject “cult” as a framework for understanding Peoples Temple as a movement and community
Most importantly, I hope this introduction helps you focus on the members of Peoples Temple in their full humanity, rather than reducing such a complex community to its flawed, murderous leader. (Remember your Weisenfeld!!)
Jonestown: Life and Death of Peoples Temple
The Kanopy link is on Canvas, but just in case, here’s a YouTube backup. See you online Friday afternoon!
