Scholarly Resources

In addition to the books and articles listed here, many of the scholars noted have items that appear on the Jonestown website. Books and articles that take a psychological approach are listed separately here.

  • Ahlberg, Sture. Messianic Movements: A Comparative Analysis of the Sabbatians, the People’s Temple and the Unification Church. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1986.
  • Anthony, Dick and Thomas Robbins. “Religious Totalism, Exemplary Dualism, and the Waco Tragedy.” In Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements. Edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer. New York: Routledge, 1994.
  • Barker, Eileen. “Religious Movements: Cult and Anticult Since Jonestown.” Annual Review of Sociology 12 (1986): 329-346.
  • Bromley, David G. and Anson D. Shupe, Jr.. Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston: Beacon Press, 1981.
  • Chesebro, James and David McMahan. “Media Construction of Mass Murder-Suicides as Drama: The New York Times Symbolic Construction of Mass Murder-Suicides.” Communication Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2006): 407-25.
  • Chidester, David. “Rituals of Exclusion and the Jonestown Dead.”  Journal of the American Academy of Religion 56, no. 4 (Winter 1988): 681-702.
  • Crist, R. E. “Jungle Geopolitics in Guyana: How a Communist Utopia That Ended in Massacre Came to be Sited.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 40 (1981): 107-14.
  • Dube, Bekithemba, Milton Molebatsi Nkoane and Dipane Hlalele, “The Ambivalence of Freedom of Religion, and Unearthing the Unlearnt lessons of Religious Freedom from the Jonestown Incident: A Decolonoiality Approach,” Journal for the Study of Religion, ASRSA, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2017), 330-349.
  • Green, Ernest, “Jonestown,” a review of five books, Utopian Studies, Penn State University Press, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1993), 162-165.
  • Greenberg, Joel, “Jim Jones: The Deadly Hypnotist,” Science News, Society for Science & the Public, Vol. 116, No. 22, (Dec. 1, 1979), 378-379+382.
  • Hall, John R. “The Apocalypse at Jonestown.” In In Gods We Trust: New Patterns of Religious Pluralism in America. Edited by Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Books, 1981, pp. 171-190. Reprinted from Transaction/Society 16, no. 6 (September/October 1979): 52-61.
    • “Collective Welfare as Resource Mobilization in Peoples Temple: A Case Study of a Poor People’s Religious Social Movement.” Sociological Analysis 49, Supplement (December 1988): 645-775.
    • Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Books, 1987; Reprinted 2004.
    • “The Impact of Apostates on the Trajectories of Religious Movements: The Case of Peoples Temple.” In Falling From the Faith: The Causes, Course, and Consequences of Religious Apostasy. Ed. David G. Bromley. Beverley Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1988, pp. 229-50.
    • “Jonestown in the 21st Century.” Transaction/Society 41, no. 2 (January/February 2004): 9-11.
    • “Peoples Temple.” In America’s Alternative Religions. Edited by Timothy Miller. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York, 1995, pp. 303-311.
    • “Public Narratives and the Apocalyptic Sect: From Jonestown to Mt. Carmel.” In Armageddon in Waco: Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict. Edited by Stuart A. Wright. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 205-235.
  • Hall, John R. and Philip Schuyler. “Apostasy, Apocalypse, and Religious Violence: An Exploratory Comparison of Peoples Temple, the Branch Davidians, and the Solar Temple.” In The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements. Edited by David G. Bromley. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998, pp. 141-69.
  • Hall, John R. with Philip D. Schuyler and Sylvaine Trinh. Apocalpyse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan. New York: Routledge, 2000.
  • Harding, Vincent. “My Lord, What a Mourning: Jonestown is America.” In The Other American Revolution, by Vincent Harding. Atlanta: Institute of the Black World, 1980.
  • Hauerwas, Stanley. “On Taking Religion Seriously: The Challenge of Jonestown.” In Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society, 91–103. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.
  • Henrickson, Embert J., “In Pursuit of the Co-operative Republic: Guyana in the 1970s,” The World Today, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Vol. 35, No. 5 (May 1979), 214-222.
  • Johnson, Doyle Paul. “Dilemmas of Charismatic Leadership: The Case of The Peoples Temple.” Sociological Analysis 40 (1979): 315-23.
  • Kent, Stephen A. “House of Judah, the Northeast Kingdom Community, and the Jonestown Problem: Downplaying Child Physical Abuses and Ignoring Serious Evidence.” International Journal of Cultic Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (2010): pp. 27-48.
  • Klippenstein, Kristian D. “Jones on Jesus: Who Is the Messiah?” International Journal of Cultic Studies 6 (2015): 34-47.
    • “Language Appropriation and Identity Construction in New Religious Movements: Peoples Temple as Test Case.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 85, no. 2 (June 2017): 348-380.
    • “Spiritual Siblings: The Function of New Religions in Peoples Temple Doctrines.” Nova Religio 22, no. 2 (2018): 40-64.
    • “Watching Movies in Jonestown: A Cultural Interlocutor Approach to Visual Media and New Religions.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 34, no.1: 53–72.
