I wrote this paper when I was still at Rice taking a Religion class. For the original word document, please comment and it will contact me that you would like to see which sources I used. Again, don't be a fool, and don't plagiarize. I am more than happy to push you in the right direction, just ask.
What do David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, Joseph Di Mambro, and Jim Jones all have in common? They were all leaders of cults that eventually led their followers to their deaths. Ranging in sizes from 39 members (Heaven’s Gate) to 914 (Jonestown population), these cults and the men who created them have undoubtedly changed the face of religion and Christianity in the twentieth century. This paper will examine the details of a number of these cults, such as the Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gate, the Solar Temple, and the People’s Temple. It will also examine the reasons as to why these cults are so successful, even after the tragic outcome of several of these cults had been witnessed.
On February 28, 1993, the standoff between David Koresh, born Vernon Howell, his Branch Davidians, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) and the FBI began at the Mount Carmel center outside of Waco, Texas. The BATF had planned an assault on the complex because of reports of possession of illegal firearms materials and the possible conversion of AR-15 semiautomatic rifles into machine guns. The assault began at 9:00 a.m. that Sunday morning, and no one knows who fired the first shot. The BATF claims that they tried to identify themselves, telling Koresh they had a warrant, but a barrage of bullets was their only answer. The Branch Davidians claim they wanted to talk to the government but were cut off by gunfire. For the next 51 days, the standoff in Waco dominated the news, and the world thirsted for more information about the thirty-three year old Bible toting Texan. When the FBI moved in on the heavily armed Branch Davidians on April 19, seventy-four Branch Davidians died, including twenty-one children under the age of 14. The outcome of this incident resulted in resignation of Stephen Higgins, the director of the BATF, along with five other high-ranking officials.
Koresh and his followers did not feel that the situation at Mount Carmel was a “hostage rescue” situation. The only rescuing they wanted was from their own government. The government, along with the rest of the world, did not sympathize with the believers. They felt that they were wantonly attacked by an evil government whom they felt were in opposition to both God and the prophet David Koresh. The standoff could have been resolved peacefully had it been handled differently. A strategy was pursued with FBI cooperation between the Davidians and Phillip Arnold of the Reunion Institute in Houston and James Tarbor of UNC-Charlotte. The two worked in collaboration with lawyers Dick DeGuerin and Jack Zimmerman, who spent twenty hours inside the Mount Carmel center between March 29 and April 4, speaking with Koresh and his main spokesman Steve Schneider. Obviously these attempts came too late.
Why was Koresh so successful in commanding allegiance from his followers throughout the incident? Albeit some of the children did leave the compound during the 51 day standoff, these followers of Koresh truly believed that Koresh was either the messiah or prophet sent from God. During private telephone conversations between Schneider and Koresh with KRLD radio, Koresh would recite hours of scripture. Tired of Koresh’s “Bible babble,” the FBI changed their stance to a “modified negotiation strategy.” This policy shift effectively sealed off all possibilities of sympathetic communication between Koresh and the negotiators. It was also at this time that they began to discuss the option of using CS gas (tear gas) privately. Then the FBI began to use “stress escalation” and harassment techniques. Temporarily, and later permanently, the FBI would cut off the electricity to the Mount Carmel compound. The FBI would demand Koresh release some of his people, once rejected, the government would then retaliate. The FBI kept searchlights brightly lit at night along with loud music and played irritating noises over loudspeakers. Koresh was adamant that he was waiting for a word from God to tell him when to exit.
The reports of sexual child abuse by Koresh ultimately made Attorney General Janet Reno decide on the FBI assault on Mount Carmel, even though these reports were unconfirmed. Who or what caused the fire on April 19 is still a matter of controversy. The government claims that Koresh had orders to deliberately set a fire where as the survivors have denied this. They insisted that suicide was a serious sin, according to their beliefs. Furthermore, most of the women and children who died were trapped in a concrete storage vault. Koresh himself had led them there for their safety to escape the gas and told the women to protect children who were too young to wear gas masks with wet blankets. Why would Koresh allow his followers and family to die? This catastrophe could have been avoided had the government been more patient and took more precautions in diffusing the situation.
