Brochure of the People's Temple portraying cult leader Jim Jones as the loving father of the "Rainbow Family".

James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931–November 18, 1978) was the founder of the People's Temple, an originally Christian group that later mainly advocated social justice and turned into a cult when Jim Jones turned it into a mini-dictatorship, with controversial viewpoints and practices.

Jones then founded Jonestown in Guyana; the town was a closed-in society of Jones' followers (13 followers left Jonestown with a reporter due to the fact that they 'wanted out') where Jim Jones and all of Jonestown committed suicide or murder on Jones's instructions by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid (a cheaper version of Kool-Aid, with which it is often confused in this particular situation) in 1978 and shooting each other to death.

The label "cult" is disputed in relation to Jones' group by the book Hearing the Voices of Jonestown. [1] (http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/1998/06/cov_17feature.html)

See also

• Charismatic authority
• true-believer syndrome

External link

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Jim Jones

• 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)

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