I’ve seen it before. I watched it all unfold on television in 1978, when the Rev. Jim Jones relieved himself and 900 of his faithful followers, along with my congressman, Leo Ryan, of this earthly life, drinking cyanide laced Kool-Aid in the jungles of Guiana. (Ryan was shot to death while trying to board a plane home to the states.)

I had watched Jones’s growth as a local San Francisco minister to the mostly black poor of  the Fillmore District. In a few short years, Jones became local celebrity ministering from his “temple” located across Geary Blvd. from one of the then-great rock venues of the country, the Fillmore Auditorium. He was instrumental in getting George Moscone and Harvey Milk elected mayor and supervisor, respectively. (Both later to fall at the hand of a madman, Dan White).

Jones, who had drifted into San Francisco from Indiana and over a period of 15 years or so, grew to be one of the most influential personalities in a city known for them. To most people, he was a minster to the poor, giving them hope, food, family, and a sense of community. If anyone had  something bad to say about the People's Temple  – or Jones’s at times off-beat sermons from his pulpit – which got coverage in the newspapers, prominent politicians instantly came to his defense. He was, for a long time, bullet proof, thanks to his unrelenting public relations campaign and his spreading church money liberally among the politicos in town.

But by the mid-70’s there was an air of unease, almost imperceptible, among a growing segment of the community. Rumors of forced isolation from family and friends, physical beatings, the signing over of personal assets to the church, sexual misconduct, and demands for unquestioned obedience to the pastor began to surface. Jones himself was paranoid of the IRS and its investigating the church’s tax-exempt status as a result of his political activities. He declared himself the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Gandhi and Lenin. He later publicly rejected Christianity, the bible, and declared himself an atheist.

When the local pols and the police begin to get wind of some of his stranger doings, Jones took 900 of his people with him to what he promised would be a socialist paradise in the South American jungle, a plot of land he had bought for a so-called Agricultural Project. Jonestown turned out to be a living nightmare for the people who served Jones. As it turned out, Jones had a drug habit of enormous proportions and his mind had gone over the edge. It was then that Ryan, responding to persistent pleas for the federal government to investigate, flew to Jonestown and where he ultimately met his own end.

After the Jonestown tragedy, dozens of  books were written on how cults gets started and how in many cases they come to a violent end. Since Jonestown, we’ve seen a few more such cults, like the Branch Davidians in Waco, come and go with  tragic ends.

Cults: Hollywood Style

Everyone’s heard of Scientology, the self-styled religion which promises to heal everything from an Oedipus Complex to neuralgia. If your intelligence quota is lacking a few dozen much wanted points, it will raise you to unimagined of heights of cerebral brilliance.

In fact, my first brush with Scientology was when I once chased after a gorgeous young lady for a while, who drew me into Scientology – in exchange for what I hoped would be her favors. (my IQ not being of particular concern, high or low)  Rather than favors, I was asked for a check to get started on the path to “clear,” a state in which all my cares and concerns would be happily dealt with - if not my libido. Being a congenital tightwad, I bailed out. I liked favors as much as anyone but I made the calculation that they could be easily had elsewhere for far less money, time and energy. Moreover, one religion was enough. Since then, I have been following, from a proper distance, this strange aggregation passing for the only path to American-style enlightenment, for I am inevitably drawn to the curious and off-beat. 

In a stunning piece in The New Yorker (Feb. 14th & 21st) by Lawrence Wright titled “The Apostate” we learn of the defection of one of Scientology’s highest level members, well-known writer / director Paul Haggis (“Million Dollar Baby,” “Crash”) who revealed leaving – and why he left -  his 35-year membership in Scientology. There have not been many disparaging articles about Scientology, mostly because it is the most litigious of “religions” and will go to great lengths to squash any negative publicity. A quote from the article:

• During our conversations, we spoke about some events that had stained the reputation of the church while he [Haggis]was a member. For example, there was the death of Lisa McPherson, a Scientologist who died after a mental breakdown, in 1995. She had rear-ended a car in Clearwater, Florida—where Scientology has its spiritual headquarters—and then stripped off her clothes and wandered naked down the street. She was taken to a hospital, but, in the company of several other Scientologists, she checked out, against doctors’ advice. (The church considers psychiatry an evil profession.) McPherson spent the next seventeen days being subjected to church remedies, such as doses of vitamins and attempts to feed her with a turkey baster. She became comatose, and she died of a pulmonary embolism before church members finally brought her to the hospital. The medical examiner in the case, Joan Wood, initially ruled that the cause of death was undetermined, but she told a reporter, “This is the most severe case of dehydration I’ve ever seen.” The State of Florida filed charges against the church. In February, 2000, under withering questioning from experts hired by the church, Wood declared that the death was “accidental.” The charges were dropped and Wood resigned.

The signs, as I read the Haggis article, were astonishingly similar to those as they progressed with the Peoples Temple 35 years ago: the near-worship of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard; the unquestioned obedience demanded of  followers to his successor, a man named David Miscavige; the forced disconnection with family and friends who disapproved of members’ joining the cult (for that’s what it is, no less). Haggis details beatings administered by Miscavige on members and the holding of  many as 200 people  in forced isolation “re-education “ camps scattered across California. And as scary as the Jonestown story itself, Scientology maintains its “Sea Organization,” a kind of religious order of 6,000 adherents within the larger organization, which do the grunt work for the larger cult itself for little or no pay, from cleaning the so-called Celebrity Centers to painting the numerous sea-going vessels Scientology owns and operates and  attending to the needs of its hierarcy. It appears that some of the darker secrets of this cult are beginning to bubble to the surface.

There is a key difference, though. Scientology and Hubbard consciously pursued high profile, Hollywood personalities to lend itself authenticity: Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, John Travolta, Ann Archer, among many film stars, as well as people like Sky Dayton, the founder of Earthlink, are current members. (Confession: Though there are always exceptions, as a class, I’ve never considered actors among the intellectual elite, and it’s also possible that the inbred insecurity of the profession itself would make such a person ripe for the picking. ) In fact, it can be said that Hollywood is to Scientology what Salt Lake City is to Mormons. The celebrities present the public face of Scientology. 

This has lead to a cult which is swimming in money both in donations from its prominent members as well as from the cost to a member  to rise through the ranks to achieve a state known as “Operating Thetan VII,” or OT-7, in Scientology parlance.  (Haggis admits to having spent upwards of $700 thousand to achieve that level.) The money has allowed this cult to spread all over the country and even to Europe with it promises of Nirvana to those who susceptible to snake oil promises. It also allows Scientology to muster legions of well paid attorneys to groom its image, as well as to threaten anyone who gets pushy with this group. (Wright stated in an interview Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air” that The New Yorker spent more time fact-checking his article than it ever has, in anticipation of legal pushback from the Church of Scientology) 

But these recent and quite public recantations by people such as Haggis and Josh Brolin, the actor, have begun to shine a light on the inner workings of Scientology and it may be that the cult is beginning to hunker down for a siege. And when this happens, it is good to remember the lessons of Jonestown: Cults under scrutiny do not do well in acting responsibly. That much we have learned from experience.

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