Founded in 1975 by Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles, who later call themselves Do and Ti, Heaven’s Gate became the center of the news world on March 27, 1997 when thirty-nine members of the cult committed suicide. Prior to founding the group, Applewhite and Nettles believed they were the “two witnesses” mentioned in the Book of Revelations (Revelation 11:1-2) and announced their identity on August 11, 1973. They hired a car, and using a credit card Nettles “borrowed,” the two went across the country leaving notes in churches that announced the arrival of the two witnesses. After Applewhite failed to return the car, they were both arrested for credit card fraud and served prison sentences. It was during the six months in prison that Applewhite began to shape his theology. Coined the “Bo and Peep UFO Cult” by Robert Balch, a sociologist who studied the group in its early years, Do and Ti had a following of up to 200 members, all brought in from the public meetings the two held to spread their beliefs, but many left the cult after the two leaders left the group and wandered into the wilderness. Later when word came out that Do and Ti could be reached via a post office box in Gulfport, Mississippi, ninety to one-hundred followers reassembled for the much needed leadership. Do and Ti believed that out of the four billion people on earth, their small group were the only individuals that could ascend into heaven on a cloud (or UFO).
Heaven’s Gate, as they would call themselves on their website (which is still online – www.heavensgate.com), would live a nomadic lifestyle, moving from Wyoming to Salt Lake City, Denver, and later Fort Worth. Cult members took on jobs to support the group. Before moving into a mansion of a financially-troubled businessman in Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego, Heaven’s Gate spent some time on a forty acre compound near Albuquerque, New Mexico working on the construction of the Earthship, modeled after the group’s beliefs of the interior of a UFO. The cult also had an interest in computers – their company in southern California, Higher Source, specialized in the construction of websites, which in turn helped pay for their rent in the Rancho Santa Fe mansion.
What did Heaven’s Gate teach? Do and Ti believed that two thousand years ago aliens from the Kingdom of Heaven came to survey their garden on Earth and concluded that their garden had evolved to a point where it would be useful to send a being down from the “level above.” It turned out that “earthlings” were not ready to enter the Kingdom of Heaven since the one they sent down was killed. Do and Ti also thought they themselves were extraterrestrials that came to offer humans a chance to move up to a higher evolutionary level in which a spacecraft would take them and their followers to their ultimate destination. The price of a “boarding pass” consisted of living a disciplined life that would eventually transform their bodies in a process called “Human Individual Metamorphosis” or HIM for short.
The Order of the Solar Temple (Ordre du Temple Solaire, or OTS) was another cult that focused on esotericism and theosophy, much like Heaven’s Gate. In three separate locations during October 4-5, 1994, fifty-three members of the Solar Temple were either murdered or committed suicide. Police found five charred bodies in Joseph Di Mambro’s (the leader) villa in Morin Heights, Canada on October 4, 1994. Three had been stabbed to death before the fire. At 1:00 a.m. the next day, a fire started in Ferme des Rochettes, Switzerland at one of the centers of the Solar Temple. Police discovered twenty-three bodies; some had been shot while others were found with plastic bags over their heads. Two hours later, three chalets inhabited by members of the cult caught fire. Twenty-five bodies were recovered, along with a pistol and the devices that started the fires. A few years later there were other incidents in Europe involving disappearing adults and children that police believe were linked to the OTS murders/suicides. How did Di Mambro command so much allegiance from his followers, and why were they willing to die for him?
Joseph Di Mambro was born on August 19, 1924 in Pont-Saint-Esprit, France. He was an apprenticed watchmaker and jeweler from the age of sixteen. A glimpse of his unsavory side emerged in 1972 when he was convicted on charged of fraud for “impersonating a psychologist and passing bad checks.” He was also involved in an insurance scandal involving a communal farm that caught fire. The money he received from the insurance swindle was used to obtain a mansion in Geneva where he established the Golden Way Foundation, the immediate predecessor to the Solar Temple. Founded in 1984, the Solar Temple was organized in Quebec, as well as Australia, Switzerland, and France. Conscious of his lack of charisma, Di Mambro employed Luc Jouret to become the public face of his organization. Jouret spoke to eclectic esoteric groups in Europe in order to recruit people to join the Solar Temple.
