Word: cults
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Morantz, who had won, for a client, a $300,000 lawsuit against the 900-member group. Synanon, founded by Dederich 20 years ago as a rehabilitation organization for alcoholics and drug addicts, had done worthy work, but in recent years had become a capriciously governed and toughly disciplined cult. Soon after the snake attack, police arrested two suspects: Synanon Members Joseph Musico, 28, and Lance Kenton, 20, the son of Bandleader Stan Kenton. Synanon has steadfastly maintained that it "had no involvement in the attack...
...Glenn Igleheart, the "interfaith witness" director of the nation's largest Protestant group, the Southern Baptist Convention, warns against "overreaction" by parents of cult members or by the government. He urges fellow Christians to support "free religious expression" at the same time that they carefully scrutinize new faiths and "speak out against deviant beliefs and abuses against persons." Every new group should be examined carefully, he advises, and measured by such beliefs and practices as "the unquestioned lordship of Jesus Christ, the unimpeded right of each believer to communicate with God and use of the Bible as the norm...
...hour, and the books of all time." He would have been surprised to find his declaration taken literally. Only eleven days after the ghastly events in Guyana had been disclosed to the world, two paperbacks with $2.50 price tags hit the stands: Bantam's The Suicide Cult and Berkley's Guyana Massacre. Produced by teams of journalists, the "instant" books, as they are known in the trade, feature photographs, background chapters on the Peoples Temple and firsthand accounts by reporters who had accompanied Representative Leo Ryan on his fatal journey...
...Bantam, the production of a paperback original in just over a week was nothing new; The Suicide Cult was its 64th extra (among others: The Pentagon Papers, 90 Minutes at Entebbe, The Pope's Journey to the United States). No sooner had a Bantam senior editor learned of the murderous assault on Ryan and his party, via a 2 a.m. phone call from Bantam's publicity representative in San Francisco, than the wheels were set in motion. By Monday, Bantam's Editor in Chief Marc Jaffe was on the phone with San Francisco Chronicle Managing Editor William...
Considering the journalistic haste with which they were assembled, Guyana Massacre and The Suicide Cult are solid documentaries. "It isn't War and Peace," admits Harwood, co-author of the Berkley book. Krause and his co-authors offer more sophisticated speculation about the psychological motives for Jonestown. One of the chapters is entitled "Scoop," a reference to Evelyn Waugh's satiric novel about journalists who cover an elusive crisis in a backward country. "A friend told me I would never write a book without a gun to my head," said Krause. Perhaps more editors and publishers should...