JONESTOWN BLOGPOST.

The people’s temple in my opinion had a lot of characteristics of a cult. Some appeared at the beginning and others which were more severe took more time to actually become aware of.


They were challenging norms from the beginning by having an interracial church and anyone that didn’t agree with this was thrown out. I think this started as a good thing but then just got worse.


The members were very mistrusting of outsiders they had constant services and Jim’s voice was always on the speaker system in Guyana so the church and Jim were all they thought about and always in their mind.

One way it resembled a cult was they separated themselves from society at first it was just by moving to California to a less racial place. Then they completely moved out of the country to Guyana.

Another reason because the members did not make their own decisions Jim Jones made all the decisions for everyone, also he said “ if you see me as your friend I’ll be your friend, If you see me as your father I’ll be your father and if you see me as your god I’ll be your god.” In the movie people also held up signs that said “I believe in Jim Jones.” Instead of saying I believe in god.

The members seemed to forget how to think for themselves, they lost all common sense and everything Jim said was right and everything he did was for their best interest.

He even had families turning on each other, people selling their houses for the church and leaving everything they had behind just for the church. People were made feel guilty if they had too many luxuries, they felt like they had to stay up days on end and donate their money for the church.

Every time someone in the church tried to speak against Jim Jones they were shut down first by him then members of the church attacked them.

Jim made sure no one felt like they were better than anyone else in the church; an example was the woman in the church getting naked and broken down by all the members.

He controlled them and made them feel like everyone was out to get the church and society was bad, he also controlled communications in the church and made you feel like if you wanted to leave, you were betraying him.

It seemed like Jim always had loyalty tests one was the fake poison he made them think was juice another was in Guyana when he said he was sending people out saying they wanted to leave and to turn them in and the final was the “revolutionary suicide”.

He made everyone think that since the congressman died that people in the U.S. would be after them and it would be better if they died for a cause and together, making a point to the church.

I do not think this was revolutionary suicide like he tried to tell people. I think he fed the poison to the children first to make the parents and people around feel like they had nothing to live for.