34 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010
Being reared in the House of Judah is
physically unsafe and developmentally
destructive. (Helfer, 1983: 10)
In essence, Hall’s attempt to analogize the
beating of children in Peoples Temple to the
beating in the House of Judah works far better
than he ever imagined, even though the group
was not Protestant and the boy’s deadly beating
was not “for his sins” (Hall, 1987: 125). Adults
beat him to death because he refused to perform
slave labour, and one wonders if ‘slavery’ would
also have been an appropriate term for the
conditions in which the Peoples Temple children
lived and died.
By attempting to contextualize, therefore,
Peoples Temple’s corporal punishment of
children within fundamentalist Protestantism,
Hall inadvertently showed that such behaviours
occurred outside of a Christian context, and
were criminal in nature. Moreover, true “atrocity
tales” assisted a United States District Court
judge to reach his decision that six key adults in
leadership positions deserved federal prison
time. Alas, future generations are unlikely to be
able to draw these alternative conclusions about
Hall’s use of the House of Judah in an attempt to
normalize the physical violence that occurred at
Jonestown. They are unlikely to be able to do so
because none of the book reviews written about
Gone from the Promised Land (Bainbridge,
1989 Baptiste, 1988 Christiano, 1989 B.
Moore, 1989 Rigney, 1988 Snow 1990 Wright
1989), nor any of the subsequent academic
discussions about Jonestown that I have seen
(for example, Chryssides, 1999 Dawson, 2006
Gallagher, 2004) have critiqued Hall on his
child-abuse discussion. Moreover, only a few
paragraphs exist on the House of Judah in two
academic publications aside from this one
(Landa, 1990–1991: 592 n.1 610 Langone and
Eisenberg, 1993: 333).
Child Corporal Punishment in the
Northeast Kingdom Community
Although Hall had alluded to the House of Judah
only when attempting to contextualize Peoples
Temple’s corporal punishment of children, he
specifically identified by name the Northeast
Kingdom Community as a better example of a
group demonstrating “[t]he extremes of
Protestant discipline.” To reiterate his statement
about it, he described it as “a contemporaneous
Christian religious community in Island Pond,
Vermont, whose members had no apologies for
using rods and switches for ‘loving correction’
of children, even if it left marks on their bodies”
(Hall, 1987: 125). On this much Hall was
correct, and a significant body of academic
literature does exist about this group that
academics in the future will be able to read
about its practices. Unfortunately, key elements
of that scholarship misrepresent crucial issues in
the sect’s stormy relationship with authorities
over corporal punishment and child-protection
issues.
The basic facts about a 1984 raid against the
Northeast Kingdom Community are well known,
and Hall cited two New York Times articles and
one Christian magazine article about it.14 On
June 22, 1984, police officers, accompanied by
social workers and nurses, raided the
community, removing 112 children. The next
day, however, a judge overturned the raid on
grounds that the search warrant was too general
and did not mention specific alleged crimes
against specific children who were living in
specific buildings (Mahady, 1984a, 1984b). At
least nine academic and academically related
articles have appeared about this group and the
raid against it (Bozeman and Palmer, 1997
Malcarne and Burchard, 1992 Palmer, 1998,
1999 2001 Swantko, 2000 [then revised,
updated, and reprinted in 2004], 2005–2006
Swantko and Wiseman, 1995)15 and the
author/co-author of four of these is the Northeast
Kingdom Community’s lawyer, Jean Swantko.
In various publications, Swantko blamed the raid
on the anticult movement, specifically on
Priscilla Coates, who was active in the Citizens
Freedom Foundation, and deprogrammer Galen
14 Hall’s citation system was minimalist, citing only “NYT, 6/23,
29/84 Charisma 1984: 68–79. Charisma is a Christian magazine
from the period (Nori, 1984), and a New York Times article did
appear on June 23, 1984 (The New York Times, 1984). I an unable
to find, however, an article from June 29 but perhaps it is a
typographical error for the date of the article that appeared on June
24, 1984 (Butterfield, 1984).
15 In an editorial note in Swantko 2004: 179, she said that this
article is revised, updated, and reprinted from Social Justice
Research 12(4), 1999. My copy of the earlier article, however, is
from 2000, which is the date that I use here in the bibliography.
