Content warning suicide, murder, child death
God what a great way to start a post right? 😳
Anyway, this is highly random but I just wanted to say it bothers me people call Jonestown a mass suicide only because it was ALSO a mass murder event. Lots of the people who died didn’t want to drink the flavor-aid (that’s right, NOT kool aid) and lots of Jones’ goons injected cyanide into people who weren’t willing to drink it. Plus tons of the people killed were children.
It was truly so horrific of an event either way; suicide or murder…over 900 people. God. But calling it a mass suicide event and thinking of it only as a mass suicide event is simply wrong and a half truth that implies something much less overtly VIOLENT than it was.
I watch (too much) cult documentary crap and so often Jonestown is the extreme example they bring up and it’s soooooo frequently called a mass suicide event and I don’t know it just makes me bristle, on behalf so many people present who did NOT kill themselves being erased.
Source: my book club tortured ourselves with this like 700 page book on the topic years ago, and as you can see I have read it/listened to the audiobook (I had to do both, alternating to make it though) in my kindle app 😅
The book really drove home what the massacre was like and massacre is the right term. And I learned WAY more than I ever wanted on this topic…and am always horrified that Jim Jones, like me, is originally from Indiana/Indianapolis and went to the university I graduated from. Back then, he was a very respected community leader, renowned fairly mainstream pastor of a HUGE church, recognized by the mayor for being a champion for integration and legit having a very diverse congregation. He was known as left leaning and socialist, which was boarder line controversial for that community but he was not at all the kind of leader he grew into later. When you deep dive into what he was preaching back then, it’s actually quite understandable why he amassed a huge following. My elderly aunt remembers his church well by reputation in Indy before he relocated the whole thing to California (and eventually Guyana.)
Anyway Jonestown was a massacre. There was a mass suicide event within that but not all the people killed themselves. MANY were murdered. MANY of them children.
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“Cult” (n.) and “cultic” (adj.)
There is great confusion when describing certain groups and movements as "cultic." Since the most famous examples of cultic groups and movements in living memory include the Manson Family, People’s Temple, the Branch Davidians and Heaven’s Gate, the popular conception of a cult has become a centralized group with one leader with a type-A personality. This is not how most cultic groups take shape.
"Cultic" and "centralized" are not synonyms. They are entirely different concepts, and whether one group or movement is one has no bearing whatsoever on whether it is the other.
The United Pentecostal Church International and Pentecostal Assemblies of the World are both cults. They are part of the Oneness Pentecostal movement*. Note, the UPCI and PAW are not in fellowship with each other and have no official relations. This is because this movement is decentralized, encompassing various different groups that are united in few if any ways besides (some) similar teachings. Whatever leadership and governance model they have, shared or contrasting, is secondary, because Oneness Pentecostalism as a set of doctrines is itself cultic, meaning any group that espouses it is a cult by definition.
Christian Identity is a more pronounced example of a cultic movement that is decentralized. It is a white supremacist group that teaches that white people are the descendants of the ancient Israelites, and that "gentiles" (people who aren't white) can never be saved. Its footprint is almost entirely made of websites, prison gangs, and local congregations, which are not in fellowship with each other or with any larger group. I would hope any decent person would be opposed to this movement and its teachings, but an attempt to treat "cultic" and "centralized" as synonyms might keep one from recognizing CI as something that should be avoided.
Other decentralized movements that are cultic include the Word of Faith movement, the Men's Right Movement, dispensationalism, neurodiversity, the Sovereign Citizens movement, BDSM, the New IFB, kinism, and the Black Hebrew Israelites. Every group that is part of these is a cult, thought they may not be in fellowship with other groups within the same movement.
*The Oneness Pentecostal movement is not representative of Pentecostalism as a whole. Most of the world's Pentecostals belong to the Assemblies of God which has taught the Trinity for its entire existence. Pentecostalism is not necessarily cultic. Oneness Pentecostalism is.
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