International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010 29
interdisciplinary books also have appeared
concerning Jonestown, and I will mention them
later in this study.
Based upon the number of libraries worldwide
that own copies of these sociological books,
Hall’s study of Jonestown appears destined to be
the most influential in the coming years.
Moreover, soon after its publication, several
book reviews sang praise to its scholarship.
“Hall’s achievement is noteworthy…. [H]e
presents the most comprehensive and
sociological assessment of Peoples Temple
available,” said the review in Contemporary
Sociology (Rigney, 1988: 469). Another
proclaimed, “Hall’s book is a triumph of
scholarly craft and a skillful demonstration of
the sociological viewpoint” (Christiano, 1989:
222). According to a third review, this study
provided “the most compelling sociohistorical
account to date of one of the more chilling
horrors of modern times” (Snow, 1990: 1103)
and a fourth reviewed concluded, “I have no
doubt this work will be a standard in the field for
years to come” (Wright, 1989: 94). More
recently, three religious-studies scholars praised
Hall’s monograph as “the most complete and
compassionate history of Peoples Temple to
date” [Moore, Pinn, and Sawyer (eds.), 2004:
xvii]. Certainly, Hall’s study of Jonestown is a
likely source to examine in an attempt to see
what future generations of scholars will learn
about and how they will interpret child-abuse
issues within Jones’s group. I begin, therefore,
my analysis of scholarly representations about
child abuse within Peoples Temple by
examining his book.
The Discussion of Child Physical Abuse in
John Hall’s Gone from the Promised Land
Hall discussed child abuse issues far more than
did other scholarly books, yet he (and for that
matter, other scholars, too) diminished important
issues of the physical (and psychological) abuse
that the children at Jonestown endured prior to
their murders. He minimized the deviance of the
children’s abuse by spuriously analogizing it to
other punishment regimes in two
contemporaneous groups (the House of Judah
and the Northeast Kingdom Community), even
though the regimes in those two groups actually
were themselves widely criticized (and in at
least one case, fatal). Other scholarship on
Jonestown attempts to humanize the people who
died while placing considerable blame upon the
group’s countercult opponents (called the
Concerned Relatives) for Jones’s murderous
response (see R. Moore, 1988: 3–26), but these
attempts minimize the significance of the large
number of infants, children, teens, and elderly
who simply were murdered.
Hall’s study was the product of extensive
research, with his having gained information
from the Guyanian government the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and the Department of
State the California Historical Society and the
attorney for the Peoples Temple (Hall, 1987: x).
Although the study has much to commend, it
completely rejected any validity to what Hall
called the anticult movement and its alleged
reliance on atrocity tales (Hall, 1987: xiv–xviii).
The anticult movement, he decided, “was
ideological, no matter what its claims to
scientific legitimation,” partly because it
targeted “culturally deviant and unpopular
religions” but ignored “the more subtle (and
perhaps more effective) coercion in mainstream
religion” (Hall, 1987: 107).
Clearly, Hall was disinclined to provide any
legitimation to the anticult movement.
Moreover, his insistence that the movement
relied upon atrocity tales to make its claims
about coercion blinded him to the fact that
people in the particular anticult movement
against Jim Jones, called the Concerned
Relatives, often were deadly accurate in their
fearful predictions about the direction of his
group (cf. Hall, 1995: 308 for mention of the
group’s credibility problem). In, for example, his
complaint against Peoples Temple, former
member James Cobb, Jr. accurately predicted
the mass murder of children that would occur
five months after he filed his papers in court.
Cobb indicated that ‘revolutionary suicide’ was
what Jones and Temple leadership were calling
the action that the group would take if “Jones
felt he was being persecuted or unduly
harassed,” but the action really “was a
megalomaniacal threat of ‘mass murder’ which
would result in the death of minor children not
old enough to make voluntary and informed
interdisciplinary books also have appeared
concerning Jonestown, and I will mention them
later in this study.
Based upon the number of libraries worldwide
that own copies of these sociological books,
Hall’s study of Jonestown appears destined to be
the most influential in the coming years.
Moreover, soon after its publication, several
book reviews sang praise to its scholarship.
“Hall’s achievement is noteworthy…. [H]e
presents the most comprehensive and
sociological assessment of Peoples Temple
available,” said the review in Contemporary
Sociology (Rigney, 1988: 469). Another
proclaimed, “Hall’s book is a triumph of
scholarly craft and a skillful demonstration of
the sociological viewpoint” (Christiano, 1989:
222). According to a third review, this study
provided “the most compelling sociohistorical
account to date of one of the more chilling
horrors of modern times” (Snow, 1990: 1103)
and a fourth reviewed concluded, “I have no
doubt this work will be a standard in the field for
years to come” (Wright, 1989: 94). More
recently, three religious-studies scholars praised
Hall’s monograph as “the most complete and
compassionate history of Peoples Temple to
date” [Moore, Pinn, and Sawyer (eds.), 2004:
xvii]. Certainly, Hall’s study of Jonestown is a
likely source to examine in an attempt to see
what future generations of scholars will learn
about and how they will interpret child-abuse
issues within Jones’s group. I begin, therefore,
my analysis of scholarly representations about
child abuse within Peoples Temple by
examining his book.
The Discussion of Child Physical Abuse in
John Hall’s Gone from the Promised Land
Hall discussed child abuse issues far more than
did other scholarly books, yet he (and for that
matter, other scholars, too) diminished important
issues of the physical (and psychological) abuse
that the children at Jonestown endured prior to
their murders. He minimized the deviance of the
children’s abuse by spuriously analogizing it to
other punishment regimes in two
contemporaneous groups (the House of Judah
and the Northeast Kingdom Community), even
though the regimes in those two groups actually
were themselves widely criticized (and in at
least one case, fatal). Other scholarship on
Jonestown attempts to humanize the people who
died while placing considerable blame upon the
group’s countercult opponents (called the
Concerned Relatives) for Jones’s murderous
response (see R. Moore, 1988: 3–26), but these
attempts minimize the significance of the large
number of infants, children, teens, and elderly
who simply were murdered.
Hall’s study was the product of extensive
research, with his having gained information
from the Guyanian government the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and the Department of
State the California Historical Society and the
attorney for the Peoples Temple (Hall, 1987: x).
Although the study has much to commend, it
completely rejected any validity to what Hall
called the anticult movement and its alleged
reliance on atrocity tales (Hall, 1987: xiv–xviii).
The anticult movement, he decided, “was
ideological, no matter what its claims to
scientific legitimation,” partly because it
targeted “culturally deviant and unpopular
religions” but ignored “the more subtle (and
perhaps more effective) coercion in mainstream
religion” (Hall, 1987: 107).
Clearly, Hall was disinclined to provide any
legitimation to the anticult movement.
Moreover, his insistence that the movement
relied upon atrocity tales to make its claims
about coercion blinded him to the fact that
people in the particular anticult movement
against Jim Jones, called the Concerned
Relatives, often were deadly accurate in their
fearful predictions about the direction of his
group (cf. Hall, 1995: 308 for mention of the
group’s credibility problem). In, for example, his
complaint against Peoples Temple, former
member James Cobb, Jr. accurately predicted
the mass murder of children that would occur
five months after he filed his papers in court.
Cobb indicated that ‘revolutionary suicide’ was
what Jones and Temple leadership were calling
the action that the group would take if “Jones
felt he was being persecuted or unduly
harassed,” but the action really “was a
megalomaniacal threat of ‘mass murder’ which
would result in the death of minor children not
old enough to make voluntary and informed
