[Cult Watch] The Peoples Temple - Part One

“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid”

As a species, we’re constantly searching for answers to life's big questions and that can sometimes lead us down dangerous paths. For too many people, this path can lead them into becoming a member of a cult. Of course one man’s cult is another man’s religion, and the word itself can have many negative connotations. In the first installment, I looked at what makes a cult in a general sense, as well as going through a checklist of sorts to aid us in our journey through the cult mindset. This week’s subject is The Peoples Temple which later gave birth to The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, or as it is informally referred to “Jonestown”. We'll be discussing the formation of Jonestown and the mass murder-suicide in the next post.

I chose this one to start with largely because it is often used in these modern times as the example of a cult, as well as for being one of, if not the worst mass murder-suicide ever in American history, as well as the worst loss of life in a deliberate act until the attacks on 9/11. A total of 918 people died that day, and it’s from the incident at Jonestown that we get the common phrase; “Drinking the Kool-Aid”

Before we discuss the events at Jonestown, we need to go over the history of The Peoples Temple and it’s founder/cult leader Jim Jones.

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Jim Jones

Jones was born on 13th May 1931 in the rural area of Crete, Indiana to James Jones and Lynetta Putnam. James was a World War I veteran, and it was during the Great Depression that economic difficulties forced the Jones family to move to the town of Lynn in 1934, where Jones grew up in a shack without plumbing.

During his childhood, Jones was said to be obsessed with both religion and death as well as having difficulty making friends, with childhood acquaintances describing him as a “really weird kid”. These acquaintances alleged that he would often hold funerals for small animals, and had once stabbed a cat to death.

In 1949, Jones married his wife Marceline who was a nurse, with the couple moving to Bloomington, Indiana. Marceline stayed with Jones throughout this entire period, until her death in Jonestown

Jones was an avid reader and studied Marx, Stalin, Mao, Gandhi and Hitler, taking careful notes of the strengths and weaknesses of each. Jones began to get really interested in communism around 1951 in his early 20s, a time period where the US had historically hated communism since before the Cold War, with the US government even putting out a lot of anti-communism propaganda during that time period.

It was this anti-communist sentiment that caused Jones to become frustrated, and he believed that a good way to demonstrate his new-found Marxism would be to infiltrate the church, and so, he started working towards that goal. In 1952 he became a student pastor at a Methodist Church in Indiana, and this was his first step to becoming a religious authority figure. He later claimed to have left that church because its leaders would not allow him to integrate black people into his congregation.

It’s around the time he left this church that he witnessed a faith-healing service at a Baptist Church, and decided that this would be a good way to draw in people and their money, which would help finance his mission. In 1956, from 11th June to 15th June, Jones organised a gigantic religious convention in a large hall in Indianapolis where he had arranged to share the stage with Rev. William H. Branham, a healing evangelist who at the time was as highly regarded and revered as Oral Roberts. I may do a seperate post all about Oral Roberts at a later point, because I didn’t really know who he was before researching this topic and boy does he have some interesting things to discuss, like most televangelists. The event managed to raise enough money for Jones to start his own church, which would eventually be called the People’s Temple Christian Church.

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The Peoples Temple Early Beginnings

The Peoples Temple was initially launched as an interracial mission. Then in 1960 he was appointed to director of the Human Rights Commission in Indianapolis, Indiana by then Major Charles Boswell. He actually managed to do some good during this time, as he’d helped to racially integrate a number of businesses and public institutions. He really believed in ending segregation during a time when that was not a popular idea, but I suspect that part of the reason for that. It’s witnessed in similar groups, typically when we see cults trying to end tribalism, it’s because they want to focus that hatred on the outside world.

In the early 1960s, Jones traveled to Brazil after a Temple speech about a nuclear apocalypse, as well as a 1962 Esquire magazine article listing Belo Horizonte in Brazil as a safe place to be during a nuclear war. It was upon his return from Brazil in December 1963, that Jones gave a speech to his Indiana congregation stating that the world would be engulfed by a nuclear war on 15th July 1967, and from the ashes would rise a socialist Eden on Earth. He said that the Temple had to move to Northern California for safety, and so the entire congregation began to move to Redwood Valley.

This is another common feature of cults, making end of the world predictions. We’ve seen it with groups from the Manson Family to Jehovah’s Witnesses, they never come true and yet they still keep on making them. There’s some really interesting theories behind why these doomsday cults can survive beyond their failed predictions, but again that’s probably best saved for another post.

Within five years of moving to California, the temple started growing, fast. The Temple began opening other branches in multiple cities. By the 1970s, he was preaching against traditional Christianity, saying it was a tool to oppress non-whites and women, as well as saying that he was the reincarnation of Gandhi, Father Divine, Jesus, Gautama Buddha and Vladimir Lenin. What a party it must have been inside his head.

This is yet another key indicator of a cult; insider versus outsider thinking, black versus white. Their doctrine is the only correct doctrine, and all others are wrong and will die.

“What you need to believe in is what you can see ... If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend. As you see me as your father, I'll be your father, for those of you that don't have a father ... If you see me as your savior, I'll be your savior. If you see me as your God, I'll be your God.”
Jim Jones

As time went by, Jones was managing to indoctrinate and brainwash so many people in the San Francisco area that he managed to gain real political power and sway in the city. For a time, things were going really well for Jones despite backlash from his opposition.

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Increasing Media Scrutiny

In the later part of 1973, Jones prepared an “immediate action” contingency plan is response to several critical newspaper articles about the Temple and the defection of eight Temple members. This contingency plan was in preparation for what Jones saw as in impeding police or media crackdown.

The Temple would establish an agricultural mission in Guyana for this purpose, involving 500 members who began construction of what would be called Jonestown, said to be a “socialist paradise” and a sanctuary from media scrutiny.

It was in the summer of 1977, that Jones and several hundred Temple members moved to Jonestown to escape building pressure from San Francisco media investigations. Jones left the same night that an editor at New West magazine read him the contents of an article to be published by Marshall Kilduff. This exposé would detail allegations of abuse by former Temple members who had already left the group.

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That's where I'm going to wrap up this weeks post, and next time we'll be looking at the formation of Jonestown in a little more detail, and then the events after the mass migration that led to the deaths of 918 people. We'll also compare The Peoples Temple to our checklist from the previous post. Let me know your thoughts and feelings down in the comments section, I always love to hear what you think about these things. If you enjoyed this, make sure to give it an upvote and if you haven't already, hit that Follow button to stay up to date on the latest Internet and Pop Culture updates, plus whatever else I feel like writing about! Until next time guys, take it easy!

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Sources:

Jonestown on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown)
Jim Jones on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones)
People's Temple in San Francisco on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_Temple_in_San_Francisco)
Photo by Nancy Wong from Wikimedia Commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones#/media/File:Rev._Jim_Jones,_1977.jpg)
Photo from Wikimedia Commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones#/media/File:Jimjonesfirstchurch.jpg)
Image by AlexAntropov86 from Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/en/nuclear-atom-bomb-atomic-science-2136244/)
Image from Wikimedia Commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_Temple_in_San_Francisco#/media/File:NewWestTop.jpg)
Image courtesy of the Jonestown Institute from Wikimedia Commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_Temple_in_San_Francisco#/media/File:Jonestown_entrance.jpg

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