People's Temple

The People's Temple is best known for the mass suicides and/or murders of nearly all of its more than 900 members in Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978. This followed the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan, plus four others, as Ryan's investigative mission was ending, with some defectors planning to return with him to the United States.

Founded in 1956 in Indianapolis by Jim Jones, the People's Temple was a racially integrated congregation featuring enthusiastic, Pentecostal-style services with sometimes staged "faith healings" plus social service programs, including free meals for the poor. Jones became known in the community as a civil rights leader, but his integrationist policies aroused local hostility. In 1963 the People's Temple affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a mainstream Protestant denomination whose polity emphasizes congregational autonomy. Jones's services were influenced more by Father Divine than by mainstream Protestantism, but his racial policies and social out-reach were consistent with the social agenda of the Disciples (and other mainstream Protestant denominations) at the time. Jones developed a controlling leadership style, putting his own authority above the Bible and expecting followers to call him "Father." He borrowed Marxist-inspired socialist ideas plus the evangelical revivalist tradition. In 1965 he was ordained as a Disciples of Christ minister, but the congregation clearly did not fit traditional categories of religious organization.

In 1965 the People's Temple moved to Ukiah, California, reflecting Jones's fear of a nuclear holocaust, which he believed he could escape there. The congregation gradually grew, attracting educated white professionals and alienated young people who admired the temple's racial policies, high cohesiveness, and social service goals. Its outreach expanded with campaigns to San Francisco and Los Angeles, recruiting many poor blacks. By 1972 the temple moved to San Francisco, where membership grew to perhaps three thousand. Jones again became active in local politics. But the congregation increasingly resembled a communal-type organization, with members surrendering all their resources to the group. Jones tightened his control, using strategies ranging from lengthy self-analysis meetings to manipulation of sexual relations to physical beatings. Control was through a circle of inner advisers and a planning commission. He initiated a fake suicide ritual with the planning commission in which members were asked to drink "poison" wine (alcohol was otherwise forbidden) before being told that it was only a test of their faith.

Controversies erupted outside as news of inside abuses became known, and Jones developed plans for moving again, this time to Guyana, South America, to establish his long-awaited utopian community isolated from the coming apocalypse and other threats. By 1977 most members had moved, taking guns acquired earlier for protection. But Jones and his followers could not escape their opponents back in the United States, as demonstrated by Congressman Ryan's visit. Following Ryan's murder, Jones gave the suicide order to his followers. It will never be known how many suicide victims drank the cyanide-poisoned punch voluntarily to maintain their honor and escape possible retaliation for Congressman Ryan's murder, but armed guards ensured that Jones's last order before his death was followed.

See alsoAnti-Cult Movement; Brainwashing; Church and State; Communes; Cult; Cult Awareness Network; Father Divine; Jones, Jim; Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity; Psychology of Religion; Sociology of Religion.

Bibliography

Hall, John R. Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown inAmerican Cultural History. 1987.

Johnson, Doyle Paul. "Dilemmas of Charismatic Leadership: The Case of the People's Temple." Sociological Analysis 40 (1979):315–323.

Kilduff, Marshall, and Ron Javers. The Suicide Cult: TheInside Story of the People's Temple Sect and the Massacrein Guyana. 1978.

Doyle Paul Johnson