235: Jim Jones & The Peoples Temple

Jim Jones was an American cult leader and mass murderer who founded and led the Peoples Temple between 1955 and 1978. In what Jones termed "revolutionary suicide", Jones and the members of his inner circle planned and orchestrated a mass murder-suicide in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978.

As a child Jim Jones was entranced with two things - Pentecostal preachers and Communism. Reflecting back on his participation in the Communist Party, Jones said that he asked himself, "How can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church."

AND SO HE DID.

He began his religious career in 1952, Jones was hired as student pastor to the children at the Sommerset Southside Methodist Church, where he launched a project to create a playground that would be open to children of all races. Jones continued to visit and speak at Pentecostal churches while serving as Methodist student pastor. 

He felt called to the pomp and circumstance of the Pentecostal movement. There was something about the attention that he just could not get enough of... that would lead him to start his own Church, The Peoples Temple.

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