Jim Jones
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Jim_Jones_brochure_of_Peoples_Temple.jpg
James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the founder of the People's Temple.
The People's Temple started out as a Christian group, but later mainly advocated social justice. Jim Jones turned it into a dictatorship, with controversial viewpoints and practices.
Jones was arrested in Los Angeles on December 13, 1973, and charged with soliciting an undercover police officer for sex in an area of McArthur park known for homosexual activity at the time. He was on record as telling his followers that he was "the only true heterosexual," but at least one account exists of his sodomizing a member of his congregation in front of the followers, ostensibly to prove that man's own gay tendencies.
Jones founded Jonestown in Guyana; the town was a closed society of Jones' followers. Thirteen followers left Jonestown with a reporter.
In 1978, all the remaining inhabitants of Jonestown committed suicide or murder on Jones's instructions by drinking cyanide-laced punch, by cyanide injection, or by shooting. Jones shot himself in the head while sitting in a deck chair.
See also
External links
- San Francisco Chronicle article commemorating the mass suicide 25 years ago (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/11/18/JONESTOWN.TMP)
- Jim Jones source for his ideology and cult control techniques (http://www.geocities.com/oldsayville/jones.htm)
- Jim Jones - The Rotten Library (http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/religion/cult/reverend-jim-jones/)
- University of Virginia (http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/Jonestwn.html)
References
- McCormick Maaga, Mary Hearing the voices of Jonestown, 1998 Syracuse University press, ISBN 0815605153