Peoples Temple (Jim Jones)

Peoples Temple (sometimes spelt People’s Temple) was a Christian movement founded by Jim Jones.

It combined elements of Pentecostalism with socialist and multiracial utopianism and millennialism. At the peak of its membership it had around 5000 members across a number of churches in California. In the late 1970s, Jones and members moved to the jungle of Guyana to establish an agricultural project which became known as Jonestown.The movement is infamous for the events which unfolded there in November 1978: the murder of a US congressman and four other people, followed by the mass murder and suicide of over 900 residents of Jonestown, a third of them children under 18. The word Jonestown has become synonymous with utopian millennial movements and violence.