Gavin Parks
North American New Religions
April 23, 2002
What happened in Jonestown? How could “sensible people” follow the “rantings of a crazed lunatic?” The questions and the simplified answers that are provided by the media coverage of Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate perhaps contributed to their downfall. The feeling of public persecution is a central theme of many new religious movements, and the negative publicity of suicide cults only fuels the fear of other like-minded religious groups. The misleading definitions the media provided for the how, what and why of these new religious movements were symptomatic of the media bias against all such movements. Through examination of the print media response immediately following both mass suicides, I will expose the hollow definitions and explanations provided for tragedies that were much more complex. Moreover, although the Jonestown Suicide occurred twenty years before the Heaven’s Gate suicides in March of 1997, coverage remained ignorant and simplistic of the critical differences between movements, and perhaps exacerbated their cultural alienation.
My research of the media response to the Jonestown suicides concentrates on the coverage of the tragedy in the New York Times because the newspaper is one of the most widely read American newspapers, replete with religion “experts.” Through the coverage in the Times alone, the common response followed a path of initial confusion that eventually led to unoriginal and uncomplicated answers for the how and why these people followed Jim Jones to their death.
The initial coverage in the New York Times exemplifies how the facts of the suicide trickled slowly out of the jungle of Jonestown, Guyana. The day after the suicides, Sunday, November 19, the New York Times featured a headline that proclaimed “Coast Congressman Believed Slain Investigating Commune in Guyana.” One small article that day, described how Jim Jones had moved to Guyana primarily for the custody of a baby born to a married woman. The following Monday, a larger headline described how “Guyana Official Reports 300 Dead at Religious Sect’s Jungle Temple.” A father of one woman living in Jonestown revealed how all the members had written undated suicide notes while still in the United States and had staged mass suicide rehearsals. “They will be all dead by tomorrow,” he predicted. Another article on Monday detailed how the “Deaths in Guyana Threaten Sect’s California Organization.” Members of the People’s Temple in California had read a statement on Sunday that declared, “Rev. Jim Jones has always deplored violence…and whatever the circumstances of the airstrip incident it is not the kind of action anyone in the temple would precipitate.” The article also mentioned that, according to an interview with his wife, Marceline, Jim Jones did not believe in Christianity but was instead a Marxist.[1]
This important distinction of Jones’ political views began a discussion that would continue in subsequent descriptions of him. According to the articles, Jones realized early “that in order to bring people out of their superstition, you have to give them a substitute.” Through the description of Jones’ radical political beliefs, the media found an alternative for why Jones was able to lead so many to their death. The religious beliefs of Jim Jones and his followers was termed “Marxist Christianity” to distinguish it clearly from mainstream Christianity.
Tuesday, the banner headline of the New York Times read, “400 are Found Dead in Mass Suicide by Cult; Hundreds More Missing from Guyana Camp.” The article declared how “Rev. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of the People’s Temple, who had promised his racially integrated flock a utopia in the South American wilds. Instead gave them death.” The article described how “defectors from the sect” recounted the practice sessions in which Jones would tell his followers to drink a poisoned drink and they were to die in 45 minutes. “I want to see how you feel about dying for socialism,” he would tell them. In yet another article Jim Jones was quoted from one of his pamphlets, the “People’s Temple is an extensive ministry based on the practical teachings of Jesus as literally set forth in Matthew 25, in which He admonishes us to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and minister to the sick and imprisoned.” As the disturbing story of what really happened in the Guyana jungle continued to trickle out, the media reinforced the differences between Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple and regular mainstream Christianity by describing Jones’ beliefs as “Marxist Christianity.” Even though the People’s Temple movement of Jim Jones found its origin in the Bible and mainstream Christianity, the New York Times detailed the differences of his “suicide cult” and found no similarities to accepted middle-class Christianity.[2]
The news on Wednesday, November 20 found that five hundred were now believed dead in Jonestown. As horrifying pictures flooded the media, the search for differences between mainstream Christianity and the People’s Temple escalated. As the number of dead rose steadily, so did the questions about why it happened. An article that described the beginnings of Jim Jones included an interview from Jones’ son who called his father “an ill man, fanatic and paranoid.” Noted psychiatrists determined that there were two main themes in the mass suicides in Guyana. A “fanatical loyalty to a charismatic leader … and a desperate fear that a hostile outside world was closing in on their settlement.” The “experts agreed” that both forces “are not unique to the members of the peoples temple and are probably becoming more common in today’s rootless society.” The next day, the Times, described how “Jones Used Bible-Thumping and Politics of Brotherhood” to “lure” people into his “cult.” One follower described how his children each “became involved with drugs, began to drink and ‘care about nothing but rock music’…but through their involvement with Jim Jones they all “became ‘rehabilitated and got better…they certainly improved.’” As the psychiatrists had purported, these people had become part of the “rootless” society and sought spiritual connection through Jim Jones. The Times warned its reader that the “rootless” society would cause the younger generation to follow fanatical socialists like Jim Jones.[3]
