The People's Temple
The People's Temple was a destructive doomsday cult founded by James Warren Jones. Jones held degrees from Indiana University and Butler University. He was an ordained minister with the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ. The People's Temple was initially structured as an inter-racial mission for the sick, homeless, and jobless. Jones assembled a following of over 900 members in the 1950's as he preached a social gospel of human freedom, equality, and love, which required the least and lowliest of society. Later on this gosepl became explicitly socialistic as the hypocrisy of white Christianity ws ridiculed while apostolic socialism was preached. When an investigation began into his cures for cancer, heart disease, and diabetes- Jones decided to move thr group to Ulkah in Northern California. He preached the imminent end of the world in a nuclear war. The group later moved to San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the 1970's, Jones moved some of Temple membership to Jonestown, Guyana. There the group leased 4000 acres of dense jungle from the government. They established an agricultural cooperative there, called the "People's Temple Agricultural Project." They raised animals for food, and assorted tropical fruits and vegetables for consumption and sale. Jones developed a belief called Translation in which he and his followers pretended to drink poison and fell to the ground. During the late 1970's, Jones had been abusing prescription drugs. In November 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown for a personal inspection. On November 18, 16 members of the group decided that they wanted to leave Jonestown with Ryan and the visitors. This shocked Jones and the rest of the group. Some of the security guards for the group then shot and killed Ryan and four other visitorrs. Later, the group reached a consensus to commit suicide. 638 adult followers and 276 children committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced kool-aid. othersappear to have been murdered by poison injection or gunfire. A few fled to the jungle and survived. Unlike most cults even after a mass suicide, the People's Tempe does not have any splinter groups that existed after the suicide, at least none that are known.
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