![]() ![]() Jones said: "Those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion had to be brought to enlightenment - socialism." Oh, and Jones was a drug addict, preferring literal opiates to metaphorical ones.Īs media scrutiny increased and his political profile became more complicated, Jones became concerned that the Peoples Temple's tax-exempt religious status in the U.S. In the following years, Jones abandoned all pretenses of Christianity and revealed himself to be an atheist who had simply used religion as a tool to legitimize his views. ![]() And where would that new Eden be? Jones selected the remote town of Redwood Valley, California, and moved the Peoples Temple (and its peoples.) there prior to the deadline.Īs you know, that end-of-the-world deadline came and went with no nuclear holocaust. He even specified a date (July 15, 1967), and suggested that after the apocalypse, a socialist paradise would exist on Earth. They also had one biological child.) Jones called his adopted retinue the "Rainbow Family," and he made a name for himself desegregating various institutions in Indiana.Īs the Peoples Temple grew throughout the 1960s, Jones lost the plot on the whole Marxism thing, and began to preach about an impending nuclear apocalypse. (Other adopted children included three Korean Americans, a Native American, and a handful of white kids. In fact, they were the first white family in Indiana to adopt an African American boy. ![]() While Jones was a cult leader and ultimately a homicidal madman, there was one bright spot: Jones and his wife Marceline were strongly in favor of racial integration, and they adopted a bunch of kids from different racial backgrounds. The Peoples Temple was arguably a cult, demanding serious dedication (and financial support) from its members. Long story short, he was a communist and occasional Methodist minister who founded his own pseudo-church in the late 1950s, the "Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church," known in short as the "Peoples Temple." (And yes, the omission of the possessive apostrophe is intentional, as the name apparently refers to peoples of the world.) While Jones called it a church, it was actually his version of a Marxist commune, with a smattering of Christian references thrown into his sermons/diatribes. Jones proposed that people perform a mass suicide as a way of showing their devotion.Before we get to the Kool-Aid part, let's recap some horrible American history. What happened next was an immense tragedy. Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple, called the people to gather there as a reaction to the murders of several people, most notably the U.S. The members of the Peoples Temple, a religious movement founded by cult leader Jim Jones had a large meeting at the Jonestown pavilion. The phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” originated from the events that occurred on November 18, 1978, in Jonestown Guyana. However, the meaning we most often apply to the phrase is one of blind devotion to a purpose or a cause. Sometimes it is used in a humorous way to describe people that change the way they act or think because of peer pressure or wanting to follow the popular trends. The phrase is often used negatively, and due to its origins being tied to the Jonestown deaths, many people consider it to be offensive. People use it to refer to a person that will continue to believe in a dangerous idea because it expects high rewards from it. Drinking the Kool-Aid is an expression that is most often tied to someone’s blind belief in a cause of some sort. ![]()
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