What did the Solar Temple believe in? To begin with, Di Mambro believed his own daughter Emmanuelle was to be the messiah-avatar of the New Age. He required her to wear gloves and a helmet to protect her purity, and only allowed family members to touch her. Di Mambro believed in Cosmic Masters, beings that could only be seen by his group, such as King Arthur (complete with Excalibur), along with visions of the Holy Grail. He even tricked his followers by using hidden holographic projectors and special effects such as floating swords dripping with blood. Di Mambro also laced coffee with stimulants and hallucinogens to enhance these “supernatural” events. The man in charge of these special effects was Tony Dutoit, who would later initiate rumors of the trickery. Not only did he defy Di Mambro, he named his son Christopher Emmanuel, in what seemed to be a challenge to Di Mambro’s daughter’s messianic status. Enraged, Di Mambro retaliated by ordering their three-month-old infant murdered with a wooden stake, claiming Dutoit’s son as the Anti-Christ. This action clearly exhibits Di Mambro’s extreme paranoia, a characteristic shared by most cult leaders. As an authoritarian leader, Di Mambro utilized “cosmic coupling,” a practice that broke up married couples and paired them with others. Di Mambro attributed every order, from mundane to insane, to the will of the Masters, and no one questioned his authority. It was not until Rose-Marie Klaus, a woman who was uncoupled with her husband Bruno, doggedly sought revenge against the OTS that the government began to intervene. With all the tabloids exploiting the OTS’s “horrors,” Di Mambro concluded that his group was the target of an international conspiracy (again, extreme paranoia). This would ultimately lead to the group’s demise.
Another cult that ended in mass suicide was founded by James Warren Jones. Born in 1931, Jones held degrees from Indiana University and Butler. At one point in his life, Jim Jones was a well respected man – he met with President Carter’s wife in 1976 and was friends with the former mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1960, the People’s Temple became an official denomination of the Disciples of Christ and Jones was ordained a minister. Jones was an avid supporter of interracial congregations, something unheard of at this time, especially in Indiana. Because of the apparent racism in Indiana, Jones moved his growing congregation to Northern California. Later, in 1974 the cult obtained a lease from the government of Guyana to develop almost 4,000 acres in the northwestern portion of the country in what would be known as the People’s Temple Agricultural Project. When an investigation from the Internal Revenue Service threatened to shut down the group, since the church might lose its tax-exempt status, Jones moved his church to Guyana and formed Jonestown. Guyana was a cooperative socialist republic, the only English-speaking country in South America, and had a government that welcomed the idea of becoming a refuge for Americans that were fleeing a “racist and oppressive” government.
Jonestown was a community that was completely run by the 914 members, including Jones himself. Everyone contributed to Jonestown through agriculture, child-care, construction, and maintenance, often requiring work days of up to 11 hours, six days a week. People lived in dormitories and children were often raised apart from their biological parents. Jonestown was a socialist “paradise;” everyone was equal regardless of race and everyone contributed equally to society. Jones would sometimes read news reports from Soviet and Eastern Bloc sources, and at other times he would ramble for hours over the public address system while abusing prescription drugs. The group “Concerned Relatives” urged government agencies to investigate the temple, fearing for their relatives and friends in the cult. They also claimed that Jones was brainwashing individuals, holding the cult members in Jonestown against their will, and operated Jonestown like a concentration camp. Finally the “Concerned Relatives” found an ally in California Congressman Leo J. Ryan. Ryan stated he was doing a neutral fact-finding mission in visiting Jonestown in November of 1978. After Ryan had inspected Jonestown and announced it was “the best thing that had happened to many people,” a resident slipped a note to a reporter asking for help to get out of Jonestown. By the end of the day, sixteen residents gathered to leave with Ryan’s party. As the group left, the congressman was attacked by member Don Sly with a knife. As the group left to board the airplanes, several cult members followed them and ambushed the group at the airstrip in Port Kaituma. Congressman Ryan was killed in the fray, along with three journalists.
