On November 18, 1978, "events in an isolated village in South America gave the world a sudden shock" (Galanter 119). On this date, 913 followers of Jim Jones and the Peoples' Temple committed a mass suicide in Northern Guyana, at a site called Jonestown. The casualties included almost the entire membership of the People's Temple. Based upon this, my opinion is that the People's Temple was full of problems from beginning to end. The chaos began with a man named Jim Jones, continued with the organization of People's Temple, and ended with the events on November 18, 1978.
             Born on May 13, 1931 near Lynn, Indianapolis, Jim Jones became known as one of the most destructive charismatic cult leaders of this century. Jones held bachelor degrees from Indiana University and Butler University and belonged to a mainline Christian denomination, ordained in the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ. According to Professor J.M. Weightsman, author of Making Sense of the Jonestown Suicides, "He preached a 'social gospel' of human freedom, equality, and love, which required helping the least and the lowliest of society's members. Later on, however, this gospel became explicitly socialistic, or communistic in Jones' own view, and the hypocrisy of white christianity was ridiculed while 'apostolic socialism' was preached" (Weightsman 24).
             Jones was a very ill man with a mental illness aggravated by his abuse of prescription drugs which, in turn, made him increasingly paranoid. Dr. Carlton Goodlett, Jones' physician in San Francisco said that Jones was "frying his brain with drugs and that he had noticed that the refrigerator in Jones' cabin [. . .] was well stocked with drugs," (Maaga 91). According to Marc Galanter, Professor of Law and South Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, states that this is why Jones claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus, as well as Ikhnaton, Buddha, Lenin, and Father Divine. ...