Being reared in the House of Judah is
physically unsafe and developmentally
destructive. (Helfer, 1983: 10)
In essence, Hall’s attempt to analogize the
beating of children in Peoples Temple to the
beating in the House of Judah works far better
than he ever imagined, even though the group
was not Protestant and the boy’s deadly beating
was not “for his sins” (Hall, 1987: 125). Adults
beat him to death because he refused to perform
slave labour, and one wonders if ‘slavery’ would
also have been an appropriate term for the
conditions in which the Peoples Temple children
lived and died.
By attempting to contextualize, therefore,
Peoples Temple’s corporal punishment of
children within fundamentalist Protestantism,
Hall inadvertently showed that such behaviours
occurred outside of a Christian context, and
were criminal in nature. Moreover, true “atrocity
tales” assisted a United States District Court
judge to reach his decision that six key adults in
leadership positions deserved federal prison
time. Alas, future generations are unlikely to be
able to draw these alternative conclusions about
Hall’s use of the House of Judah in an attempt to
normalize the physical violence that occurred at
Jonestown. They are unlikely to be able to do so
because none of the book reviews written about
Gone from the Promised Land (Bainbridge,
1989 Baptiste, 1988 Christiano, 1989 B.
Moore, 1989 Rigney, 1988 Snow 1990 Wright
1989), nor any of the subsequent academic
discussions about Jonestown that I have seen
(for example, Chryssides, 1999 Dawson, 2006
Gallagher, 2004) have critiqued Hall on his
child-abuse discussion. Moreover, only a few
paragraphs exist on the House of Judah in two
academic publications aside from this one
(Landa, 1990–1991: 592 n.1 610 Langone and
Eisenberg, 1993: 333).
Child Corporal Punishment in the
Northeast Kingdom Community
Although Hall had alluded to the House of Judah
only when attempting to contextualize Peoples
Temple’s corporal punishment of children, he
specifically identified by name the Northeast
Kingdom Community as a better example of a
group demonstrating “[t]he extremes of
Protestant discipline.” To reiterate his statement
about it, he described it as “a contemporaneous
Christian religious community in Island Pond,
Vermont, whose members had no apologies for
using rods and switches for ‘loving correction’
of children, even if it left marks on their bodies”
(Hall, 1987: 125). On this much Hall was
correct, and a significant body of academic
literature does exist about this group that
academics in the future will be able to read
about its practices. Unfortunately, key elements
of that scholarship misrepresent crucial issues in
the sect’s stormy relationship with authorities
over corporal punishment and child-protection
issues.
The basic facts about a 1984 raid against the
Northeast Kingdom Community are well known,
and Hall cited two New York Times articles and
one Christian magazine article about it.14 On
June 22, 1984, police officers, accompanied by
social workers and nurses, raided the
community, removing 112 children. The next
day, however, a judge overturned the raid on
grounds that the search warrant was too general
and did not mention specific alleged crimes
against specific children who were living in
specific buildings (Mahady, 1984a, 1984b). At
least nine academic and academically related
articles have appeared about this group and the
raid against it (Bozeman and Palmer, 1997
Malcarne and Burchard, 1992 Palmer, 1998,
1999 2001 Swantko, 2000 [then revised,
updated, and reprinted in 2004], 2005–2006
Swantko and Wiseman, 1995)15 and the
author/co-author of four of these is the Northeast
Kingdom Community’s lawyer, Jean Swantko.
In various publications, Swantko blamed the raid
on the anticult movement, specifically on
Priscilla Coates, who was active in the Citizens
Freedom Foundation, and deprogrammer Galen
14 Hall’s citation system was minimalist, citing only “NYT, 6/23,
29/84 Charisma 1984: 68–79. Charisma is a Christian magazine
from the period (Nori, 1984), and a New York Times article did
appear on June 23, 1984 (The New York Times, 1984). I an unable
to find, however, an article from June 29 but perhaps it is a
typographical error for the date of the article that appeared on June
24, 1984 (Butterfield, 1984).
15 In an editorial note in Swantko 2004: 179, she said that this
article is revised, updated, and reprinted from Social Justice
Research 12(4), 1999. My copy of the earlier article, however, is
from 2000, which is the date that I use here in the bibliography.