One investigation of the opinions of those in California, where Jones lived before his exodus to Guyana, exposed the need for distinction between mainstream and cult. One interviewee was thankful that “At least the temple wasn’t like the Moonies, who had gone from door to door around here annoying people and trying to sell overpriced things.” Through these quotes, the Times connected the People’s Temple to other “cults” which might share common, negative associations.[4]
The search for closure and collection of all “facts” was best achieved on Sunday, November 26, eight days after the mass suicide, when the headline proclaimed “Guyana Toll is Raised to at Least 900 by U.S., with 260 Children Among Victims at Colony.” In a large article entitled “Jim Jones- From Poverty to Power of Life and Death,” the Times finally tried to gather up all their information on Jim Jones to answer the many questions of the suicides. The answers provided were simple and uncomplicated. Jim Jones through his “Marxist Christianity,” had hundreds follow him who shared his radical combination of politics and religion. Time and Newsweek both ran front-page stories repeating the same explanations found in the Times for the phenomenon, with a picture of hundreds of corpses that were all part of the “Cult of Death.” [5]
Two decades later, the “Cult of Death” became the “Web of Death.” Even though the name had changed and the process of suicide was different, the treatment in the media was the same. The Heaven’s Gate mass suicide brought another stark example of a religious movement that was marginalized, criticized, and stereotyped in the media. The week of the Heaven’s Gate suicide in March 1997 the cover of both Time and Newsweek featured an image of wide-eyed insane man, who was identified as the “cult leader,” Marshall Applewhite. The Heaven’s Gate mass suicides received the same type of coverage as the People’s Temple “massacre.” The Heaven’s Gate movement was described in the Time article as “a dense and jumbled universe of UFOS and extraterrestrials careening smack into unusual astronomical happenings, apocalyptic Christian heresies and end-is-nigh paranoia.” The descriptions of the followers of Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles in the Time coverage portrayed them as all fascinated by science fiction, specifically Star Trek, Star Wars, and the X-Files. The Time treatment of the mass suicide tried to create a blueprint for uncovering future “death cults” before they completed their destiny. The followers, lamented the Time article, were “people who shared little more than a willingness, or a need to suspend disbelief, and in the end participate in common death.”
At no point were the actions of Applewhite and his followers considered rational; the suicide was a tragic mystery from the start. Although the Heaven’s Gate followers “seemed happy,” media portrayals like those in Time depicted the followers as misguided and controlled by the fanatical Applewhite. The close family structure of Heaven’s Gate had caused the followers to be “unable to see beyond their restricted world view, one that permitted them to consider suicide as a viable option.” The label of irrationality placed on the followers by the media shows the editorialized coverage of the suicides. Without question, the actions of those that committed suicide in Heaven’s Gate were irrational and not normal, according to media pundits. [6]
The depiction of Marshall Applewhite in Time was also akin to the coverage of Jim Jones twenty years ago. The title of the article summarized its perspective, “Imprisoned by his own passions.” Applewhite was depicted as a man who was “penalized for sexuality, the future guru embarked on a quest for sexless devotion and an antiseptic heaven.” The descriptions of androgyny, loss of familial connection, loss of name and financial security, were all meant to highlight the stark difference of the leader and the followers of the Heaven’s Gate movement compared to mainstream Sunday morning Christians.[7]
The coverage of the People’s Temple and Heaven's Gate described the strangeness of the movements, those aspects that made them “a cult” and not a real religion. Through the examination of the Heaven’s Gate website, Time detailed how even if the group had “given outsiders an impression of Christianity, their version of Jesus was most certainly heterodox.” In one Time article entitled “The Lure of the Cult”, the writer depicted how “out where religion and junk culture meet, some weird new offspring are rising.” Like Heaven’s Gate, the article warns, many new religious movements are cropping up, “with doctrines that mix the sacred and the tacky.”[8]
The media’s opinion of the “cult suicides” was nicely encapsulated by the U.S. News and World Report article “Lost Souls: How Reasonable People can Hold Unreasonable Beliefs.” The Heaven’s Gate theology was boiled down to its simplest and most unusual form, “The central idea of the faith was that the path to ‘the only real heaven’ was aboard a spaceship.” The description of new religious movements in the U.S. News and World Report began with a comparison of Heaven’s Gate and the other contemporary American tragedy. “Just as the Oklahoma City bombings displays the extreme of American’s distrust of government, the mass suicide of Applewhite’s comet-struck followers is a grotesque extension of a now well-established parallel universe of alternative theology.” The U.S. News article concluded with a warning: as many as “3,500 ‘new’ religious groups, many as seemingly outlandish as that of Applewhite and his followers,” live in this country. Through portrayals like those found in the U.S. News, established religions were given favorable terms like “faith or belief,” while new religious movement are equated with “suicide, terror, and social unrest.”[9] Through its biased coverage and its judgmental news stories, the media became the arbiter of normative social behavior, a role it continues to play in our culture.
