44 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010
Moore) likely captured the attitudes that many of
the able-bodied killers felt about murdering the
children. Annie Moore indicated,
‘I don’t relish the idea of participating in
killing the children and I don’t think
anyone else does but I will do it because
I think I could be as compassionate as
the next person about it and I don’t hate
children.’ (letter reproduced in Maaga,
1998: 123)
Efforts to restore the humanity of the individuals
who were at Jonestown, therefore, cannot gloss
over the fact that roughly half of those people
had their humanity—their very lives—taken
from them by other members acting under
Jones’s directives.
Somewhat similar qualifications about the fate
of the children appeared in David Chidester’s
1988 study (revised 2003), Salvation and
Suicide, which attempted to give a religious-
studies perspective to the tragic events. “For
those who willingly embraced death through
revolutionary suicide, Jones described the
conditions under which this could be regarded as
a meaningful act within the categories of
symbolic orientation and classification that
operated in their shared worldview” (Chidester,
2003: 155 see Smith, 1982: 119–120). But in
the previous paragraph he had to acknowledge:
Finally, it would be difficult to suppose
that the 260 children24 of Jonestown all
committed suicide. Babies were
sacrificed first, perhaps to signify to the
adults that this was not a rehearsal, not
another loyalty test, but an act from
which there could be no turning back
once it had begun. (Chidester, 2003:
154–155)
However much scholars within religious studies
want to find meaning for the suicides within the
group’s own theological system, for the children
the final event was infanticide. As even Hall
admitted, “the organizational effectiveness of
People’s [sic] Temple for more than fifteen
years and the actual carrying out of the mass
24 See above, where I give Kenneth Wooden’s (1981: 1) number
for dead children as 276.
murder/suicide show that Jones and his staff
knew what they were doing” (Hall 1982: 36
Hall, 1990: 270).
Conclusion
The so-called ‘cult wars’ continue to rage, as a
few scholars persist in publishing ideologically
tainted studies designed to minimize or ignore
real instances of harm. In such studies, of
course, these scholars have to neutralize or
deemphasize the child abuse that the adults far
too frequently perpetrate upon children.
Sociologically, therefore, important social
processes involving the socialization of adults
into abusers (not to mention, murderers) are
crucial to identify and studies that ignore,
sidestep, or downplay the range of child abuses
that adults perpetrated against children in
Jonestown are overlooking an important issue. It
seems likely that they are doing so because close
analysis of groups’ deviant socialization
processes will fuel anticultist criticism of
numerous groups. As a sociologist realized back
in 1983,
The children of Jonestown were very
thoroughly socialized. For them, the
[Peoples] Temple was not an alternative
reality, a subuniverse, but the ground of
their primary socialization…. The
primary socialization that the children of
the Temple was receiving, however, was
taking place within a milieu designed
more for the secondary socialization of
their parents—a milieu oriented toward
those who might be tempted to deny its
reality. (Weightman, 1983: 152–153)
Surely these questions about socialization are
vital (see R. Moore, 1988: 130–131), especially
concerning how adults came to individual and
collective positions that allowed them to abuse
and ultimately murder children.
Far too much of the existing scholarship on
Jonestown has avoided detailed examinations of
the child abuse in Peoples Temple facilities,
probably for fear that such an examination
would feed the fires of the anticult movement
with atrocity tales (Maaga, 1998: 39 see Hall,
1987: 107 R. Moore, 2009: 5, 116–118 Shupe
and Bromley, 1982: 128–129 Swantko, 2004:
Moore) likely captured the attitudes that many of
the able-bodied killers felt about murdering the
children. Annie Moore indicated,
‘I don’t relish the idea of participating in
killing the children and I don’t think
anyone else does but I will do it because
I think I could be as compassionate as
the next person about it and I don’t hate
children.’ (letter reproduced in Maaga,
1998: 123)
Efforts to restore the humanity of the individuals
who were at Jonestown, therefore, cannot gloss
over the fact that roughly half of those people
had their humanity—their very lives—taken
from them by other members acting under
Jones’s directives.
Somewhat similar qualifications about the fate
of the children appeared in David Chidester’s
1988 study (revised 2003), Salvation and
Suicide, which attempted to give a religious-
studies perspective to the tragic events. “For
those who willingly embraced death through
revolutionary suicide, Jones described the
conditions under which this could be regarded as
a meaningful act within the categories of
symbolic orientation and classification that
operated in their shared worldview” (Chidester,
2003: 155 see Smith, 1982: 119–120). But in
the previous paragraph he had to acknowledge:
Finally, it would be difficult to suppose
that the 260 children24 of Jonestown all
committed suicide. Babies were
sacrificed first, perhaps to signify to the
adults that this was not a rehearsal, not
another loyalty test, but an act from
which there could be no turning back
once it had begun. (Chidester, 2003:
154–155)
However much scholars within religious studies
want to find meaning for the suicides within the
group’s own theological system, for the children
the final event was infanticide. As even Hall
admitted, “the organizational effectiveness of
People’s [sic] Temple for more than fifteen
years and the actual carrying out of the mass
24 See above, where I give Kenneth Wooden’s (1981: 1) number
for dead children as 276.
murder/suicide show that Jones and his staff
knew what they were doing” (Hall 1982: 36
Hall, 1990: 270).
Conclusion
The so-called ‘cult wars’ continue to rage, as a
few scholars persist in publishing ideologically
tainted studies designed to minimize or ignore
real instances of harm. In such studies, of
course, these scholars have to neutralize or
deemphasize the child abuse that the adults far
too frequently perpetrate upon children.
Sociologically, therefore, important social
processes involving the socialization of adults
into abusers (not to mention, murderers) are
crucial to identify and studies that ignore,
sidestep, or downplay the range of child abuses
that adults perpetrated against children in
Jonestown are overlooking an important issue. It
seems likely that they are doing so because close
analysis of groups’ deviant socialization
processes will fuel anticultist criticism of
numerous groups. As a sociologist realized back
in 1983,
The children of Jonestown were very
thoroughly socialized. For them, the
[Peoples] Temple was not an alternative
reality, a subuniverse, but the ground of
their primary socialization…. The
primary socialization that the children of
the Temple was receiving, however, was
taking place within a milieu designed
more for the secondary socialization of
their parents—a milieu oriented toward
those who might be tempted to deny its
reality. (Weightman, 1983: 152–153)
Surely these questions about socialization are
vital (see R. Moore, 1988: 130–131), especially
concerning how adults came to individual and
collective positions that allowed them to abuse
and ultimately murder children.
Far too much of the existing scholarship on
Jonestown has avoided detailed examinations of
the child abuse in Peoples Temple facilities,
probably for fear that such an examination
would feed the fires of the anticult movement
with atrocity tales (Maaga, 1998: 39 see Hall,
1987: 107 R. Moore, 2009: 5, 116–118 Shupe
and Bromley, 1982: 128–129 Swantko, 2004:
