Download or read book The Road to Jonestown written by Jeff Guinn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrait of the cult leader behind the Jonestown Massacre examines his personal life, from his extramarital affairs and drug use to his fraudulent faith healing practices and his decision to move his followers to Guyana, sharing new details about the events leading to the 1978 tragedy.
Download or read book People s Temple People s Tomb written by Phil Kerns and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A former member of the People's Temple discusses his conversion to, involvement in, disillusionment with, and investigation of the cult of Jim Jones in which his mother and sister both met their deaths
Download or read book Salvation and Suicide written by David Chidester and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-16 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for the first edition: "[This] ambitious and courageous book [is a] benchmark of theology by which questions about the meaningful history of the Peoples Temple may be measured." —Journal of the American Academy of Religion Re-issued in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the mass suicides at Jonestown, this revised edition of David Chidester's pathbreaking book features a new prologue that considers the meaning of the tragedy for a post-Waco, post-9/11 world. For Chidester, Jonestown recalls the American religious commitment to redemptive sacrifice, which for Jim Jones meant saving his followers from the evils of capitalist society. "Jonestown is ancient history," writes Chidester, but it does provide us with an opportunity "to reflect upon the strangeness of familiar . . . promises of redemption through sacrifice."
Download or read book Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America written by Rebecca Moore and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-11 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-five years after the tragedy at Jonestown, they assess the impact of the black religious experience on Peoples Temple.
Download or read book Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple written by Rebecca Moore and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-07-06 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This in-depth investigation of Peoples Temple and its tragic end at Jonestown corrects sensationalized misunderstandings of the group and places its individual members within the broader context of religion in America. Most people understand Peoples Temple through its violent disbanding following events in Jonestown, Guyana, where more than 900 Americans committed murder and suicide in a jungle commune. Media coverage of the event sensationalized the group and obscured the background of those who died. The view that emerged thirty years ago continues to dominate understanding of Jonestown today, despite the dozens of books, articles, and documentaries that have appeared. This book provides a fresh perspective on Peoples Temple, locating the group within the context of religion in America and offering a contemporary history that corrects the inaccuracies often associated with the group and its demise. Although Peoples Temple had some of the characteristics many associate with cults, it also shared many characteristics of black religion in America. Moreover, it is crucial to understand how the organization fits into the social and political movements of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: race, class, colonialism, gender, and other issues dominated the times and so dominated the consciousness of the members of Peoples Temple. Here, Rebecca Moore, who lost three family members in the events in Guyana, offers a framework for U.S. social, cultural, and political history that helps readers to better understand Peoples Temple and its members.
Download or read book And Then They Were Gone written by Judy Bebelaar and published by . This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Of the 918 Americans who died in the shocking murder-suicides of November 18, 1978, in the tiny South American country of Guyana, a third were under eighteen. More than half were in their twenties or younger. And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown begins in San Francisco at the small school where Reverend Jim Jones enrolled the teens of his Peoples Temple church in 1976. Within a year, most had been sent to join Jones and his other congregants in what Jones promised was a tropical paradise based on egalitarian values, but which turned out to be a deadly prison camp. Set against the turbulent backdrop of the late 1970s, And Then They Were Gone draws from interviews, books, and articles. Many of these powerful stories are told here for the first time."--Back cover
Download or read book Cult City written by Daniel J. Flynn and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recounting the fascinating, intersecting stories of Jim Jones and Harvey Milk, Cult City tells the story of a great city gone horribly wrong. November 1978. Reverend Jim Jones, the darling of the San Francisco political establishment, orchestrates the murders and suicides of 918 people at a remote jungle outpost in South America. Days later, Harvey Milk, one of America’s first openly gay elected officials—and one of Jim Jones’s most vocal supporters—is assassinated in San Francisco’s City Hall. This horrifying sequence of events shocked the world. Almost immediately, the lives and deaths of Jim Jones and Harvey Milk became shrouded in myth. Now, forty years later, this book corrects the record. The product of a decade of research, including extensive archival work and dozens of exclusive interviews, Cult City reveals just how confused our understanding has become. In life, Jim Jones enjoyed the support of prominent politicians and Hollywood stars even as he preached atheism and communism from the pulpit; in death, he transformed into a fringe figure, a “fundamentalist Christian” and a “fascist.” In life, Harvey Milk faked hate crimes, outed friends, and falsely claimed that the US Navy dishonorably discharged him over his homosexuality; in death, he is honored in an Oscar-winning movie, with a California state holiday, and a US Navy ship named after him. His assassin, a blue-collar Democrat who often voted with Milk in support of gay issues, is remembered as a right-winger and a homophobe. But the story extends far beyond Jones and Milk. Author Daniel J. Flynn vividly portrays the strange intersection of mainstream politics and murderous extremism in 1970s San Francisco—the hangover after the high of the Summer of Love.
