Jonestown Massacre
The origins of the Jonestown Massacre can be found in the foundation of the People's Temple of the Disciples of Christ in 1956. This church was founded by Jim Jones. Jones, who held communist values, began this church by buying a church building in Indianapolis. He created the church because he felt that his views on communism were looked down upon and also wanted to create a racially-mixed congregation.
In order to gain popularity for his church, Jones used the method of faith healings. These healings were faked by Jones and members of the church to create support for the church and gather financial resources to be used to grow the church and to help the poor in the area. Another method used to create awareness of the church was the organizing of conventions with other pastors. These conventions, drawing thousands of attendees, greatly increased the membership of the church through the use of faith healings and divination of private information that the church would find out before hand through the use of private detectives.
As the Church grew, so to did its ideology. It was very welcoming of the poor, stressing the wearing of casual clothing and providing places to sleep for those who needed it. Jones emulated the word and style of Father Divine, a preacher who had founded the International Peace Mission Movement. He spoke in a captivating manner, with passion and wisdom, directly interacting with members. His sermons would include ideas that Jones was the “Christ the Revolution”, a holy figure who had the power to heal. He also preached that the U.S. and capitalism were evil and comparble to the Antichrist and that Communism was the system of Christ. E also rejected the Bible and traditional Christianity...
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...ical performance welcoming them. The Temple had rehearsed extensively to convince Ryan that everyone was in good spirits and everything was in order. However, two members passed a note to someone in Ryan's party, reading “Dear Congressman, Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby. Please help us out of Jonestown.” Ryan and 3 others spent the night in Jonestown. In the morning, two families directly asked to be escorted from Jonestown by Ryan. Jones was forced to give the families, along with the two people who had passed the note to Ryan the day before, permission to leave.
Later in the day, the party departed on a dump truck but Ryan and one of his delegates stayed behind to escort any more defectors. One such defector was Larry Layton, who was, by all accounts,a loyalist to the Temple. Layton was allowed to join the group despite the protests of several other defectors.
He was forced to flee to Virginia, where he changed his name first to John Jones, then to John Paul Jones. Though he seems like a horrible mass murderer, he really wasn't. He had his best points in history. For example, he "started" the American navy and he performed a hit and run raid on Whitehaven. When Congress formed the "Continental Navy," Jones offered his services and was commissioned as first lieutenant.
Walter Rauschenbusch is widely regarded are a great American theological leader who is regarded as the founder of the social gospel movement in America, that transformed the church and the society in general . His main belief was that religion was not an individual activity or a phenomenon that affected only a single person. Instead, he believed that religion affected the entire society and therefore, the impetus for social reform and raising one’s voice against any sort of social evils or injustice should also come under the ambit of religion and church1. In this write-up an attempt is made to understand the religious philosophies of Walter Rauschenbusch and elaborate his principles of the social gospel movement. The Social Gospel movement also had a significant impact on the Protestant stream of thought prevalent in America .
...t its operation. Jonestown, after the termination of the project, was thought to have been a test site for mind control and mental experiments under MKUltra due to the mass suicide that took place there that became known as the Peoples Temple mass suicide and the formation of the Jim Jones cult in that town. Further, Leo Ryan was murdered in Jonestown by the Peoples Temple members when he was investigating numerous reports that were claimed to have happened in that area. Besides the Jonestown theory, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy was believed, by Lawrence Teeter, to have been a work of the techniques used in the Project MKUltra. Moreover, the attorney believed that Sirhan Sirhan, was under the influence of hypnosis when he murdered Robert F. Kennedy. Nevertheless, he was found guilty of first degree murder and six days later, was executed in a gas chamber.
preached against abuses in the church and attempted to shift the focus of religious faith
meetings at churches and preach sometimes at the cost of their lives. Quakers had many
Annie Moore one of the people who died in Jonestown said these last haunting words: “We died because you would not let us live”. That chilling sentence says so much about the grip Jim Jones had on his followers. Once he had them under his control they weren’t even allowed to think for themselves let alone do anything else freely. Jim Jones started to lose it when the congressman, the relatives, and the media began to question what was going on in Jonestown.