Back at Jonestown, the mood was grim due to the defections. Jones announced that the end had come for the residents of Jonestown. He stated that the outside world would come back to exact retribution on the murdered congressman, and that “revolutionary suicide” was the only option. The group had practiced several drills in which at random times of the day and night sirens would be triggered and the residents of Jonestown would drink juice and pretend to die. At approximately 5 p.m. on November 18, 1978, 914 men, women, and children, including Jones, drank grape Kool-Aid laced with cyanide and died. Parents first syringed the poison down their babies’ throats, and then the older children and adults drank the juice. In America the following week, a Gallup Poll discovered that 98% of the population knew about the events of Jonestown, a record equaled only by Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor.
So what do Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite have in common? They both shared a couple of traits: an intolerance of any view or perspective other than their own, a need for complete commitment or obedience from followers, and a level of paranoia about external threatening forces. Lewis and Petersen, authors of Controversial New Religions also give several more traits that suicide cult leaders such as Applewhite and Jones share, such as the leader and group members being isolated from the non-believing world, no apparent successors to the leader, and stagnation or decline in the growth of the group. Another common characteristic of cults is the use of slave labor. Jonestown had numerous jobs for its followers – the entire community was self-sufficient. Heaven’s Gate relied on members’ earnings to assist in paying for housing. Although Koresh matches a few of these traits, he is still considered a different leader since he fathered a number of children, had ties outside of the cult, and was in good health prior to the ATF raid on the compound.
What makes these and other cults so successful? To begin, cults offer instant friendship, a caring community, and a hotline to Heaven. They usually attract more men than women, more middle class, and more whites than black. Also, the recruits tend to have had a religious upbringing. Usually cults are successful because of their promises of friendship and their ability to give their members a strong sense of belonging to a group, often replacing traditional family ties with connections among their members. People who wish to belong to a group are welcomed with open arms to a cult. Moreover, the leaders of these cults have very charismatic personalities and are usually good public speakers; they capture the attention of their audiences.
In conclusion, cults are very successful due to their kindness and immediate friendship they offer to people. Some of these people fall into cults because they are seeking a special relationship, regardless of whom it is with. Many of the followers are open to suicides, since their leaders explain that to ascend to Heaven or the next level; they must shed their bodies to receive new ones. Paranoia ultimately leads cults to their destruction – the paranoia in the leaders of Heaven’s Gate, the Solar Temple, and the People’s Temple all lead to the murders and suicides of their followers. It has also been stated that the use of brainwashing techniques draw the followers even deeper into the cults, usually past the “point of no return.”
On February 28, 1993, the standoff between David Koresh, born Vernon Howell, his Branch Davidians, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) and the FBI began at the Mount Carmel center outside of Waco, Texas. The BATF had planned an assault on the complex because of reports of possession of illegal firearms materials and the possible conversion of AR-15 semiautomatic rifles into machine guns. The assault began at 9:00 a.m. that Sunday morning, and no one knows who fired the first shot. The BATF claims that they tried to identify themselves, telling Koresh they had a warrant, but a barrage of bullets was their only answer. The Branch Davidians claim they wanted to talk to the government but were cut off by gunfire. For the next 51 days, the standoff in Waco dominated the news, and the world thirsted for more information about the thirty-three year old Bible toting Texan. When the FBI moved in on the heavily armed Branch Davidians on April 19, seventy-four Branch Davidians died, including twenty-one children under the age of 14. The outcome of this incident resulted in resignation of Stephen Higgins, the director of the BATF, along with five other high-ranking officials.
Koresh and his followers did not feel that the situation at Mount Carmel was a “hostage rescue” situation. The only rescuing they wanted was from their own government. The government, along with the rest of the world, did not sympathize with the believers. They felt that they were wantonly attacked by an evil government whom they felt were in opposition to both God and the prophet David Koresh. The standoff could have been resolved peacefully had it been handled differently. A strategy was pursued with FBI cooperation between the Davidians and Phillip Arnold of the Reunion Institute in Houston and James Tarbor of UNC-Charlotte. The two worked in collaboration with lawyers Dick DeGuerin and Jack Zimmerman, who spent twenty hours inside the Mount Carmel center between March 29 and April 4, speaking with Koresh and his main spokesman Steve Schneider. Obviously these attempts came too late.