Download or read book A Thousand Lives written by Julia Scheeres and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1954, a pastor named Jim Jonesopened a church in Indianapolis called Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church. He was a charismatic preacher with idealistic beliefs, and he quickly filled his pews with an audience eager to hear his sermons on social justice. As Jones’s behavior became erratic and his message more ominous, his followers leaned on each other to recapture the sense of equality that had drawn them to his church. But even as the congregation thrived, Jones made it increasingly difficult for members to leave. By the time Jones moved his congregation to a remote jungle in Guyana and the US government began to investigate allegations of abuse and false imprisonment in Jonestown, it was too late. A Thousand Lives is the story of Jonestown as it has never been told. New York Times bestselling author Julia Scheeres drew from tens of thousands of recently declassified FBI documents and audiotapes, as well as rare videos and interviews, to piece together an unprecedented and compelling history of the doomed camp, focusing on the people who lived there. The people who built Jonestown wanted to forge a better life for themselves and their children. In South America, however, they found themselves trapped in Jonestown and cut off from the outside world as their leader goaded them toward committing “revolutionary suicide” and deprived them of food, sleep, and hope. Vividly written and impossible to forget, A Thousand Lives is a story of blind loyalty and daring escapes, of corrupted ideals and senseless, haunting loss.
Download or read book Slavery of Faith written by Leslie Wagner-Wilson and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2009 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slavery Of Faith...the quietly kept story of a young woman's escape through the jungles of Jonestown, Guyana the morning of the massacre November 18, 1978 and her struggles to live in the aftermath. November 18, 2008 marks 30 years since the Jonestown, Guyana Massacre/Suicides and the death of its founder, the Reverend Jim Jones. Escaping Jonestown, Guyana the morning of November 18,1978 with nine others, Leslie Wagner-Wilson then twenty one years old, trekked thirty seven miles through the jungle with a 40-pound care package strapped to her back with a sheet, her son, later to be known as the youngest survivor of Jonestown. That evening, she would be told that Jonestown was gone along with her plan to escape and return with her father, Richard Wagner who was a part of the Concerned Relatives to free the rest of her family. Amongst the carnage would be her husband, mother, brother, sister, niece, nephew, sister in law, brother in law and the friends she had grown up and loved since 13. Slavery of Faith reveals the life of a thirteen year old coming of age in the heart of People's Temple Disciples of Christ Church where the pastor Jim Jones, exhorted his followers to consider him divine and to call him "Father" while he touted his extra-marital affairs from the pulpit. The world of Jim Jones was one of inverted ideals, isolation and alienation. However, what began as a church that appealed to peoples inner spirit to help others, was turned into a living hell. Yet it was a place she would go, half a continent away, to be with her 2 year old son, who'd been taken to Jonestown by Jim Jones as he made his exodus to Guyana. It shares the horrors of Jonestown - the labor punishment squads, suicide drills, sleep deprivation, drugging, and humiliations. It also takes the reader through the escape that she says was revealed to her in the spirit. Thirty years since Jonestown, Slavery of Faith also chronicles her return to the U.S. under a veil of secrecy in fear of the "death squads", her fight to maintain her faith in her most darkest hours; suffering survivors guilt, drug addiction, a family suicide, and finally redemption. It shares her journey through psychological and spiritual jungles to reach a place of remembrance-- to "live their love and not their deaths." Faith has allowed her the resiliency to as she states "tuck and roll" and discover that through pain, tragedy and joy, her life has found divine order.