The American Revolution: the war for our independence. This revolution opened the door to our liberty, freedom, and basically what America is now. Most Americans have heard the stories of famous battles, important people (George Washington for instance), and everything in between. However, this was only for our side of the American Revolution and a small fraction of people have been told of Britain’s campaign of the revolution. The only thing people have been told was the Britain lost the war. What of Britain’s triumphs, strategies, and everything that happened in the span of a few years? Not many people know it, but the British struck a major blow against the Patriots in the last few years of the war. Even though the United States won the American Revolution, Britain struck a major blow against the colonists when the British successfully and brutally took the town of Charleston, South Carolina.
...s already small portions of food and horrible tasks given to those who didn’t obey Jim Jones. Also, Reverend jones clearly didn’t mind the fact that he was forcing more than nine hundred people to commit suicide, a third if them children. Being me, I feel like the way Jim Jones treated these people, and the way he led this cult compound was completely wrong. I feel like Peoples Temple was a humungous mistake. I also feel truly sorry for those who lose friends and family in this horrible event and for those who went through this. Although this is all over the Jim jones Massacre will forever be remembered and never be forgotten.
American Baptist, Martin Luther King Jr. in his letter, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, justifies his response to the letter that the clergymen had sent him when he was in jail. King Jr.’s purpose was to make the clergymen change the system of the church by using pathos, logos, and ethos in order to meet the people’s needs. He adopts a persuasive tone in order to appeal to the clergymen to change how they deal with problems in society.
Born as Protestant reform, the ideas behind the Social Gospel movement exploded in the United States among America’s Christians and more. The concept of Social Gospel applied Christian ethics like charity and justice, to society’s growing issues, poverty, lack of education, malnutrition, particularly in poverty stricken neighborhoods. One of the most prominent examples displaying Social Gospel was Jane Addams and the Hull House. Addams’s goal was to bring culture and a better quality of life to those living in the slums, although not everyone was truly included, “in light of Addams’s apparent dislike of the Irish, it is a mystery why she opened her settlement just blocks from Holy Family, the most prominent Irish Catholic Church in the city”(Skerrett 35). Whereas the Addams’s had persuaded wealthy donors to sponsor an art gallery, Skerrett describes Holy Family as successful in the same task of bringing art to the city, as the church was filled with beautiful stained glass
The People’s Temple was religious cult founded and lead by Jim Jones, based in Jonestown, Guyana. The converts belonging to Peoples Temple may have joined for various reasons differing from one another, yet the one common bond they all shared was Jim Jones. They loved Jim, they feared Jim, and eventually they died for Jim .
Jim Jones and his infamous cult entitled, “The People’s Temple,” holds an interesting value to social psychology. Jonestown is a topic that can relate back to many sociology terms and ideas. Jonestown can be related to social deviance, the effect of American culture on social groups, labelling theory, charismatic authority, and even shows how societal history often repeats itself. American society during the late 60’s-70’s is what led to the creation of Jonestown. Jonestowns downfall provided a lot of insight to the American public of how society needed to change, proving that the deaths of about 900 people weren’t for nothing.
On November 18, 1978, a notorious religious organization lead by Jim Jones became international news. As a result of manipulation and isolation, Jim Jones influenced his followers to commit suicide. Not only, but his followers were utterly convinced that what they were doing was for a good cause, specifically, a political movement. With kool-aid and a dash of cyanide, 918 people, adults and children, ended their lives that day. The aftermath of this horrific event resulted in numerous documentaries, on of which being, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. Created in 2006, this documentary gives a thorough and accurate account of the events that lead up to as well as occured that day.
It is understandable that they joined as they might of been killed had they not, but when Ralph says “Won’t you come with me? Three of us- We’d stand a chance”(Golding, 189), But they only gave him excuses, and would not leave because why both gave up hope, which was a missing necessity to their lives. We do not understand the importance of hope in our day to day lives. Hope keeps us moving, breathing, and having the will to
into a richer experience of worship and a more effect life of service" (Crabb, 1977, p.31). The method to establishing an