Why was Koresh so successful in commanding allegiance from his followers throughout the incident? Albeit some of the children did leave the compound during the 51 day standoff, these followers of Koresh truly believed that Koresh was either the messiah or prophet sent from God. During private telephone conversations between Schneider and Koresh with KRLD radio, Koresh would recite hours of scripture. Tired of Koresh’s “Bible babble,” the FBI changed their stance to a “modified negotiation strategy.” This policy shift effectively sealed off all possibilities of sympathetic communication between Koresh and the negotiators. It was also at this time that they began to discuss the option of using CS gas (tear gas) privately. Then the FBI began to use “stress escalation” and harassment techniques. Temporarily, and later permanently, the FBI would cut off the electricity to the Mount Carmel compound. The FBI would demand Koresh release some of his people, once rejected, the government would then retaliate. The FBI kept searchlights brightly lit at night along with loud music and played irritating noises over loudspeakers. Koresh was adamant that he was waiting for a word from God to tell him when to exit.
The reports of sexual child abuse by Koresh ultimately made Attorney General Janet Reno decide on the FBI assault on Mount Carmel, even though these reports were unconfirmed. Who or what caused the fire on April 19 is still a matter of controversy. The government claims that Koresh had orders to deliberately set a fire where as the survivors have denied this. They insisted that suicide was a serious sin, according to their beliefs. Furthermore, most of the women and children who died were trapped in a concrete storage vault. Koresh himself had led them there for their safety to escape the gas and told the women to protect children who were too young to wear gas masks with wet blankets. Why would Koresh allow his followers and family to die? This catastrophe could have been avoided had the government been more patient and took more precautions in diffusing the situation.
Founded in 1975 by Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles, who later call themselves Do and Ti, Heaven’s Gate became the center of the news world on March 27, 1997 when thirty-nine members of the cult committed suicide. Prior to founding the group, Applewhite and Nettles believed they were the “two witnesses” mentioned in the Book of Revelations (Revelation 11:1-2) and announced their identity on August 11, 1973. They hired a car, and using a credit card Nettles “borrowed,” the two went across the country leaving notes in churches that announced the arrival of the two witnesses. After Applewhite failed to return the car, they were both arrested for credit card fraud and served prison sentences. It was during the six months in prison that Applewhite began to shape his theology. Coined the “Bo and Peep UFO Cult” by Robert Balch, a sociologist who studied the group in its early years, Do and Ti had a following of up to 200 members, all brought in from the public meetings the two held to spread their beliefs, but many left the cult after the two leaders left the group and wandered into the wilderness. Later when word came out that Do and Ti could be reached via a post office box in Gulfport, Mississippi, ninety to one-hundred followers reassembled for the much needed leadership. Do and Ti believed that out of the four billion people on earth, their small group were the only individuals that could ascend into heaven on a cloud (or UFO).
Heaven’s Gate, as they would call themselves on their website (which is still online – www.heavensgate.com), would live a nomadic lifestyle, moving from Wyoming to Salt Lake City, Denver, and later Fort Worth. Cult members took on jobs to support the group. Before moving into a mansion of a financially-troubled businessman in Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego, Heaven’s Gate spent some time on a forty acre compound near Albuquerque, New Mexico working on the construction of the Earthship, modeled after the group’s beliefs of the interior of a UFO. The cult also had an interest in computers – their company in southern California, Higher Source, specialized in the construction of websites, which in turn helped pay for their rent in the Rancho Santa Fe mansion.
What did Heaven’s Gate teach? Do and Ti believed that two thousand years ago aliens from the Kingdom of Heaven came to survey their garden on Earth and concluded that their garden had evolved to a point where it would be useful to send a being down from the “level above.” It turned out that “earthlings” were not ready to enter the Kingdom of Heaven since the one they sent down was killed. Do and Ti also thought they themselves were extraterrestrials that came to offer humans a chance to move up to a higher evolutionary level in which a spacecraft would take them and their followers to their ultimate destination. The price of a “boarding pass” consisted of living a disciplined life that would eventually transform their bodies in a process called “Human Individual Metamorphosis” or HIM for short.
