...that happened prior to massacre are looked at, it begins to seem plausible. The Peoples Temple had beginnings that were fairly similar to that of the early Catholic Church. It had common factors that would even appeal to people now. However, it ultimately proved to take a turn for the worst and head in a much different direction than the Catholic Church. One extremely important factor that is important in establishing a church or major organization such as the People’s Temple and the Catholic Church is a strong leader. In the early Catholic Church these leaders were the apostles, especially Peter, and in the People’s Temple it was Jim Jones. They were both very persuasive and passionate about what they believed, which they showed through preaching. However, the positions of these leaders and how they thought of themselves is very different. The Apostles saw themselves as servants of God and Jesus, which can be seen in in Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians when he states “Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God……We who know Christ should view ourselves as His servants and our aim should be to be faithful...
Words: 988 - Pages: 4
...Don’t Drink the Kool Aid On November 18, 1978 what has been called the largest mass suicide in modern history occurred in Jonestown, Guyana where 909 members of The Peoples Temple died. Jim Jones was the leader of the Peoples Temple Church and religious movement. The church was looked highly upon by many back in the 1950-1970’s. All races and backgrounds were brought together as one in his congregation. Religion serves as a sanctuary from the harshness of everyday life and oppression by the powerful. Most of Jones’s followers lived lives that they were dissatisfied with and they felt as if the movement gave them a purpose. Many of his followers believed that Jim brought more opportunities into their lives and allowed them to change for the better. The story of Jim Jones and The Life and Death of Peoples Temple is very interesting and brings up many sociological questions and viewpoints. Jim Jones grew up in Indiana. He was brought up in a very dysfunctional family. His father was an alcoholic, didn’t work, and was strongly racist. His mother had to constantly work to make ends meet and support her family. Many childhood friends of Jim’s remember him as being a very strange boy. One of his childhood friends told a story of Jim killing a cat with a knife at the age of 5. Jim spoke strongly of religion and death as a child. These things today are taken much more seriously and would have been considered huge red flags that would lead to Jim’s tragic future. As Jim grew up it was...
Words: 1946 - Pages: 8
...persuasion, and argue about Jim Jones and what his had done in the past. Furthermore, the paper will describe and discuss in detail about Jonestown events and other concerned that related to this event which gave shock to American society, Guyana, and the rest of the world. Who is Jim Jones? First of all, I would like to introduce about him as well as his life. Jim Jones is a son of James Jones who had a poor health by poisonous gasses in the World War One; and he was a son of a woman named Lynetta in a factory in Indiana. Jim Jones learned from his Mom that he should love animal and care for the people who have underprivileged; and she expected that her son would come a ministered when he grow up. Even though Jim Jones was a noisy child and along with neighborhood children but he still followed his Mom, he loved and kinds to all kinds of animals and underprivileged people. His parents divorced in 1945 and moved to Richmond, Indiana. A few years later, he married to Maceline who was a nurse in a hospital in Indiana, where he worked when he was a high school student. In 1949, Jim’s family moved to another city in Indiana named...
Words: 2218 - Pages: 9
...want to create what they feel the perfect world is. Then this person strives to make others believe as they do so they will join. There are somewhere around 3,000 to 5,000 of these cults throughout the United States, but only 75 to 100 are documented (Study Resources). The most commonly known cults are Reverend Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, Heavens Gate, and Charles Manson and the Family; these cults were able to drag people in and make them willing to do horrible things to themselves and others. In the early 20th century, Allistar Crowly, AKA “The Black Pope”, started modern Satanism (Satan Worship). It is said that Anton Lavey brought Satanism to the United States; Anton believed that he was the reincarnation of the “Black Pope”. He set his church up in San Francisco in 1966. By the end of the first year, Anton’s cult grew to more than 200,000 members (Satan Worship). Anton then went to Hollywood to help make movies about Satanism. The movies, such as Rosemary’s Baby, glamorized the Satanic lifestyle and drew people in. Satanism was the jumping point for the modern cult movement. Reverend Jim Jones was the leader of The Peoples Temple. Jim thought of himself as the reincarnation of Jesus. His vision of world domination was nuclear war, and the only cities that would survive are Ukiah, California and Belo Horizonte, Brazil (Robinson). Because of this belief, he moved his cult to Ukiah and awaited the war. When world war three did not quickly hit, he moved his church...
Words: 1273 - Pages: 6
...turned into the Peoples Temple. Jones moved to Guyanese jungle where he made the Peoples Temple into what was supposed to be a real life paradise. Who would've thought that a gift from Heaven would later on turn out to be a gift from Hell in 1978. Jim Jones began his own religion at a young age and he often visited different churches in his area. As Jones’s knowledge grew on religions he began taking what he learned and going to houses preaching and he also preached to younger children. He was no normal teenage boy he wasn’t so much into sports, he believed to be sinful, he liked to drink and dance. After he had gathered a good amount of followers he had developed a church of his own. Jones was the leader of his church named, “the Peoples Temple” and he demanded loyalty and preached sacrifice. He believed the American Capitalism was the reason for unhealthy balance in the world. The rich had too much money and the poor worked to hard to try to get money. The Peoples Temple helped people find jobs and was suppose to be fair. Jones church was growing and was very successful, until investigations began and Jones decided it was time to move the Peoples Temple to a different location. Jim Jones soon moved to Redwood Valley in Northern California, listed as one of the least likely place to get hit in a nuclear attack. After moving to Cali with his 65 families that followed him, his religion started quickly expanding into San Francisco Bay area. The People’s Temple was still a place...