  • Kutulas, Judy, “Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid: The Jonestown Tragedy, the Press, and New American Sensibility,” After Aquarius Dawned: How the Revolutions of the Sixties Became the Popular Culture of the Seventies, The University of North Carolina Press (2017), 167-198.
  • Levi, Kenneth, ed. Violence and Religious Commitment: Implications of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple Movement. University Park, Penn.: Penn State Press, 1982.
  • Lewis, Gordon K. “Gather with the Saints at the River:” The Jonestown Guyana Holocaust 1978. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico, 1979.
  • Lincoln, C. Eric and Lawrence H. Mamiya. “Daddy Jones and Father Divine: The Cult as Political Religion.” Religious Life 49 (1980): 6-23. Reprinted in Rebecca Moore, Anthony B. Pinn, and Mary R. Sawyer, eds. Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America. Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 2004, pp. 28-46.
  • Lindt, Gillian.  “Journeys to Jonestown: Accounts and Interpretations of the Rise and Demise of People’s Temple.”  Union Seminary Quarterly Review 37, nos. 1 & 2 (Fall-Winter 1981-1982): 159-174.
  • Maaga, Mary McCormick. Hearing the Voices of Jonestown. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998.
    • “‘No One Commits Suicide’: The Need for a Sociology of Knowledge for the Women of Peoples Temple.” Paper given at the Annual Meeting, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 6-8 November, 1992, Washington, D.C.
  • McCabe, Michael, “Moral Evil and the Jonestown Tragedy,” The Furrow, Vol. 30, No. 4 (April 1979), 219-225.
  • McCloud, Sean. “From Exotics to Brainwashers: Portraying New Religions in Mass Media.” Religion Compass 1, no. 1 (2007): 214-28.
  • Melton, J. Gordon. Peoples Temple and Jim Jones: Broadening Our Perspective. New York: Garland, 1990.
    • A Sympathetic History of Jonestown: The Moore Family Involvement in the Peoples Temple. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985. (Sample chapters appear on this site.)
    • “Is the Canon on Jonestown Closed?” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 4, no. 1 (October 2000): 7-27. Also available on this site.
    • “‘American as Cherry Pie:’ Peoples Temple and Violence in America.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases. Edited by Catherine Wessinger. Syracuse N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000, pp. 121-137. Available on this site.
    • “Peoples Temple.” Article in Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements. Ed. Richard Landes. New York and London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 305-8.
    • “Reconstructing Reality: Conspiracy Theories About Jonestown.” Journal of Popular Culture 36, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 200-20. Reprinted in Controversial New Religions. Ed. James Lewis, 61-78. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2005. Available on this site.
    • “Peoples Temple.” Article in The 21st Century Encyclopedia of the World Religions. Ed. J. Gordon Melton and Martin Baumann. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2002.
    • “Drinking the Kool-Aid: The Cultural Transformation of a Tragedy.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 7, no. 2 (November 2003): 92-100. Also available on this site. 
    • “A Demographic Study of Black Involvement in Peoples Temple: What the Numbers Say.” In Moore, Pinn, and Sawyer, 57-80. [A 2017 revision of this article, titled “An Update on the Demographics of Jonestown,” is available on this site.]
    • “Jim Jones.” Article in The Encyclopedia of African American Folklore. Ed. Anand Prahlad. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing, 2005.
    • “Jim Jones.” Article in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2d edition. Ed. Lindsay Jones. New York: Macmillan Reference, 2005.
    • “Peoples Temple: A Typical Cult?” In Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America, Vol. 2. Ed. Eugene V. Gallagher and W. Michael Ashcraft. Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 2006, pp. 113-34.
    • “Peoples Temple Revisited: A Review Essay.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 10, no. 1 (August 2006): 111-18.
    • “Jonestown in Literature: Caribbean Reflections on a Tragedy.” Literature and Theology 23, no. 1 (March 2009): 1-15.
    • Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2009; paperback revision 2018. Reviews in the jonestown report by Rikke Wettendorff and Matthew Thomas Farrell.
    • “Peoples Temple.” Article in Religions of the World Religions, 2d ed., A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, ed. J. Gordon Melton. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2010.
    • “Narratives of Persecution, Suffering, and Martyrdom: Violence in Peoples Temple and Jonestown.” In Violence and New Religious Movements. Ed. James R. Lewis, pp. 95-111. New York: Oxford  University Press, 2011.
    • “The Stigmatized Deaths in Jonestown: Finding a Locus for Grief.” Death Studies, 35, no. 1 (2011): 42-58. Available on this site
    • “Jonestown and the Study of NRMs: How Survivors and Artists are Reshaping the Narrative of Jonestown.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements. Ed. George D. Chryssides and Benjamin E. Zeller, 73–88. London: Continuum, 2013.
    • “Rhetoric, Revolution and Resistance in Jonestown, Guyana,” Journal of Religion and Violence, Vol. 1, No. 3 (2013), 303-321. Also in Sacred Suicide. Ed. James R. Lewis and Carole M. Cusack, 73–90. London: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.
