This project is a response to J.Z. Smith's call to take seriously such challenging religious phenomena. While it is tempting to focus on the deaths at Jonestown, I propose that we focus on the dreams that led people there. What was it about Peoples Temple that held such deep and compelling religious meaning for Jones' disciples?
As for Jones, we cannot simply dismiss him as a madman. Instead, we must seek out what Smith calls "the ordinary humanness" of Jones and the other members of Peoples Temple (Smith 111). As Smith points out, the act of comparison is always and everywhere a process of reduction, a process of relating the unknown to things that we understand.
Indeed, I would go a step further than Smith and argue that we must actually find a way to relate personally to the members of Peoples Temple. The fundamental impulses of their lives could not have been entirely different from those of our own. To pretend that these Americans were wholly alien, to "other" them, does more to insulate ourselves from the fullness of humanity than it does to elucidate their beliefs and actions.
While its emotionally difficult to spend a lot of time studying this kind of tragedy, I am proposing something even more radical: to analyze my research in large part via critical reflection on the similarities between myself and the members of Jonestown and -- of even greater importance -- to reflect critically on the ways I contribute to the society that produced this level of social and racial despair. This process of seeking out the everyday humanity of Peoples Temple is the best hope we have of understanding what happened at Jonestown.