Words: 948 - Pages: 4
...the leader, the followers, and the situation.” (Chapter 1) A leader is someone who is able to influence others to attain goals. “Leadership comes in all shapes and sizes whether religious or political or social…an essential element that all leaders share whether for good or evil goals is vision.” (Mosley, 2009) Jim Jones had a vision of making the world a better place. Or at least that was what he wanted people to believe. In Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, an article by Jennifer Rosenberg, she says that Jim had one child and adopted several children of different ethnicities. He was proud of his “rainbow family” and tried to encourage others to adopt interracially. He was against segregation which was not a popular idea in his time. He started his own church in 1956, the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, Indiana. Most churches were segregated at that time, but Jim Jones offered a utopian view of what society could become. He was a charismatic man who demanded loyalty and preached of sacrifice. His church established soup kitchens and homes for elderly and also helped people find jobs. In 1966, he moved the church to California because it seemed more open to an integrationist church than Indiana had been. About 65 families followed him. Many did not know how complex and unbalanced he actually was. The church was transforming into a cult centered around Jim Jones. Jim envisioned a communist community where everyone lived in harmony and worked for the common good. Jones found...
Words: 906 - Pages: 4
...In 1978, members of a religious group called Peoples Temples, under the leadership of Reverend Jim Jones, committed suicide in mass. In the occasion, 912 died of intoxication by the venom they drank; Babies and children were killed first, by they own mothers and fathers. Then, the adults drank the substance and died as well. Jim jones killed himself, supposedly, by a single shot in the head. The people that died in Jonestown were no different than the average American, in fact, they were no different than any of us. However, they were capable of unimaginable acts based only on the words of a man, a reverend, a father, a church leader and authority figure in that community. What drive people to do things, even when they not necessarily agree...
Words: 2177 - Pages: 9
...Thesis Jim Jones formed The People’s Temples that had hundreds, even thousands of followers from a large range of religious and social backgrounds. It was a mystery on how he was able to manipulate and brainwash so many people to follow him and portray himself as their saviour, let along make them do a loyalty test by telling them to drink poison. Many people have different opinion regarding the massacre that occurred in Jonestown on November 18th 1978. This is one of the biggest mystery related to the Jonestown. Was the massacre a suicide performed by the group members to show their loyalty towards Jim Jones or was it cover up for murder? There was a lot of supporting evidence to show that this was an act of murder which was tried to cover...
Words: 1560 - Pages: 7
...some individuals are blessed with while others are cursed (Cain and Abel, Genesis, Ch. 4, Holy Bible, King James). This chapter in the Bible has been used to discipline, control race relations, social contacts, and individual life styles to name a few. The Holy Bible is used actively in the United States court room, before every testimony, A Judge or bailiff will ask Individuals if they “swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God? Jim Jones founded the “Peoples Temple Full Gospel Christian Church”, (Wessinger, 2000) as a means of providing hope in desperate times, elderly, poor, and disadvantaged citizens were converting. Jim Jones used social and ethnic issues to subdue his flock of mostly African Americans. The Christian aspect of the People’s Temple was soon transformed into what many refer to as a “cult”. The power associated with religious leaders is so strong that Rev. Jim Jones was able to manipulate hundreds of people to drink a poison. He convinced many of them that he was a profit and peace was only available through mass suicide. Even while a woman named Christine made her argument for her individual right to live, others in the congregation protested “they were ready to go”. He was able to instruct adults to take...
Words: 378 - Pages: 2
...Jonestown Section I: The Event One of the more disturbing incidents in American History is the Jonestown Massacre that occurred on November 18th, 1978 in Georgetown, Guyana. It was the largest loss of civilian life in a non-natural tragedy until the attacks of September 11th, 2001. 909 lives were lost under the hand of Jim Jones who had cultivated a following of people over twenty-plus years. Jim Jones started his first church, named The Peoples Temple, in the mid-1950’s in Indianapolis, Indiana (I). From the beginning, he preached a message of socialism and communism. Upon scrutiny of his tactics and teachings, he moved The Peoples Temple to Redwood Valley, California in 1965 and shortly after headquarters were set up in San Francisco. The Peoples Templecame into the public eye when eight defectors and negative media spoke out against the church. Jim Jones decided at this point to move his church to Georgetown, Guyana where the chilling events of November 18th would eventually unfold. To better understand how such a tragedy could occur it is important to understand the background of Jim Jones. Jones was born in Indianaand from an early age expressed interest in socialism and communism, studying the works and lives of Stalin, Marx, Gandhi, and Hitler among others. As he grew older, he became more and more politically involved in the communism movement, joining the Communist Party USA in 1951 (II). Jones was surprised with the reaction he received from Americans when he...
