Word: jonesism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Before he entered his teens, Jones picked up religion from a neighbor, Mrs. Myrtle Kennedy, who was a devout member of the Church of the Nazarene. He took to carrying a Bible, but no one made fun of the husky boy, who got into fights easily. He was a natural...
He would preach to them, sometimes frightening his listeners with visions of a hell where, with senses undiminished, sinners burned forever. His first chance to mount a real pulpit came when he was 14 and working at a nearby hospital; some of his black co-workers invited him to bring...
Jones briefly attended Indiana University in Bloomington, but left for Indianapolis to preach and later form his own church. He went to night school at Butler University there, and ten years later he finally won a degree in education. At matriculation, he listed his religion as Unitarian, and for a...
He had one son and adopted other children, ultimately eight in all, including blacks and Koreans. He once heard an affluent black doctor at an adoption agency reject a child because he was "too black." Snapped Jones: "Well, I'll take him then." The mayor appointed him the first...
These frustrations were accompanied, in late 1961, by a kind of vision of a nuclear holocaust destroying Indianapolis. Having read a magazine article listing a selection of the best places in the world to avoid an atomic war, Jones took his wife and three children to one of them, Belo...