This is Religion News Blog's news page on
Peoples Temple. See our front page for more
religion news.
Thursday November 19, 2009
Peoples Temple:

It has taken more than 30 years, but the government of Guyana has erected a memorial plaque at the site of the
Jonestown cult massacre, a dark episode the South American country had long sought to downplay.
A simple, white stone plaque was unveiled with little fanfare Wednesday at the jungle clearing where more than 900 members of the
cult led by the American preacher Jim Jones died in a night of mass murder and suicide on Nov. 18, 1978.
»
Full Story
Monday November 17, 2008
Peoples Temple:

30 years ago more than 900 men, women and children were massacred in a murder-suicide ritual thought up by cult leader Jim Jones.
On Nov. 18, 1978, members of the Jonestown security unit shot and killed congressman Leo Ryan, three journalists and one defector as they attempted to leave an airstrip near the settlement on two planes. The gunmen injured 10 other people, including Speier, who sustained five gunshot wounds.
By the time the airstrip gunmen returned to Jonestown, Jones had gathered his people in the pavilion and had begun preparing them for the end. He used news of Ryan’s shooting to convince the throng that they had no hope, no future, no place to go. “The congressman has been murdered!” he said. “Please get the medication before it’s too late. Don’t be afraid to die.”
»
Full Story
Wednesday November 12, 2008
Peoples Temple:

