Destructive Cults, The Peoples Temple And Jehovah's Witnesses

A cult is a small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister according to Google’s dictionary. When we think of cults we think of mass murders or crazy leaders. Those cults are destructive cults, a destructive (or totalist) cult exploits its members' vulnerability in order to gain complete control over them, often using unethical psychological techniques to bring about thought reform (HowStuffWorks). One should understand that there is destructive and non destructive cults. In this essay I’ll talk about the mentality of cults, the People’s Temple, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. First of all, it’s important to understand that there are destructive and non destructive cults.

It started as an organization that was for civil rights, homes for the elderly and people with mental health issues in Indianapolis. Jim Jones started as a student pastor at Somerset Methodist Church. Jones’ church (Methodist Church) didn’t allow African Americans in, so it forced Jones to leave. During this time he gathered the first members of Peoples Temple. Jones opened the first interracial church in Indianapolis. He first named the church “Wings of Deliverance” then renamed it later to “Community Unity Church” according to Historic Indianapolis. In 1956, Jim bought his first church where he renamed it to “People’s Temple Full Gospel Church”(Historic Indianapolis). They were known for its social activism in Indianapolis. People’s temple ran a soup kitchen, led canned food drives, operated nursing homes and services for the disabled. During this time, Jones told the members to call him dad or father and to consider him as an incarnation of God. In 1960, Jim Jones was appointed director of the Human Rights Commission. He helped end racial segregation in churches, restaurants, theaters, Riverside Amusement Park, and the Methodist Hospital (Historic Indianapolis). In 1965, Jones read an article from Esquire that listed places to survive if there was a nuclear war so he warned the others. Jones moved his family and the People’s Temple to Redwood Valley in California. In the early 1970s, their cult spread through

The group Jehovah’s Witnesses was founded by Charles Taze Russell in 1879. Charles was born in 1852 and was a Pittsburgh businessman. He was raised a Congregationalist, but then converted to agnostic in 1869. Late, Charles went to a Second Adventist Bible study where he became interested in the idea that the Bible could be used to predict God’s plan of salvation (britannica). He regains his faith and decided to start Bible study groups and a religious publishing company. In 1872, Charles Russell finds the International Bible Students Association in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During the late 1870s, he published books and magazines about his beliefs that the Second Coming of Christ had occurred but invisibly in 1874 and that Christ was going to return visibly in 1914. In 1884 the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania was incorporated with himself as president. In 1886, Russell starts writing Studies in Scriptures which was Russell’s major theological work (Encyclopedia). It contains seven volumes and the early history of Jehovah’s Witnesses. In 1909 Russell moved its headquarters from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Brooklyn, New York. Charles Russell dies in 1916 and is succeeded by Joseph Franklin Rutherford. He was the one who changed the group’s name to Jehovah’s Witnesses because he wanted to emphasize its members’ belief that Jehovah is the true God and that the Witnesses were his chosen