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Comparing Milgram's Obedience And The Jonestown Massacre

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Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual behaves in a way as a response to an order from an authority figure. Conformity is the act of matching behaviors or beliefs to a group norm. Obedience is different from conformity because obedience occurs when a person is told to do something, whereas conformity occurs through social pressure; there is a hierarchy of power involved with obedience.

Stanley Milgram studied obedience shortly after World War II when Nazi soldiers defended themselves on the basis of obedience of their superiors during the Nuremburg Trials. Milgram was interested to find if these soldiers were truly just following orders, or if they were accomplices finding a defense for their actions. This prompted him …show more content…

In the 1970s, a man by the name of Jim Jones started a religious cult in Africa. Over nine hundred followers of Jones willingly participated in a mass suicide. Jones asserted himself as a man of God, he was the authority figure. These people joined his temple to worship God and receive his praises. Jones spun words that these people listened to because he was the authority, the closest man to God these people had. Like Milgram, Jones told people what to do and these people listened. Unlike Milgram though, this was not an experiment. This was a real life situation of misguided …show more content…

He found that most individuals will ignore their own moral boundaries in the presence of an authority figure. These individuals ignore their own beliefs even more so when prompted more than once to do what they were ordered to do (ie willing to give a lethal shock to a stranger when told to do so two or three times). This ideality is what happened in Jonestown. Jim Jones led these people astray in a cult disguised by religion. He told his followers what they wanted to hear to gain their trust, to manipulate them to the point where they would do anything he said. After claims of abuse and other issues surfaced about this supposed utopian society, Jim Jones ordered his followers to ingest poisoned punch as guards stood by. Those who refused were forced to swallow or were shot. Over nine hundred individuals followed Jones to the grave because he ordered them to do so. They killed themselves, and their loved ones, without a second

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He was a follower of the new church. Johnny Appleseed

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There are articles that ask the question, how did Jones convince people to move to this settlement in the middle of nowhere? It was a slow gradual change. There were many who stated with him from his first church in Indianapolis, but many did leave along the way. As Jones went on he gained more loyal supporters. He used religious tactics at first, preaching messages from the Bible but as he went on his message changed after he had convinced these people to stay with him.

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze how Jim Jones slowly and manipulatively built his congregation through a recognition that he could capitalize on and exploit individual’s troubles in order to achieve, keep, and act out his authority. The social, religious, and economic climate of the 1960s combined with the chaos of the 1970s created the dependency, idealism, and rationalization that Jim Jones used to slowly yet blatantly manipulate his way to power and eventually create Jonestown. Jim Jones was born in rural Crete. Indiana on May 13, 1931, to Lynetta and James Jones. Early on Jones was different from the other children he grew up around.

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THe members understood that they needed to create the “First African Church.” Most of the blacks favored the Episcopal Church, knowing the members had different religious views (Free African Society of Philadelphia). When the Free African Society was forced to segregate, most of the members did not agree with Methodism and wanted to worship at the Episcopal Church. Though Jones wanted to continue to be a Methodist, he caved and was the minister to the African Episcopal CHurch of St. Thomas. Jones and Reverend William White later agreed to ordained

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Jones was present during the Ludlow Massacre and Colorado Coal Strike in 1913 (Ford 265). She testified before Congress about the twenty women and children who were killed by the Colorado militia (Ford 265). She tried to bring an end to the violence by lobbying President Wilson and creating protest groups for miners (Ford 265). She tried to make a change for the better after she saw the violence against the women and children during that

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Here, it is important to note Jones’ description of the origins, resurgence, and current

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He spoke out against becoming judgemental and making the Gospel seem exclusively for Western Christians. Thus, Jones’ work in contextualizing the Gospel and supporting insider movements as contributed significantly to missiology. (4) Moreover, Jones’ exhibited how to advocate for reconciliation. His work encourages us to strive to be at peace with everyone. (5) Finally, the prayer-filled life he displayed throughout his lifetime serves as a beautiful reminder of the importance of acting in accordance with God and displaying Christlikeness whenever we are given the opportunity to serve others.

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Jim Jones was religious cult leader who started the Peoples Temple and lead a group to Guyana, South America. He convinced people that he was God, but that changed when he started making them participate in dangerous practices. To see if the people of Jonestown were loyal to him, he would hold suicide practices, called "White Nights"where followers would drink a liquid that they believed was poisonous. Jim Jones gave members relentless punishments if they went against him and were forced to work strenuously out in the fields. Late at night, they were compelled to go to long, tedious meetings and guards kept them in the camp just like slave catchers.

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Furthermore, I learned from this documentary that Jim Jones was someone that did not practice what he preached and a manipulator that had a lot of power, but I was surprised by the amount of people he had such an impact on. He nurtured and protected them when society turned them away and I recognized that is how he gained all of that power. Unfortunately, this power he had resulted in the mass suicide of nine hundred and nine people in Jonestown,

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The congregation of the People’s Temple, devoted to Jim Jones, were led to death on November 18, 1978. Nearly 915 people died and only a few made it out alive. The motive behind this act of unfortunate violence is still unknown. Many believe it was in the hands of Jim Jones himself and others are suspicious there was a cover up.

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Jim Jones was a cruel cult leader with a long, successful career and an idea that ultimately led to the deaths in Jonestown. James Warren Jones was born on May 13, 1931, in Crete, Indiana. Jim Jones was described as a weird kid, and he would usually hold funerals for small animals, Jim even stabbed a cat to death when he was ten-years-old. At around this time, Jim Jones began visiting churches. Jim Jones was also very intolerant of racial discrimination and had African American friends that weren’t allowed to come over.

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These members yearned for bliss and happiness, but instead found themselves in terrible conditions. These members primarily concerned themselves with humanitarian efforts in the Peoples Temple’s communities. Hypocritically, Jim Jones treated his worshippers abusively. Jim Jones used a technique called self-incrimination to punish members of the cult. Jones taught followers to give him “written statements about their fears and mistakes and then, if they disobeyed him, he used that information to humiliate them or subject them to their worst fears during public meetings.”

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Since the beginning of the human existence, man has always dominated and ruled over one another be it empires, corporations, or small groups. Authority and obedience has always been a factor of who we are. This natural occurrence can be seen clearly through the psychological experiments known as The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both of these studies are based on how human beings react to authority figures and what their obedience is when faced with conflict.

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They reached Guyana and Jim Jones had stated that if they did end up leaving the church, it would be a betrayal to him. This should have been a huge red flag if nothing else had worked before this, but it was not. Everyone was just extremely miserable in their lives and wanted a sense of meaning but ended up dead in the jungle instead.” AQUINAS: “This is why faith and reason are inseparable.

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Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple Cult “Jim Jones of the Peoples’s Temple began as a sound, fairly mainstream Christian minister” (Sects, ‘Cults’ & Alternative Religions). Before all the madness Jones seemed like a caring person, that wanted to bring peace to a town he made, Jonestown. Instead it turned into something more horrific. Jim Jones was the manipulative mastermind behind the traumatic events that happened in Jonestown, Guyana, this essay will discuss interviews by people who are survivors of the mass suicide, and dive into the crazy conspiracies that have emerged, and finally conclude with the death of the Peoples Temple.

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