After Jonestown: A Filmmaker's Journey into the Legacy of a Tragic Cult, Study notes of Theology

Download After Jonestown: A Filmmaker's Journey into the Legacy of a Tragic Cult and more Study notes Theology in PDF only on Docsity! In November 1978, I was a boy of 10, riding in the back seat of my father’s car on a bright fall day in Boston and looking at a Newsweek article about the deaths of more than 900 Americans in what was called a “mass suicide” by members of a “cult” commune called Jonestown, in Guyana. (The actual na- ture of these deaths is still in dispute, but they undoubtedly were a mix of suicide and murder.) These deaths at the com- mune had almost immediately followed the murders nearby of United States Congressman Leo Ryan and three other people who had been part of a delega- tion to visit on a fact-finding mission. This was the first major news story that impressed itself on my imagination. Now, I am revisiting the story of Jon- estown on its 25th anniversary, co-pro- ducing a documentary film about its life, death, and legacy, After Jonestown. Elie Wiesel has remarked that “we can never really tell the story of the Holocaust, but we must always try.” Trying to tell a story about Jonestown presents a similar challenge, and it calls on me to remain open to the story and its storytellers as they evolve. Doing so is in no small part an act of faith. The Rev. Jim Jones founded Peo- ples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955. By 1961, it was known as Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church, and it became part of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which ordained Jones in 1964. Soon after that, Jones moved his opera- tions to Ukiah, California, near San Francisco, and by 1971 was active in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. Throughout these years, the Temple was controversial for its support of racial integration, lauded for its social-service programs, and politically influential thanks to its savvy pastor and dedicated, integrated membership. A project of Peoples Temple, Jonestown was intend- ed as a socialist communal settlement far from the racism and poverty of American life; it was essentially a small village built in the middle of the Guyanese jungle in the early- to mid- 1970s, and was populated primarily in 1977-78. The residents of Jonestown, who were isolated from outside media and subjected to nearly constant haranguing by Jones, were led to believe that their families back home and the United States government and news media were out to destroy the community. The mur- ders and suicides at Jonestown on No- vember 18, 1978—after the murders of several of the outsiders who had just vis- ited Jonestown to investigate reports of a range of emotional and physical cruel- ty—were conceived as a last stand to die for the cause rather than sacrifice it. No one feels the difficult distance between experience and language in re- gard to Jonestown more acutely than the survivors. Of the roughly 1,000 peo- ple who were in Jonestown, just more than 900 died, and just more than 80 survived (some ran into the jungle; oth- ers had left with the investigating con- gressman earlier in the day and were not killed in the attack on him; others were away, visiting Georgetown, the capital of Guyana). After the deaths, many sur- vivors were overwhelmed by grief, guilt, and what-if questions. The magnitude of the tragedy was so great, and the reach of their aspirations had been so long, that many of them just could not put their experience into words. In mak- ing the film, I am joining with a handful of survivors and relatives of those who died to try to do just that: tell the stories of their lives then and since 1978. This task presents a number of challenges, not least of which are religious ones. Part of the difficulty lies in the ab- jectly painful nature of the material. One woman with whom I’m working lost nine family members in Jonestown, including her mother and a daughter— she still suffers from debilitating depres- sion. Another man escaped Jonestown in the company of Congressman Ryan but left behind his young son, thinking that he would be able to retrieve the boy later. That moment of decision remains the single most painful one of his life. Sitting and talking with people about such moments, and staying with them through the most difficult parts, is a kind of ministry of listening. My doubts are many. Who am I to minister to these people, many of whom suffered more loss in one day than I will in a lifetime? And who is to say that they will be helped by telling their stories? Peoples Temple originated and grew as a religious community, and its tragic end poses religious questions of loss, meaning, and respon- sibility. But my task is also political. About 70 percent of the people who lived and died in Jonestown were African American. The story, however, has been told primarily by white sur- vivors who were in leadership positions, and the news media have treated these perspectives as somehow representative. The story of Jonestown is suffused with issues of race and racism, and inasmuch as I approach this story theologically, my theology must take on these same is- sues. I am reminded of James Cone’s message that any kind of theology that is not principally concerned with libera- tion is no kind of theology at all. It would be easy for me as a white man to ignore race, but in order to do justice to the story, I must do justice to those who populate that story. After Jonestown fo- cuses primarily on African American perspectives and on the race issues in- volved in the story. The public presentation of this story raises another problem. The pain of these losses was exacerbated by the fact that they were part of one of the most public and stigmatized tragedies of our time. In the immediate aftermath, it was hard for survivors and families to grieve because their lost loved ones were being portrayed in newspapers and tele- vision broadcasts nationwide as de- praved cultists. Many survivors were hounded by the news media for the sen- sational “inside” story of how virtually an entire community died. In the last 25 years, the news and documentary cover- age of Jonestown hasn’t gotten much better in this regard. With few excep- tions, it still focuses on the most lurid and sensational aspects of the tragedy; it still focuses on Jim Jones rather than on the people of Jonestown, and on the 24 Harvard Divinity Bulletin The Jonestown That Won’t Fade Away Twenty-Five Years Later, a Filmmaker Examines the Lasting Consequences by Paul VanDeCarr Karen Harms, right, Stanley Clayton, and other members of Peoples Temple preparing a community meal in 1977-78. Paul VanDeCarr, MTS ’99, is an inde- pendent producer and writer living in San Francisco. His work has appeared in The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Advo- cate, Storytelling, on KPFA Radio and the Pacifica Radio Network, and elsewhere. “After Jonestown” is in production, and is scheduled to be completed in late 2004. For information or to be put on the project update list, write to AfterJonestown@yahoo.com or visit www.geocities.com/AfterJonestown.