Peoples Temple Essay - 640 Words

Peoples Temple On November 18, 1978 more than nine hundred people died in one of the largest mass murder/suicides in history. The man that implemented and carried out that atrocity was James Warren Jones, otherwise known as Jim Jones, a self proclaimed Second Coming (God). His exposure to an intensely emotional Pentecostal church service influenced and shaped his future beliefs and actions. In 1960, despite his lack of theological training, Jim Jones became an ordained minister. He made racial equality one of goals. Jim Jones also used fear arousal to recruit his followers by Genocide and thermonuclear war. His ability to persuade was more successful with him becoming an ordained minister. He used his charisma to persuade†¦show more content†¦The people yielded to real or imagined social pressure. There were loyalty tests to prove their loyalty to Jim Jones. One of these tests was to do a practice suicide of drinking the Kool-Aid. They were told the drink was poisoned, but it rea lly wasnt. The people thought it was though and drank it anyways. Some of the people were just compliant. They yielded to social pressure in their public behavior, even though their private beliefs had not changed. I believe these people to be the ones who ended up wanting to leave the cult. Some of these people were killed for trying to leave. There were still others who conformed to the social norms for fear of negative social consequences which they called catharsis. Their example of catharsis was, for example, if a teenager was accused of being rude to a senior citizen , the congregation would hear the evidence and vote on the teenagers innocence or guilt. The punishment could be a severe spanking administered by Jones. Adults who transgressed were punished by being placed in a ring and forced to box with bigger, stronger Temple members. Transgressions subject to catharsis ranged from selfishness, sexism, discourtesy to drug and alcohol abuse, and petty crimes for which members could be arrested and convicted by public authorities. So, as far as this relating to the chapter, it did in many ways. I have always wondered what the Jim Jones story was all about. I was six years oldShow MoreRelatedA Look At Jonestown And The Peoples Temple1857 Words   |  8 PagesA Look at Jonestown and the Peoples Temple Many people have heard the phrase â€Å"drinking the Kool-aid† but few actually know where the term comes from. The story of Jonestown and the Peoples Temple is a complex one with many different causes and can sometimes be a tough topic to learn about. Nonetheless, there is much to be learned from it, as it shows the dangers of putting too much blind loyalty into a person or cause. The story of Jonestown began in 1955 when a man named Jim Jones Started a ReligionRead MoreCults Of The People s Temple1476 Words   |  6 Pageshave done some rather unmoral things that lead the people to ask, Why did they do it? The People s Temple, Aum Shinrikyo, and Ku Klux Klan are extraordinary examples of wicked cults that begged the question Why? When people think of crazed cults The People s Temple quickly comes to mind because it truly fits the definition of a cult a small group of very devoted supporters or fans (Merriam-Webster). The members of The People s Temple worshipped Jim Jones their leader even though he wasRead MoreThe United States And The Vietnam War1153 Words   |  5 Pagesborders. The citizens were not ready for what the 1970’s was going to bring, socially, economically, and religiously. Jim Jones was going to bring peace and relief to these people in the most tragic way possible. 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But there is one event in particular that was even more heinous and stranger than any of those – the Jonestown Massacre. It was a mass suicide that occurred on November 18, 1978, in Guyana that took the lives of over 900 innocent people (The Stigmatized Deaths in Jonestown†¦ 42). And the man behind this inexcusable act was none other than cult mysterious leader Jim Jones. James Warren Jones was born on May 13, 1931 in Crete, Indiana to James Thurman Jones, a construction worker,