    • “The Controversies about Peoples Temple and Jonestown.” In Controversial New Religions, 2d ed., rev. and exp. Ed. James Lewis and Jesper A. Petersen, 53–66. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2014.
    • “Mythopoesis, Digital Democracy, and the Legacy of the Jonestown Website.” In Digital Death: Mortality and Beyond in the Online Age. Ed. Christopher M. Moreman and A. David Lewis, 143–58. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2014.
    • “From Jonestown to 9/11 and Beyond: Mapping the Contours of Violence and New Religious Movements.” In The Oxford Handbook on New Religions. Ed. James R. Lewis and Inga B. Tøllefsen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
    • “Godwin’s Law and Jones’s Corollary: The Problem of Using Extremes to Make Predictions.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 22, no. 3 (November 2018).
    • “Jonestown, Forty Years On.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 22, no. 3 (November 2018).
    • The Erasure (and Re-inscription) of African Americans from the Jonestown Narrative, Communal Societies, Communal Studies Association (Vol. 38, Issue 2, December 2018) (PDF here).
    • “From Resistance to Terror: The Open Secret of Jonestown.” In The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Secrecy, ed. Hugh B. Urban and Paul Christopher Johnson, Routledge (2018).
    • “A Monumental Problem: Memorializing the Jonestown Dead.” In Beyond the Veil: Reflexive Studies of Death and Dying, ed. Aubrey Thamann and Kalliopi M. Christodoulaki, pp. 187–208, Berghahn Press, 2021.
    • “Apocalyptic Groups and Charisma of the Cadre.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Charisma, ed. José Pedro Züqete, pp. 277–287. New York: Routledge, 2021.
  • Moore, Rebecca and Fielding M. McGehee, III, eds. The Need for a Second Look at Jonestown. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989.
    (Editor’s Note: This book includes an article by Gary Scarff, who had presented himself falsely as a former member of Peoples Temple. An article about the subterfuge – and Mr. Scarff’s apology for misleading the editors – appears here.)
  • Moore, Rebecca, Anthony B. Pinn, and Mary R. Sawyer, eds. Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2004.
  • Poster, Alexander. “Jonestown: An International Story of Diplomacy, Détente, and Neglect, 1973–1978.” Diplomatic History 43, No. 2 (April 2019), 305–331.
  • Pozzi, Enrico. Il Carisma malato. Il People’s Temple e il suicidio collettive di Jonestown. Naples: Liguori, 1992.
  • Richardson, James. “Peoples Temple and Jonestown: A Corrective Comparison and Critique.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 19, no. 3 (1980): 239-255.
  • Robbins, Thomas. “Reconsidering Jonestown.” Religious Studies Review 15, no. 1 (January 1989): 32-37. (This article was expanded into “The Second Wave of Jonestown Literature,” noted below.)
  • Robbins, Thomas and Dick Anthony. “Sects and Violence: Factors Enhancing the Volatility of Marginal Religious Movements.” In Armageddon at Waco: Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict. Edited by Stuart A. Wright. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 236-59.
  • Sidky, Homayun. “Chapter 16: Religion and Violence.” In Religion: An Anthropological Perspective. New York: Peter Lang, 2015, pp. 225-241.
  • Simon, Louis, “Writing, Reading and Altered Consciousness in Jonestown,” Journal of Caribbean Literatures, Vol. 2, No. 1/2/3 (Spring 2000), 207-214.
  • Smith, Archie Jr. “An Interpretation of the Peoples Temple and Jonestown: Implications for the Black Church.” PSR Bulletin Occasional Paper 58, no. 2 (February 1980). Reprinted in Moore, Pinn, and Sawyer, 47-56.
    • The Relational Self: Ethics and Therapy from a Black Church Perspective. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1982. (The last chapter discusses Peoples Temple.)
  • Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. (Chapter 7, pp. 102 – 120, “The Devil in Mr. Jones”.)
  • Smith, Karin A. “A Taxonomy of Jonestown.” M.A. Thesis. San Francisco and Oakland: California College of the Arts, 2007.
  • Stephenson, Denice. Dear People: Remembering Jonestown. San Francisco and Berkeley: California Historical Society and Heyday Books, 2005. A review in the April 14, 2005 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle appears here.
  • Taylor, Moe, “One Hand Can’t Clap: Guyana and North Korea, 1974–1985,” Journal of Cold War Studies 17, no. 1 (2015): 54 (for the links between Guyana, North Korea, and Jonestown).
  • Thompson, R.L., Manders, M.W., and Cowan, W.R., “Postmortem Findings of the Victims of the Jonestown Tragedy”, Journal of Forensic Sciences, JFSCA, Vol. 32, No. 2 (March 1987), 433-443.
  • Weightman, Judith. Making Sense of the Jonestown Suicides: A Sociological History of Peoples Temple. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983.
  • Wessinger, Catherine. How the Millennium Comes Violently. New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2000.
Originally posted on April 15th, 2013.
Last modified on September 1st, 2024.
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