The Order of the Solar Temple (Ordre du Temple Solaire, or OTS) was another cult that focused on esotericism and theosophy, much like Heaven’s Gate. In three separate locations during October 4-5, 1994, fifty-three members of the Solar Temple were either murdered or committed suicide. Police found five charred bodies in Joseph Di Mambro’s (the leader) villa in Morin Heights, Canada on October 4, 1994. Three had been stabbed to death before the fire. At 1:00 a.m. the next day, a fire started in Ferme des Rochettes, Switzerland at one of the centers of the Solar Temple. Police discovered twenty-three bodies; some had been shot while others were found with plastic bags over their heads. Two hours later, three chalets inhabited by members of the cult caught fire. Twenty-five bodies were recovered, along with a pistol and the devices that started the fires. A few years later there were other incidents in Europe involving disappearing adults and children that police believe were linked to the OTS murders/suicides. How did Di Mambro command so much allegiance from his followers, and why were they willing to die for him?
Joseph Di Mambro was born on August 19, 1924 in Pont-Saint-Esprit, France. He was an apprenticed watchmaker and jeweler from the age of sixteen. A glimpse of his unsavory side emerged in 1972 when he was convicted on charged of fraud for “impersonating a psychologist and passing bad checks.” He was also involved in an insurance scandal involving a communal farm that caught fire. The money he received from the insurance swindle was used to obtain a mansion in Geneva where he established the Golden Way Foundation, the immediate predecessor to the Solar Temple. Founded in 1984, the Solar Temple was organized in Quebec, as well as Australia, Switzerland, and France. Conscious of his lack of charisma, Di Mambro employed Luc Jouret to become the public face of his organization. Jouret spoke to eclectic esoteric groups in Europe in order to recruit people to join the Solar Temple.
What did the Solar Temple believe in? To begin with, Di Mambro believed his own daughter Emmanuelle was to be the messiah-avatar of the New Age. He required her to wear gloves and a helmet to protect her purity, and only allowed family members to touch her. Di Mambro believed in Cosmic Masters, beings that could only be seen by his group, such as King Arthur (complete with Excalibur), along with visions of the Holy Grail. He even tricked his followers by using hidden holographic projectors and special effects such as floating swords dripping with blood. Di Mambro also laced coffee with stimulants and hallucinogens to enhance these “supernatural” events. The man in charge of these special effects was Tony Dutoit, who would later initiate rumors of the trickery. Not only did he defy Di Mambro, he named his son Christopher Emmanuel, in what seemed to be a challenge to Di Mambro’s daughter’s messianic status. Enraged, Di Mambro retaliated by ordering their three-month-old infant murdered with a wooden stake, claiming Dutoit’s son as the Anti-Christ. This action clearly exhibits Di Mambro’s extreme paranoia, a characteristic shared by most cult leaders. As an authoritarian leader, Di Mambro utilized “cosmic coupling,” a practice that broke up married couples and paired them with others. Di Mambro attributed every order, from mundane to insane, to the will of the Masters, and no one questioned his authority. It was not until Rose-Marie Klaus, a woman who was uncoupled with her husband Bruno, doggedly sought revenge against the OTS that the government began to intervene. With all the tabloids exploiting the OTS’s “horrors,” Di Mambro concluded that his group was the target of an international conspiracy (again, extreme paranoia). This would ultimately lead to the group’s demise.
Another cult that ended in mass suicide was founded by James Warren Jones. Born in 1931, Jones held degrees from Indiana University and Butler. At one point in his life, Jim Jones was a well respected man – he met with President Carter’s wife in 1976 and was friends with the former mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1960, the People’s Temple became an official denomination of the Disciples of Christ and Jones was ordained a minister. Jones was an avid supporter of interracial congregations, something unheard of at this time, especially in Indiana. Because of the apparent racism in Indiana, Jones moved his growing congregation to Northern California. Later, in 1974 the cult obtained a lease from the government of Guyana to develop almost 4,000 acres in the northwestern portion of the country in what would be known as the People’s Temple Agricultural Project. When an investigation from the Internal Revenue Service threatened to shut down the group, since the church might lose its tax-exempt status, Jones moved his church to Guyana and formed Jonestown. Guyana was a cooperative socialist republic, the only English-speaking country in South America, and had a government that welcomed the idea of becoming a refuge for Americans that were fleeing a “racist and oppressive” government.
