Word: jonestown
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Modern liberal theologians have forgotten the problem of evil," says University of Chicago Philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Is that true, even in the aftermath of a horror like Jonestown? Remarks Yale Divinity School's Barbara Hargrove, "in other ages, what happened to Jim Jones would have been referred to very clearly as coming under the influence of evil forces-'the devil got in him.' But I haven't heard any people using that kind of language...
...even of the devil and demons-and did so in the wake of what happened in the jungles of Guyana. But these concepts have not exactly been popular among more liberal theologians. Brown University's John Giles Milhaven, for example, refuses to attach the label "evil" even to Jonestown. "I think what really happens with people like Hitler and Jones," says he, "is simple psychological sickness. The only response [to Guyana], it seems to me, is pity for everybody involved, not moral horror. Psychological illnesses that keep people from being good, sociological causes that compel people to turn...
...While Jonestown may raise questions about upbeat liberal theologies, it also raises a classic problem for orthodox belief, one as old as the Book of Job or as current as next week's list of senseless murders: Why does evil exist at all? If God is benevolent, and if he is all powerful, why does he not prevent evil? If evil exists, so the argument runs, then either God's love or his power must be limited...
...main-line religion been so ineffectual in confronting the bizarre cults that were proliferating in the U.S. long before tragedy struck at Jonestown? The Evangelical Protestants and the Fundamentalists have been waging ideological hand-to-hand combat with them, as have Jewish groups (which are fending off Christian evangelists at the same time). But Roman Catholicism and the more liberal Protestant denominations have settled for polite discourse, though they, too, mistrust the cults...
...them. Says the Rev. Stephen Duffy, chairman of the theology and religion department of New Orleans' Loyola University: "The Catholic Church has learned a certain tolerance, a wisdom in biding your time and hoping people will regain their senses." The same is true of many Protestant churches. Jonestown also intensifies these groups' embarrassment over the failure of traditional religions to spread their message...