Words: 2058 - Pages: 9
...James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American cult leader and community organizer. Jones was the founder and the leader of the Peoples Temple, best known for the mass murder-suicide in November 1978 of 909 of its members in Jonestown, Guyana,[1] and the murder of five people at a nearby airstrip, including Congressman Leo Ryan. Over two hundred children were murdered at Jonestown, almost all of them by cyanide poisoning.[2] Jones died from a gunshot wound to the head; it is suspected his death was a suicide. Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple there in the 1950s. He later moved the Temple to California in the mid-1960s, and gained notoriety with the move of the Temple's headquarters to San Francisco in the early 1970s. Jones was born in a rural area of Randolph County, Indiana,[3] to James Thurman Jones (1887 – 1951), a World War I veteran, and Lynetta Putnam (1902 – 1977). Lynetta reportedly believed she had given birth to a messiah.[4][5] He was of Irish and Welsh descent.[6] Jones later claimed partial Cherokee ancestry through his mother, though according to his maternal second cousin Barbara Shaffer, this is likely untrue.[6][note 1] Economic difficulties during the Great Depression necessitated that Jones' family move to nearby Lynn, Indiana in 1934, where he grew up in a shack without plumbing.[2][7] Jones was a voracious reader as a child and studied Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler carefully...
Words: 492 - Pages: 2
...Drinking the Kool-Aid? On November 18, 1978, at a commune often called “Jonestown” in the jungle of Guyana, 900 people died in a mass murder/suicide; all were members of the Peoples Temple, an American religious cult. At the request of their leader, men and women administered lethal doses of cyanide-laced punch to over 300 infants and children before gulping down their own. How could so many people be convinced to kill their babies and themselves? His name was James Warren Jones. Like his idol, Hitler, he was a dominant propagandist, a charismatic leader, and an evil human being. Summaries In the piece “Propaganda under a Dictatorship” (1958/2016), Aldous Huxley, renowned English novelist, and Oxford graduate expands on ideas he first presented in his 1932 novel, Brave New World, which examines a futuristic culture in which no individual thought takes form. Huxley’s essay explores the practical use of propaganda by Adolph Hitler in controlling the minds of eighty million German people in the years leading to the Second World War. He examines, with chilling account, Hitler’s...
Words: 1554 - Pages: 7
...Jonestown, once known as a promising religion, now thought of as a cult. The story of the Jonestown massacre has made me feel very uncomfortable for years. Regarding my opinion and feelings toward the documentary, I am very mixed. Jonestown itself is a very dark subject but, at the same time, I feel like I have learned a lot from it. My belief is that in the beginning of Jonestown, Jim Jones had great intentions. His main goal was to create the “perfect” world, a world without poverty and racism. These are great ideas that everyone should strive for. However, Jim Jones’s insecurities took over his mind and caused him to be afraid and worried of the outside world. Overall, Jim Jones’s intentions were good until his own worries got to him and...
Words: 301 - Pages: 2
...The issue arises when we take other people and see them differently since you cannot pathologize the 914 people who drank the cyanide beverage. Smith says we need to focus on what we do not necessarily like, which in turn opens up nuanced interpretations. Contrarily, by turning Jones into a monster and those into Jonestown into fanatics, you are isolating the topic of religion. In an article called “Drinking The Kool-Aid: A Survivor Remembers Jim Jones”, Teri Buford O'Shea answers the following question: “You want people to remember the good parts of Jonestown. What were the good parts?” O’Shea admits that Jim Jones did not represent the good in Jonestown, however it was the people, who in reality, were not inherently bad. She says, “They came from every walk of life, from the very well educated to the uneducated. Some had lots of money. Some were living off of Social Security, and some didn't even have that.” The problem remained with Jim Jones’ luring methods as he constantly pinpointed what the innocent inhabitants needed and then brought them in...
Words: 558 - Pages: 3
...no means an ethical leader. In many ways Jim Jones was decades ahead of his time with regards to social issues. His leadership helped many disadvantaged people in Indianapolis, Indiana. At first glance it may appear he used his Visionary Leadership for a higher cause; however his unethical pursuits, ultimately resulted in the downfall of his church, his followers and himself when 914 members of his congregation committed suicide after “drinking the Kool Aid”. Visionary Leadership From early in his life Jim Jones had a vision of the world he wanted to live in. Jim Jones was born the only child of a disabled veteran father and working mother during the Great Depression. His poor upbringing shaped his vision of a world in which all people were equal. As an adult he began to attend uni-racial churches in Indianapolis. In 1961 he became the first white man to adopt and African-American child in Indiana (Ryan, 2011). Shortly thereafter he became disenfranchised with the segregation, of the congregations, in the churches he attended. In response to this social norm of the time, Jim Jones visionary leadership began. He started by establishing the Peoples Temple and invited all races and social demographics to join his congregation. Jim Jones encouraged Demographic Diversity (USAF) because he saw the value of having people from all walks of life within his congregation. From the lawyers who represented him to the laborers who built church facilities, all members served a purpose...
Words: 1533 - Pages: 7