The description of a cult in U.S. News was based on the “eternal mystery” of why “reasonable people hold unreasonable beliefs.” Applewhite was described as “exploit[ing] universal needs the carving to belong, the desire for orderliness and certainty, the wish to connect to something larger than oneself, the secret hope of finding an all-caring parent who offers protection and comfort.” The descriptions of “ordinary people who, during a moment of vulnerability, meet someone who introduces them to a new way of thinking” furthers the idea that believers are the innocent victims of their wide-eyed crazy leader. “Isolation,” warned the article, is “ a specialty of brainwashers of all kinds” and “is the most potent weapon wielded by a Marshall Applewhite or a Jim Jones.” The depictions were meant to create a shroud of mystery over the cults, a distinct label of “otherness.” “Why entering a cult,” warned one article, “is comforting and feels a lot like joining a religion.”[10]
It is hard not to find deep hostility in the media treatment and coverage of the Heaven’s Gate and People Temple suicides. The interjection of editorial opinion in the news articles was exemplified through the use of phrases like “cult,” “fanatic”, “brainwashing,” and “death.” The study of media treatment on the eve of the millennium by Harvey Hill, John Hickman and Joel McLendon found that “ mainstream religious groups are typically described in neutral or favorable terms, while new religious movements are consistently described in pejorative language.”[11]
The tendency of journalists
in the coverage of the new religious movement was first to only cover the
movements at their time of crisis. In what is termed the “front-end/ back-end
disproportional” of the coverage, journalists tend to “report extensively on
allegations against a new religious movement at the beginning of a crisis and
report less extensively on the resolution of the crisis.” Furthermore, the
study concludes that this media bias on new religious movements may be a force
behind the “direction that events ultimately take.”[12]
The how, why, and what happened to Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple in Guyana and the Heaven’s Gate movement in California will probably always stay a mystery. However, I believe it is dangerous to make assumptions about the nature of the Peoples Temple Movement and Heaven’s Gate and why “it went wrong.” Even the assumption that it went wrong can have damaging effects on other new religious movements. In the beginning, Jim Jones had noble beliefs about the equality of all man, white or black, and of helping the community through the strength of the church, those beliefs alone could be considered “radical beliefs” like socialism. However, Jones’ Peoples Temple changed and the religion’s mission became retarded by Jones and his loyal followers. Through an examination of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple it is important to continue to respect Jones’ fights for civil rights, poor, and elderly in the beginnings of his movements and not let them get overshadowed by the tragedy that unfolded. Marshall Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate movement was boiled down to a bunch of fanatics who had a deep love for Star Trek and took those crazy ideas too far. The comparison of the coverage of both of these “suicide cults” illustrates how the coverage has not changed dramatically in a twenty-year time span. What is forgotten in the media coverage is that the beliefs of the radicals like Applewhite and Jones are based on a vision of Christian orthodoxy.
The biased news coverage betrays a constant effort to separate these “cults” from the “churches” of established Christianity. Another result of this bias is that the misunderstanding of new religious movements like the People’s Temple and Heaven’s Gate “contributes to a sense of persecution on the part of these movements.”[13] Year later, books like Making Sense of Jonestown and Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment? have continued to seek answers to what happened, suggesting the problematic nature of quick, journalistic assumption. According to the medical experiment study, Jonestown was being funded by the CIA for experimental testing on ethnic minorities. The final test for the experiment was if they would be willing to follow Jim Jones in the mass suicide. Such new research, albeit problematic in it’s own right, nevertheless exposes the redundancy of the typical media’s response. The media coverage of new religious movements should become more understanding of the differences in belief structures and withdraw from continuous persecution of those new religious movements that are markedly different from established religion.
