Response Essay

NEW RELIGIOUS MOVMENTS

WHAT COUNTS AS “CHRISTIAN?”

• Religious Studies vs. Theology

• Taking an “outside” perspective

• Refraining from proclamations of

normativity

• Putting aside bias

• Refusing to take a side in intra-

Christian debates

CHRISTIANITY (NOT NECESSARILY) AT THE MARGINS

• Gnostics

• Ebionites

• Marcionites

• Arians

• Nestorians

• Monophysites

• Iconoclasts

WHAT IS A NEW

RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT

(NRM)?

NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

• Why say New Religious Movement

instead of “cult?”

• What often starts out as “cult” becomes

mainstream.

• Jehovah’s Witnesses

• Mormons

NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

• Millenialism

• 20 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven,

holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit and a

great chain. 2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient

serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a

thousand years, 3 and threw him into the pit, and shut it

and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations

no more, till the thousand years were ended. After that he

must be loosed for a little while.

4 Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to

whom judgment was committed. Also I saw the souls of

those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus

and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the

beast or its image and had not received its mark on their

foreheads or their hands. They came to life, and reigned

with Christ a thousand years. 5 The rest of the dead did not

come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is

the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is he who shares in

the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no

power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and

they shall reign with him a thousand years. (Revelation

20:1-6)

JONESTOWN

• Jim Jones•

• Born May 1931 in Indiana

• KKK

• Worked at interracial churches in 1950s

• 1956–founded Peoples Temple

• Civil rights work

• Healings

JONESTOWN

• Critique of United States

• Racism

• Capitalism

• Exploitation

• Socialism and communism

• “I represent divine principle, total equality, a society where

people own all things in common, where there’s no rich or

poor, where there are no races. Wherever there are people

struggling for justice and righteousness, there I am.” – Jim

Jones

JONESTOWN

• California – 1965

• Jones reads article about nuclear destruction

• Prophesies nuclear apocalypse on July 15, 1967

• Brazil, Guyana, and Ukiah, California

• Starts new congregation in northern California

• New churches in Los Angeles and San Francisco

• •More civil rights work, fame

• Invited to Carter’s inauguration

• Accusations and exposés

• Guyana–1977–Jones and about 900 members movethere

JONESTOWN

• Jonestown

• Town in Guyana

• Agricultural

• Almost all American citizens, mostly black

• Communist utopia

• Income went to Temple

• Long work hours, church services

• Jones’s deterioration

• Disease, druguse

JONESTOWN

• White Night

• Leo Ryan, Congressman from California visits

• Note from two members: “Dear Congressman...Please help

us get out of Jonestown”

• Fourteen defectors; no one else wanted to leave

• Ryan and his party killed on the airstrip

• White Night meeting

• “death tape”

• Revolutionary suicide

• Cyanide

• 914 died

JONESTOWN

• Media Coverage

• Sensationalized rather than explained?

• Brainwashing

• Evil, possession

• Jones’s insanity

• “Perversion,” sexualcontrol and

manipulation

• Drug use

JONESTOWN

• “As students of religion, we have become stubbornly

committed to making the attempt (even if we fail) at

achieving intelligibility. We must accept the burden of

the long, hard road to understanding” (J. Z. Smith,

“The Devil in Mr. Jones,” 104).

• “A basic strategy [for understanding], one that is a

prerequisite for intelligibility, is to remove from

Jonestown the aspect of the unique, of its being

utterly exotic” (111).

BRANCH DAVIDIANS

• Many religious scholars want to refocus study

away from belief and towards practice.

• How can we know what people “really”

believe?

• Religious practices said to be based on

beliefs but often “really” about other things,

e.g. power structures, social ties, social

coherence.

• How does Malcolm Gladwell push back on

this trend?