Jim Jones: A Brief Biography And Analysis

Jim Jones was born in rural Randolph county Indiana to James Thurman Jones and Lynetta Putnam. Lynetta was said to believe that she had given birth to the messiah. During the great depression, in 1934 the Jones family moved to Lynn Indiana. Jones was said to have studied on Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler. He concentrated on the strengths and weaknesses of each. Jones also developed a great interest in the idea of religion. Early on in his adulthood he was married to Marceline Baldwin and moved to Bloomington Indiana. Here he attended Indiana University Bloomington, were he was impressed by a speech on African Americans. In 1951, Jones moved to Indianapolis. Here he attended night school at Butler University with a major in education. Here he also started attending meetings for the Communist party. (November 2013) …show more content…
He became a student pastor not long after starting. Not long after this though, the leaders of the church threw him out because of him letting blacks into the congregation. After this, Jones witnessed a faith-healing service at a Seventh Day Baptist Church. He saw that this was an attraction to allot of people. He believed that the financial gains from such services as this could give him all he needed to reach his goals. Jones organized a very large religious convention in 1956 in the Cadle Tabernacle. To draw in a larger crowd Jones brought in Rev. William M. Branham, an evangelist and religious leader that was highly thought of by Oral Roberts. After this convention, Jones had raised enough money to create his own church. He named the church The Peoples Temple Christian Church Full