“A Heaven’s Gate Recruiting Session in Colorado.” The Skeptical Enquirer. 21,
no. 4, (1997): 23.
“Before their Involvement in the Heaven’s Gate Cult, the 39 suicide victims of Rancho Santa Fe were beauty queens and athletes, mothers and fathers, entrepreneurs and oystermen.” People Weekly. (April 14, 1997): 40 (19 Pages).
“Heaven’s Gate Hell—‘I Blame that Madman for My Sister’s Suicide.’ ” Cosmopolitan. 223, no. 1, (July 01, 1997).
“Life After Death for Heaven’s Gate.” U.S. News and World Report. 124, no. 12, (March 30,1998).
Bromley, David G. and Anson D. Shupe. Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston: Beacon Pres, 1981.
Brown, Nancie. “ ‘I Lost My Son to Heaven’s Gate Cult.’” McCall’s. 124, no.10, (July 01, 1997).
Chua-Eoan, Howard. “Cults: With Guidance from Beyond- Heaven’s Gate hasn’t perished; trusting believers are still at work.” Time. (April 14, 1997): 44-46.
Chua-Eoan, Howard. “Imprisoned by his Own Passions.” Time (April 7, 1997): 40-42.
Feldman, Leah Eckerberg. “ “My Mother Killed Herself at Heaven’s Gate.’ ” Mademoiselle. 103, no.7, (July 01, 1997).
Fosburgh, Lacey. “Jones Used Bible Thumping and Politics of Brotherhood,” The New York Times, 23 November 1978, Sec A16.
Gardner, Martin. “Heaven’s Gate: The UFO Cult of Bo and Beep.” The Skeptical Enquirer. 21, no. 4, (1997): 15.
Genoni Jr, Thomas C. “Art Bell, Heaven’s Gate, and Journalistic Integrity.” The Skeptical Enquirer. 21, no. 4, (1997): 22.
Gleick, Elizabeth. “Inside the Web of Death” Time (April 7, 1997):28-40
Hedges, Stephen J. “Mass Suicide in California.” U.S. News World Report. 122, no. 13, (April 07, 1997).
Herd, Alex. “Apocalypse now. No, really. Now!” New York Times Magazine. New York: Dec 27, 1998; pg. 40.
Hill, Harvey and John Hickman and Joel McLendon. “On Religious Outsiders- Cults and Sects and Doomsday Groups, Oh My: Media and Treatment of Religion on the Eve of the Millennium” Review of Religious Research. 43, no. 1, (2001): 24 (15 pages).
Lacayo, Richard. “The Lure of the Cult” Time (April 7, 1997): 45-46.
Ledbetter, Les. “Anguished Mother Tells How Fear Controlled Cult,” The New York Times, 21 November 1978, Sec A16.
Ledbetter, Les. “Neighbors in California Say Cult Members were Helpful,” The New York Times, 24 November 1978, Sec A16.
Lindsey, Robert. “Defectors from Sect Depict Its Rehearsals fro Suicide,” The New York Times, 21 November 1978, Sec A1.
Neimark, Jill. “Crimes of the Soul: From Marshall Appelwhite of Heaven’s Gate to the Dali Lama of Tibet, Americans Follow their Gurus with a kind of blind fervor that can lead to unforgettable acts of heroism and generosity, or to death and dissolution. A look at the secret and potent ties that bind gurus and their devotees.” Psychology Today. 31, no. 2, (1998): 55.
Nordheimer, Jon. “400 Are Found Dead in Mass Suicide by Cult; Hundreds More are Missing from Guyana Camp,” The New York Times, 21 November 1978, Sec A1.
Nordheimer, Jon. “Guyana Official Reports 300 Dead At Religious Sects Jungle Temple,” The New York Times, 20 November 1978, Sec A1.
Nordheimer, Jon. “Guyana Toll has is Raised to at Least 900 by U.S., with 260 Children Among Victims at Colony” The New York Times, 26 November 1978, Sec A1.
Nordheimer, Jon. “Mystery Is Intensifying in Guyana Over Those Who Fled Suicide Rite,” The New York Times, 23 November 1978, Sec A1.
Nordheimer, Jon. “US Says Guyana Toll has Nearly Doubled; Deaths in Jungle Commune Could Reach 780,” The New York Times, 25 November 1978, Sec A1.
Pace, Eric. “Coast Congressman Believed Slain Investigating Commune in Guyana,” The New York Times, 19 November 1978, sec A1.