Cyanide was being bought and shipped to the Rev. Jim Jones’ jungle compound in South America for at least two years before
900 Americans died there at the command of their
cult leader, CNN has learned.
Jones led his followers to their death after his gunmen killed a visiting congressman, Rep. Leo Ryan, and four others, including an NBC News correspondent and his cameraman, on November 18, 1978.
»
Full Story
Saturday May 31, 2008
Peoples Temple:
Of all the comebacks on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jackie Speier’s ranks among the most unexpected. Her first stint here, 30 years ago, nearly killed her.
In November 1978, Speier, then a 28-year-old legal aide to Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.), accompanied the maverick lawmaker, a handful of reporters and concerned family members into the jungles of Guyana to investigate the People’s Temple cult. Cult members attacked and killed Ryan and several members of the entourage.
Speier was shot five times and left for dead, and more than 900 cult members committed mass suicide at the urging of their leader, Jim Jones.
»
Full Story
Wednesday April 9, 2008
Peoples Temple:
Jackie Speier, who as a Congressional aide nearly 30 years ago was shot and left for dead on a Guyana airstrip, won a special election Tuesday for the House seat once held by her former boss
»
Full Story
Saturday October 6, 2007
Peoples Temple:
The question has been asked more than once of Rob Jones by well-meaning but obviously history-challenged inquirers. Essentially, it is: Where were you when family patron Jim Jones led more than 900 of his cult followers in the infamous mass suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid at Jonestown, Guyana?
»
Full Story
Monday April 9, 2007
Peoples Temple:
Tragedy struck the Moore family in 1978 in the form of Peoples Temple, a religious group whose hundreds of members killed themselves at their jungle commune called Jonestown.
»
Full Story
Peoples Temple:
The Rev. Jim Jones’ journey to the Promised Land turned out to be a dead end – a mass murder/suicide in Guyana that took more than 900 lives. Although Jones’ sick tale is familiar, filmmakers Stanley Nelson, Marcia Smith and Noland Walker have produced a riveting documentary about it.
»
Full Story
Saturday March 10, 2007
Peoples Temple:
Stephan Jones hasn’t seen – nor does he plan on seeing – Jonestown: Paradise Lost, a harrowing docudrama recounting the last days of the People’s Temple in the jungles of Guyana in November 1978. He lived through it. Jones is the son of infamous cult leader Jim Jones, the mastermind behind one of the grimmest chapters of the last century.
»
Full Story
Wednesday March 7, 2007
Peoples Temple:
It has been 29 years, but the archival images of those hundreds of corpses, lying just as they fell, scattered across an eerily silent Jonestown compound, are no less shocking or horrific. The tragic saga of Rev. Jim Jones and his followers still has something relevant to say about abused power, unconditional influence and extremist faith.
»
Full Story
Peoples Temple:
“Nobody joins a cult,” insists the former Peoples Temple member Deborah Layton in Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. “You join a religious organization. You join a political movement. You join with people you really like.”
»
Full Story
Monday January 15, 2007
Peoples Temple:
The People’s Temple, the cult that expired in the mass suicide and murder organized by Jim Jones, is often regarded as a cancer that 1960s utopianism wrought, a disease of idealism splintered and sent off course.
»
Full Story
Wednesday November 22, 2006
Peoples Temple:
Mass suicide, or was it mass murder? More than 900 dead — new research and new details, a terrifying look at what turned Jonestown into a killing ground.
»
Full Story
Saturday November 4, 2006
Peoples Temple:
One of the most amazing elements of Stanley Nelson’s riveting new documentary about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple is just how much film footage and audio had been recorded of this cult.
»
Full Story
Friday November 3, 2006
Peoples Temple:
Almost 20 years after he led more than 900 people to suicide, cult leader Jim Jones continues not just to fascinate, but to elude. In Berkeley filmmaker Stanley Nelson’s thoughtful documentary Jonestown, we see footage of Jones we haven’t seen before, but the man’s legendary magnetism remains mysterious.
»
Full Story
Saturday October 21, 2006
Peoples Temple:
Do their new friends encourage them to leave home and move in with them? Do they discourage them from continuing old relationships? Do they ask them to sign over assets, go without sleep, listen to constant lectures, stop following the news and always, always stay on the lookout for traitors? Then the friends they’ve found aren’t part of a normal religion, or genuine movement. They’re part of a cult. And Jonestown: The Life and Death of the Peoples Temple, a fine new documentary, explained how hard it was — and later, tragically impossible — for some people to see that.
»
Full Story
Friday October 20, 2006
Peoples Temple:
In November 1978, 913 people died in a shocking mass murder-suicide, and 28 years later, the Jonestown Massacre still remains the most chilling example of faith turned against the faithful. The group was led by the charismatic Jim Jones, who started his church, the Peoples Temple, in Indiana. He then moved the group to the San Francisco area, and ultimately to a desolate area of Guyana, where the tragedy played out as a concerned group showed up to investigate. Leo Ryan, a California congressman, led the delegation, and was killed by Jones’s guards when he attempted to fly defectors out of the site. Hours later, Jones instructed the group to drink cups of grape Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide.
»
Full Story
Tuesday May 2, 2006
Peoples Temple:
The buzz this past week among movie critics was about United 93, a gut-wrenching film about the courage and heroism of the passengers and crew of the one hijacked plane that didn't hit its intended target on Sept. 11, 2001.
»
Full Story
Monday April 24, 2006
Peoples Temple:
SAN FRANCISCO --When Stanley Nelson set out to make a documentary on
cult leader
Jim Jones and the mass murder-suicide of his followers, his biggest challenge was unearthing enough new footage to make the 28-year-old story seem fresh again.
»
Full Story
Wednesday April 5, 2006
Peoples Temple:
Matt Gonzalez and director Stanley Nelson ponder the fate and impact of Peoples Temple and the truth behind the powerful new doc Jonestown
»
Full Story
Peoples Temple:
Friday December 9, 2005
Peoples Temple:
Wednesday December 7, 2005
Peoples Temple:
BERKELEY -- A surviving member of a Berkeley family some believed were murdered in 1980 because they defected from the
People's Temple cult has been arrested on suspicion of killing his parents and sister.
»
Full Story
Thursday May 26, 2005
Peoples Temple:
Monday May 2, 2005
Peoples Temple:
Older »
Our Peoples Temple news feed with only items about Peoples Temple
Books about Peoples Temple
Apologetics Research Resources on Peoples Temple
Check it out: So you think you
know Jesus?

Religion News Blog (RNB), published by Apologetics Index, highlights news items and other resources on world religions, cults, religious sects, new religious movements, alternative religions, abusive churches and - to a lesser extent - related issues (e.g. ethics, human rights).
The information is provided for research and educational purposes.
RNB's non-profit news clipping service is used by - among others - Christian apologists, countercult professionals, anticult organizations, cult experts, teachers, religion professionals, reporters and other researchers.
Categories / News Trackers:
Samples of the hundreds of religious news subjects covered in Religion News Blog include (click links for respective news trackers): the Alpha Course, Alternative Healing, Catholic Church, Christianity, Cults, Falun Gong, Hate Groups, Interfaith issues, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism / Mormon Church, Polygamy, Religion Trends, Scientology, Transcendental Meditation, Unification Church, Wicca / Witchcraft, and many more.
[More info : How to link]