During the 1960’s, Jim Jones started the People’s Temple, a racially integrated, socialist, Pentecostal worship-inspired church, which caused controversy after he led the mass religious suicide of over 900 people on November 17th, 1978 at Jonestown, Guyana. While some branded the People’s Temple as cult, David Chidester’s book Salvation and Suicide analyzes the People’s Temple from a religious perspective to understand the underpinnings of its values and ideologies. By doing so, he embraces the identities of those who were part of the People’s Temple, accepting them as part of the very fluid definition of what it means to be human. Chidester’s phenomenological approach successfully and cohesively analyzes the beliefs of the People’s Temple,
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Comprehending religion in an unbiased and thorough manner can be an ordeal that unintentionally highlights certain Western viewpoints. Although politics, economics, and psychology can be used to explain the causes human religious activity, limiting our study to solely these factors ignores a fundamental institution in which humans engage: religion. Studying the People’s Temple phenomenologically gives way to understanding it without letting societal norms cloud our judgement. Chidester’s approach to religion as “that human ability to symbolize whatever may be held to be sacred”(48) allows for a respectful study of the People’s Temple, recognizing that “religious worldviews create context for the construction of human identity” (48). Calling the People’s Temple a cult rather than embracing it as a religion dehumanizes those who believed in the ideals of the People’s Temple, stripping them of a legitimate and crucial aspect to their identities. Applying phenomenology to the study of the People’s Temple allowed Chidester to realize that although the one of the primary goals of the People’s Temple was motivated mainly by the goals of achieving ultimate economic egalitarianism through socialism and racial integration, it also preached other religious beliefs, such as the rejection of a Sky God …show more content…
Some people, such as the Concerned Relatives, felt that Jones was a psychopathic leader who brainwashed his members into dying, and thus called the final white night a murder, rather than a suicide. Others made an important distinction between Jones and the People’s Temple arguing that most people who stayed voluntarily in Guyana made the choice to do so because they loved the message of the People’s Temple – a socialist utopia – even if they disliked Jones. Communal death was primarily an act of revolution that would signify that “each body had been integrated into the living and dying organism of the community as a whole” (127), martyrdom of the unified people who, by blaming capitalist America for mistreating them, placed the responsibility of their deaths in the hands of the American public. Calling the event a mass religious suicide would legitimate the People’s Temple as a religion, rather than a cult. To counter this, the American media used rhetoric that referred to those who died as “putrid,” “rotten,” and “badly decomposed bodies” that were transported and “incinerated in body bags” (24), perpetuating a sentiment of disgust and otherness. The media’s coverage of Jonestown seeped into the mindset of the American public, which
Comprehending religion in an unbiased and thorough manner can be an ordeal that unintentionally highlights certain Western viewpoints. Although politics, economics, and psychology can be used to explain the causes human religious activity, limiting our study to solely these factors ignores a fundamental institution in which humans engage: religion. Studying the People’s Temple phenomenologically gives way to understanding it without letting societal norms cloud our judgement. Chidester’s approach to religion as “that human ability to symbolize whatever may be held to be sacred”(48) allows for a respectful study of the People’s Temple, recognizing that “religious worldviews create context for the construction of human identity” (48). Calling the People’s Temple a cult rather than embracing it as a religion dehumanizes those who believed in the ideals of the People’s Temple, stripping them of a legitimate and crucial aspect to their identities. Applying phenomenology to the study of the People’s Temple allowed Chidester to realize that although the one of the primary goals of the People’s Temple was motivated mainly by the goals of achieving ultimate economic egalitarianism through socialism and racial integration, it also preached other religious beliefs, such as the rejection of a Sky God …show more content…
Some people, such as the Concerned Relatives, felt that Jones was a psychopathic leader who brainwashed his members into dying, and thus called the final white night a murder, rather than a suicide. Others made an important distinction between Jones and the People’s Temple arguing that most people who stayed voluntarily in Guyana made the choice to do so because they loved the message of the People’s Temple – a socialist utopia – even if they disliked Jones. Communal death was primarily an act of revolution that would signify that “each body had been integrated into the living and dying organism of the community as a whole” (127), martyrdom of the unified people who, by blaming capitalist America for mistreating them, placed the responsibility of their deaths in the hands of the American public. Calling the event a mass religious suicide would legitimate the People’s Temple as a religion, rather than a cult. To counter this, the American media used rhetoric that referred to those who died as “putrid,” “rotten,” and “badly decomposed bodies” that were transported and “incinerated in body bags” (24), perpetuating a sentiment of disgust and otherness. The media’s coverage of Jonestown seeped into the mindset of the American public, which