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... > social science subjects > politics and international relations > global studies > global governance and world order > global religion > movements and organizations > Peoples Temple
... > social science subjects > sociology > sociology of religion > global religion > movements and organizations > Peoples Temple

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Peoples Temple  

Definition

  • The Peoples Temple was a socialist religious sect that rocketed to international prominence in 1978, when more than 900 members of its intentional community in Guyana, South America, took their own lives by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid or were shot for their refusal to do so. The group was led by the charismatic self-styled prophet Jim Jones, whose lifelong battle for racial integration and social equality won him accolades from civil rights organizations but who, in the years leading up to the mass suicide, demanded increasingly authoritarian control over his followers and ratcheted up his rhetoric against what he saw as a conspiracy by a coalition of the U.S. government, the media, and a group of ex-followers to undermine his vision and destroy his movement.Jones was born into the fractured landscape of racial and class tensions that would become his central concern. [Source: Encyclopedia of Global Religion; Peoples Temple]

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https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/Peoples_Temple

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