Download or read book Revisiting Jonestown written by Domenico Arturo Nesci and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-12-13 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting Jonestown covers three main topics: the psycho-biography of Jim Jones (the leader of the suicidal community) from the new perspective of Prenatal Psychology and transgenerational trauma, the story of his Peoples Temple, with emphasis on what kind of leadership and membership were responsible for their tragic end, and the interpretation of death rituals by religious cults as regression to primordial stages of human evolution, when a series of genetic mutations changed the destiny of Homo Sapiens, at the dawn of religion and human awareness. A pattern of collective suicide is finally identified, making it possible to foresee and try to prevent its tragic repetition. At the same time, through an artistic editorial work on original images from the Peoples Temple files, a sort of Multimedia Psychotherapy is subliminally delivered in order to help the mourning of the victims of Jonestown, to whose memory the book is dedicated.
Download or read book Raven written by Tim Reiterman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basis for the upcoming HBO miniseries and the "definitive account of the Jonestown massacre" (Rolling Stone) -- now available for the first time in paperback. Tim Reiterman’s Raven provides the seminal history of the Rev. Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and the murderous ordeal at Jonestown in 1978. This PEN Award–winning work explores the ideals-gone-wrong, the intrigue, and the grim realities behind the Peoples Temple and its implosion in the jungle of South America. Reiterman’s reportage clarifies enduring misperceptions of the character and motives of Jim Jones, the reasons why people followed him, and the important truth that many of those who perished at Jonestown were victims of mass murder rather than suicide. This widely sought work is restored to print after many years with a new preface by the author, as well as the more than sixty-five rare photographs from the original volume.
Download or read book A Lavender Look at the Temple written by Michael Bellefountaine and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2011-08-11 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most of its history, the Peoples Temple existed under the radar. Most had never even heard of the church until news of the tragic deaths of more than nine hundred men, women, and children in the jungles of Guyana broke in November of 1978.Th e lives and deaths of the members of the Peoples Temple are ones that remain mostly misunderstood to this day. And for the gay and lesbian members and their families, the truth is sometimes even harder to ?nd. Author Bellefountainean activist, a scholar, and proud member of the gay communityprovides a new perspective of the Temple. His detailed research into the inner workings of the Peoples Temple is presented, with a special look at the lives of the gay and lesbian members of the Peoples Temple community. Their stories illustrate how their lives were in?uenced and a?cted by Jones and his acceptance of their sexuality. Bellefountaine looked deep into the historical connection between Jim Joness Peoples Temple and the city of San Francisco, as well as the connection San Franciscos ?rst gay councilman, Harvey Milk, had with the Peoples Temple. The power that acceptanceeven false acceptancecan have on people is explored through the detailed accounts of members of the temple community. He tells the very human stories of those who died in Jonestown as well as how those who survived the horror and their families were deeply a?ected by the tragedy of November 18, 1978and what we can learn from this event.
Download or read book A Theology of Liberation written by Gustavo Gutierrez and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the credo and seminal text of the movement which was later characterized as liberation theology. The book burst upon the scene in the early seventies, and was swiftly acknowledged as a pioneering and prophetic approach to theology which famously made an option for the poor, placing the exploited, the alienated, and the economically wretched at the centre of a programme where "the oppressed and maimed and blind and lame" were prioritized at the expense of those who either maintained the status quo or who abused the structures of power for their own ends. This powerful, compassionate and radical book attracted criticism for daring to mix politics and religion in so explicit a manner, but was also welcomed by those who had the capacity to see that its agenda was nothing more nor less than to give "good news to the poor", and redeem God's people from bondage.
Download or read book Seductive Poison written by Deborah Layton and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-08-18 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this haunting and riveting firsthand account, a survivor of Jim Jones's Peoples Temple opens up the shadowy world of cults and shows how anyone can fall under their spell. A high-level member of Jim Jones's Peoples Temple for seven years, Deborah Layton escaped his infamous commune in the Guyanese jungle, leaving behind her mother, her older brother, and many friends. She returned to the United States with warnings of impending disaster, but her pleas for help fell on skeptical ears, and shortly thereafter, in November 1978, the Jonestown massacre shocked the world. Seductive Poison is both an unflinching historical document and a suspenseful story of intrigue, power, and murder.
