Cultism: Difference between revisions

===[[File:DestinyChurchNZ.png]] Destiny Church ===

W.I.P

The [[File:Peoples Temple.png]] Peoples Temple was founded in 1954 by reverend Jim Jones. Jim Jones was born in Crete, Indiana, on May 13, 1931, and was a product of the Florence Nightingale Effect: his father, James Thruman Jones, was a World War One vet who suffered ill health from a gas attack. His mother, Lynette Putnam, served as James's nurse and later married him. They were later forced to move to Lynn, Indiana due to the Great Depression, where Jones grew up in a shack with no plumbing. As a child, he was often left to his own devices while his mother worked multiple jobs and his father showed little interest in him. One of their neighbors offered to take him to her church, which later became a regular occurrence and sparked Jones's interest in religion.

Jones began visiting different churches and preaching to other kids when he was aged 10, actively objected to drinking and dancing as "sinful", and held funerals for small animals on his parents' property, including one for a cat he personally stabbed to death. Due to all this creepy behavior, Jones was an outcast for much of his early life; his peers and neighbors described him as a weird kid, obsessed with religion and death. Still, he was very well-read and studied world leaders like [[File:Stalin.png]] Stalin, [[File:Mao.png]] Mao, [[File:Hitler.png]] Hitler, and Gandhi. He graduated from both high school and college early and with honors. Jones's status as an outcast also helped him sympathize with the [[File:Blacknat.png]] African-American community. This drove a wedge between him and his father, especially after he refused to let one of Jones' black friends into their house. After his parents split up, Jones moved to Richmond, Indiana, where he finished high school and met his future wife Marceline Baldwin. The two married in 1949. While attending the University of Indiana Bloomington, Jones was impressed by a speech made by Eleanor Roosevelt about the plight of African-Americans. He was also continuously harassed after he attended a meeting of the [[File:CPUSA.png]] Communist Party USA. Jones became increasingly frustrated with the open hostility toward Communists, especially from the Rosenberg trial and after his mother was harassed by the FBI in front of her co-workers for coming with him to such an event. After many years of struggling, Jones decided that the best way to demonstrate his own brand of Marxism was to infiltrate the church. In 1952, he became a student minister at a Methodist church in a very poor and predominately-white neighborhood in Indianapolis. While the Methodist superintendent helped him get a start, he didn't comply with Jones's request to hold racially integrated congregations. It was also around this time that Jones witnessed a faith-healing session, which he saw as another means to gain financial resources to accomplish his social goals. So, in 1954, Jones decided to begin his own church in a rented space in Indianapolis, known as the Community Unity Church. In 1956, Jones bought his first church building in a racially-mixed neighborhood. Initially known as the Wings of Deliverance, it was later changed to the Peoples <ref>not "Peoples'" nor "People's"; Jones specifically avoided the apostrophe as it "symbolized ownership" </ref>Temple Full Gospel Church. It was also around this time that Jones donned his famous sunglasses. Jones and the Peoples Temple garnered a lot of publicity. They set up large conventions that drew thousands, held faith-healing sessions, impressed people by revealing private information supposedly through clairvoyance, preached egalitarian ideals, happily accepted members of all races, opened a soup kitchen, and even bought time on a local AM station to air Jones's sermons over the radio. Jones had been ordained as a minister in the mainline Protestant Disciples of Christ denomination, which helped the Temple's credibility in the religious community. Jones was later appointed to the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission for his deeds. Of course, [[File:Peoples Temple.png]] Peoples Temple really only existed to fund his own social goals and spread his Marxist doctrine. Accounts from former members have revealed that they were taught about socialism rather than religion. Jones discouraged romantic and sexual relationships between Temple members, but engaged in many adulterous relationships of his own with both male and female followers, even fathering a child from one of them. Jones would later state to his Temple that he was "the one true heterosexual".