Quittner, Joshua. Life and Death on the Web. Time (April 7, 1997): 47.
Reiterman, Tim. “Saturday Journal; Remembering Jonestown; Twenty years after the mass deaths in Guyana, a reporter recalls how time has not diminished the horror.” The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles; Nov 14, 1998, pg. 1
Rensberger, Boyce. “Explaining the Mass Suicides: Fanaticism and Fear,” The New York Times, 22 November 1978, Sec A11.
Rudin, A.
James. Prison or Paradise? The New Religious Cults.
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.
Steel, Ronald.“How Kooky Was Heaven’s Gate?” The New Republic. (April 21, 1997): 25.
Tabor, James and Eugene Gallagher. Why Waco?: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Turner, Wallace. “Deaths in Guyana Threaten Sect’s California Organization,” The New York Times, 20 November 1978, Sec A17.
Turner, Wallace. “Dispute over Baby Spurred Sect’s Move to Guyana,” The New York Times, 19 November 1978, Sec A11.
Turner, Wallace. “Lawyer Says the Leader of Cult Had ‘Lost His Reason’,” The New York Times, 23 November 1978, Sec A16.
Turner, Wallace. “Little Attention Paid to Warnings by Sect’s Leader,” The New York Times, 21 November 1978, Sec A16.
[1] Eric Pace, “Coast Congressman Believed Slain Investigating Commune in Guyana,” The New York Times, 19 November 1978, sec A1.
Wallace Turner, “Dispute over Baby Spurred Sect’s Move to Guyana,” The New York Times, 19 November 1978, Sec A11.
Wallace Turner, “Deaths in Guyana Threaten Sect’s California Organization,” The New York Times, 20 November 1978, Sec A17.
Jon Nordheimer, “Guyana Official Reports 300 Dead At Religious Sects Jungle Temple,” The New York Times, 20 November 1978, Sec A1.
[2] Wallace Turner, “Little Attention Paid to Warnings by Sect’s Leader,” The New York Times, 21 November 1978, Sec A16.
Les Ledbetter, “Anguished Mother Tells How Fear Controlled Cult,” The New York Times, 21 November 1978, Sec A16.
Robert Lindsey, “Defectors from Sect Depict Its Rehearsals for Suicide,” The New York Times, 21 November 1978, Sec A1.
Jon Nordheimer, “400 Are Found Dead in Mass Suicide by Cult; Hundreds More are Missing from Guyana Camp,” The New York Times, 21 November 1978, Sec A1.
[3] Boyce Rensberger, “Explaining the Mass Suicides: Fanaticism and Fear,” The New York Times, 22 November 1978, Sec A11.
Wallace Turner, “Lawyer Says the Leader of Cult Had ‘Lost His Reason’,” The New York Times, 23 November 1978, Sec A16.
Lacey Fosburgh, “Jones Used Bible Thumping and Politics of Brotherhood,” The New York Times, 23 November 1978, Sec A16.
Jon Nordheimer, “Mystery Is Intensifying in Guyana Over Those Who Fled Suicide Rite,” The New York Times, 23 November 1978, Sec A1.
[4] Les Ledbetter, “Neighbors in California Say Cult Members were Helpful,” The New York Times, 24 November 1978, Sec A16.
[5] Jon Nordheimer, “US Says Guyana Toll has Nearly Doubled; Deaths in Jungle Commune Could Reach 780,” The New York Times, 25 November 1978, Sec A1.
Jon Nordheimer, “Guyana Toll has is Raised to at Least 900 by U.S., with 260 Children Among Victims at Colony” The New York Times, 26 November 1978, Sec A1.
[6] Elizabeth Gleick, “Inside the Web of Death” Time (April 7, 1997):28-40
[7] Howard Chua-Eoan, “Imprisoned by his Own Passions.” Time (April 7, 1997): 40-42.
[8] Richard Lacayo, “The Lure of the Cult” Time (April 7, 1997): 45-46.
[9] Harvey Hill and John Hickman and Joel McLendon, “On Religious Outsiders- Cults and Sects and Doomsday Groups, Oh My: Media and Treatment of Religion on the Eve of the Millennium,” Review of Religious Research. 43, no. 1, (2001): 24 (15 pages), 26.
[10] Stephen J Hedges, “Mass Suicide in California.” U.S. News World Report. 122, no. 13, (April 07, 1997).
Life After Death for Heaven’s Gate.” U.S. News and World Report. 124, no. 12, (March 30,1998).
[11] Hill, 24.
[12]Hill, 32, 24.
[13] Hill, 35.