New Religious Movements Term Paper

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New Religious Movements

Of the myriad new religious movements which have arisen over the course of the twentieth century, only a few have resorted to violence and mass suicide as a course of action. Perhaps the most famous of these, the so-called Jonestown Massacre, resulted in the deaths of over nine hundred people, and serves as the basis for John Hall's examination of the particular preconditions and precipitating factors which lead one cult or new religion to violence instead of another. Hall's theory is applicable beyond the case of Jonestown, and in fact may be used to better understand the motivating factor behind the mass murder/suicides committed by the Order of the Solar Temple in the 1990s. In particular, by considering Hall's theory in conjunction with the analysis of the Solar Temple deaths given by Jean-Francois Mayer, it will become clear that each of the six preconditions and three precipitating factors defined by Hall as necessary for the outbreak of large-scale violence.

Before examining the case of the Order of the Solar Temple, it will be useful to briefly address Hall's consideration of the Jonestown deaths in his essay "The Apocalypse at Jonestown," in order to explicate the necessary preconditions and precipitating factors which may lead to this kind of violence. The six necessary preconditions are "a charismatic religious social movement; an apocalyptical ideology; a form of social organization adequate to maintain solidarity; legitimacy enough among followers to exercise collective social control over the affairs of the community; sufficient economic and political viability; [and] life within strong social boundaries in cognitive isolation from society at large" (Hall 203). In addition to the internal preconditions necessary as part of the group, there are three external precipitating factors which help to catalyze a preconditioned group into actually committing violence, because as Hall notes, even if "the preconditions are particularly conducive to violence, they are hardly sufficient" (Hall 203). These three precipitating factors which may be observed to have instigated the kind of violence seen in Jonestown and with the Order of the Solar Temple are the "mobilization of a group of cultural opponents who possess a high degree of solidarity; the shaping of news media coverage through the cultural opponents' frame of interpretation about "cults"; [and] the exercise of state authority" (Hall 203). Before attempting to locate these preconditions and precipitating factors in the case of the Order of the Solar Temple, a look at how Hall demonstrates their presence in the events surrounding the Jonestown deaths will make the subsequent analysis of the Order of the Solar Temple a little clearer.

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Hall notes that "this general causal explanation" is clearly exemplified by the murders and suicides at Jonestown, because each of the preconditions were met by Jim Jones and the People's Temple, and Congressman Ryan's fact-finding mission provided the perfect combination of all three precipitating factors; the combination of the Concerned Relatives (factor one), the news media (factor two), and the appearance of Ryan himself (factor three) served to catalyze Jim Jones and his preconditioned group, so that "rather than submit to external powers that they regarded as illegitimate, they chose to stage the airstrip murders as revenge and shut out their opponents by ending their own lives" (Hall 203). In much the same way, one may view the history of the Order of the Solar Temple as a process of establishing the necessary preconditions within the group before the mounting external pressure in the form of any state action and the defection of key members led the core group to enact the apocalyptic narrative they had previously envisioned.

In her essay "Our terrestrial journey is coming to an end": the last voyage of the Solar Temple," Jean-Francoise Mayer analyzes the murders and suicides of the Order of the Solar Temple, which began in 1994 but continued through 1997. Almost immediately her analysis demonstrates that the first two of Hall's preconditions were met by the group, when she notes the details of the group's beliefs, including the fact that "the core members of the group understood themselves as an elect people who had incarnated periodically on Earth since ancient times….....

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