Download or read book Hearing the Voices of Jonestown written by Mary McCormick Maaga and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When over 900 followers of the Peoples Temple religious group committed suicide in 1978, they left a legacy of suspicion and fear. Most accounts of this mass suicide describe the members as brainwashed dupes and overlook the Christian and socialist ideals that originally inspired Peoples Temple members. Hearing the Voices of Jonestown restores the individual voices that have been erased so that we can better understand what was created—and destroyed—at Jonestown, and why. Piecing together information from interviews with former group members, archival research, and diaries and letters of those who died there, Maaga describes the women leaders as educated political activists who were passionately committed to achieving social justice through communal life. The book analyzes the historical and sociological factors that, Maaga finds, contributed to the mass suicide, such as growing criticism from the larger community and the influx of an upper-class, educated leadership that eventually became more concerned with the symbolic effects of the organization than with the daily lives of its members. Hearing the Voices of Jonestown puts human faces on the events at Jonestown, confronting theoretical religious questions, such as how worthy utopian ideals come to meet such tragic and misguided ends.
Download or read book Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the cult and the massacre *Includes Jim Jones' quotes about his life and the massacre *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "We didn't commit suicide; we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world." - Jim Jones The United States has never had a shortage of cults based on religious teachings and charismatic leaders, but perhaps none are as infamous as Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, which remain notorious for the mass murder-suicide event in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978, during which nearly 900 people drank cyanide-laced Flavor Aid, including nearly 300 children. To this day, "drinking the Kool-Aid" is a popular phrase in America to refer to people who blindly follow a person or idea without thought, and the event at Jonestown was the deadliest deliberate act involving Americans in history until the 9/11 attacks. In addition to those deaths, Peoples Temple members also murdered a handful of others on the same day, including journalists, a member trying to leave Jonestown, and Congressman Leo Ryan. Almost from birth, Jones believed he had a higher calling, and after being immersed in various Christian churches and both political and religious doctrine, Jones founded the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955, when he was still in his mid-20s. While that might have been an unusual course in life for most Americans, Jones was hardly the first to take such a path, and indeed, his group expanded at a remarkable pace in the 1960s, which included a move to California after Jones claimed to foresee a nuclear attack on Chicago and the destruction of Indianapolis. By the 1970s, services at the group's Temple attracted thousands of visitors, even as Jones increasingly criticized Christianity and the Bible. Of course, none of the previous locations earned the notoriety of Jonestown, which the Peoples Temple established in Guyana along the northern coast of South America in the mid-'70s. Meant to be a "socialist paradise" and "sanctuary" from America's "creeping fascism," over 900 members headed to the new settlement by 1978. That November, Congressman Leo Ryan arrived in Jonestown to investigate various claims about the Peoples Temple and met with some members who wished to defect from the group. In response, Jones issued a tape decrying outsiders' efforts and directing members to commit suicide, and when some pushed back, he chided them: "Stop these hysterics. This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die. No way for us to die. We must die with some dignity." Survivors described the ensuing event, during which children drank the poison first and were followed by parents who lay down to die as a family. Others indicated that Jones had simulated mass suicides on a couple of other occasions before to test members' loyalty as well, so people remained unsure whether the event was real, even as Jones told them, "I tell you, I don't care how many screams you hear, I don't care how many anguished cries...death is a million times preferable to ten more days of this life. If you knew what was ahead of you - if you knew what was ahead of you, you'd be glad to be stepping over tonight." Although many began to worry once they saw the poison take effect in others, most of those who drank the poison were dead within 5 minutes, while Jones apparently shot himself in the head. Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple: The History of the Most Notorious Cult and Mass Murder-Suicide in American History chronicles the notorious cult and the mass murder-suicide. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Peoples Temple like never before.
Download or read book Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America written by Rebecca Moore and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-11 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Peoples Temple movement ended on November 18, 1978, when more than 900 men, women, and children died in a ritual of murder and suicide in their utopianist community of Jonestown, Guyana. Only a handful lived to tell their story. As is well known, Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple, was white, but most of his followers were black. Despite that, little has been written about Peoples Temple in the context of black religion in America. In 10 essays, writers from various disciplines address this gap in the scholarship. Twenty-five years after the tragedy at Jonestown, they assess the impact of the black religious experience on Peoples Temple.