Jonestown was a community that was completely run by the 914 members, including Jones himself. Everyone contributed to Jonestown through agriculture, child-care, construction, and maintenance, often requiring work days of up to 11 hours, six days a week. People lived in dormitories and children were often raised apart from their biological parents. Jonestown was a socialist “paradise;” everyone was equal regardless of race and everyone contributed equally to society. Jones would sometimes read news reports from Soviet and Eastern Bloc sources, and at other times he would ramble for hours over the public address system while abusing prescription drugs. The group “Concerned Relatives” urged government agencies to investigate the temple, fearing for their relatives and friends in the cult. They also claimed that Jones was brainwashing individuals, holding the cult members in Jonestown against their will, and operated Jonestown like a concentration camp. Finally the “Concerned Relatives” found an ally in California Congressman Leo J. Ryan. Ryan stated he was doing a neutral fact-finding mission in visiting Jonestown in November of 1978. After Ryan had inspected Jonestown and announced it was “the best thing that had happened to many people,” a resident slipped a note to a reporter asking for help to get out of Jonestown. By the end of the day, sixteen residents gathered to leave with Ryan’s party. As the group left, the congressman was attacked by member Don Sly with a knife. As the group left to board the airplanes, several cult members followed them and ambushed the group at the airstrip in Port Kaituma. Congressman Ryan was killed in the fray, along with three journalists.
Back at Jonestown, the mood was grim due to the defections. Jones announced that the end had come for the residents of Jonestown. He stated that the outside world would come back to exact retribution on the murdered congressman, and that “revolutionary suicide” was the only option. The group had practiced several drills in which at random times of the day and night sirens would be triggered and the residents of Jonestown would drink juice and pretend to die. At approximately 5 p.m. on November 18, 1978, 914 men, women, and children, including Jones, drank grape Kool-Aid laced with cyanide and died. Parents first syringed the poison down their babies’ throats, and then the older children and adults drank the juice. In America the following week, a Gallup Poll discovered that 98% of the population knew about the events of Jonestown, a record equaled only by Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor.
So what do Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite have in common? They both shared a couple of traits: an intolerance of any view or perspective other than their own, a need for complete commitment or obedience from followers, and a level of paranoia about external threatening forces. Lewis and Petersen, authors of Controversial New Religions also give several more traits that suicide cult leaders such as Applewhite and Jones share, such as the leader and group members being isolated from the non-believing world, no apparent successors to the leader, and stagnation or decline in the growth of the group. Another common characteristic of cults is the use of slave labor. Jonestown had numerous jobs for its followers – the entire community was self-sufficient. Heaven’s Gate relied on members’ earnings to assist in paying for housing. Although Koresh matches a few of these traits, he is still considered a different leader since he fathered a number of children, had ties outside of the cult, and was in good health prior to the ATF raid on the compound.
What makes these and other cults so successful? To begin, cults offer instant friendship, a caring community, and a hotline to Heaven. They usually attract more men than women, more middle class, and more whites than black. Also, the recruits tend to have had a religious upbringing. Usually cults are successful because of their promises of friendship and their ability to give their members a strong sense of belonging to a group, often replacing traditional family ties with connections among their members. People who wish to belong to a group are welcomed with open arms to a cult. Moreover, the leaders of these cults have very charismatic personalities and are usually good public speakers; they capture the attention of their audiences.
In conclusion, cults are very successful due to their kindness and immediate friendship they offer to people. Some of these people fall into cults because they are seeking a special relationship, regardless of whom it is with. Many of the followers are open to suicides, since their leaders explain that to ascend to Heaven or the next level; they must shed their bodies to receive new ones. Paranoia ultimately leads cults to their destruction – the paranoia in the leaders of Heaven’s Gate, the Solar Temple, and the People’s Temple all lead to the murders and suicides of their followers. It has also been stated that the use of brainwashing techniques draw the followers even deeper into the cults, usually past the “point of no return.”
1 comment:
Well done paper, Rob. Cults, how they attract members, and the evolution of a mindset: from hearing about a "group of friends" all the way to "drinking the kool-aid" are all fascinating. It seems well-researched. Makes you wonder what people really want, what they need to fulfill themselves and their beliefs, and how easily those beliefs are manipulated.
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