He Wore His Sunglasses Indoors For Heaven's Sake

            
             He Wore His Sunglasses Indoors For Heaven's Sake.
             Is that man on the cover page Roy Orbison? No, that's James Warren Jones, ordained minister of the "Disciples of Christ" Christian Denomination, highly regarded political figure and humanitarian, and megalomaniacal mass-murderer. Despite the fact that, in retrospect, Reverend Jim Jones seems parsecs away from the type of person one would expect to be the leader of a widespread socio-political religious movement, we are forgetting that it was the 1970's, and the Jonestown mishap was the first of its breed. Yet, anyone with brains ought to have noticed that good ol" Jim was a little light in his loafers, right? Well, sit down, make yourself comfortable have a glass of Kool-Aid: this is a sociological study of the unwitting adherents, the enigmatic figurehead, and their concurrent descent.
             Jones was born of lowly origins in Indiana at the height of the Great Depression. It is speculated that his father belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. His mother, who raised him single-handedly and was skeptical of organized religion, as well as a Pentecostal woman who lived near Jones as a child were both theologically influential. They, as well as the Socialist and Communist literature with which he was familiar, would greatly shape the unusual ideology that led to the tragic deaths of nearly a thousand innocents. But the aim of this essay is not to detail the appalling events of November 18, 1978, nor the controversy surrounding them; it is to dissect the personalities involved and their motives for involvement.
             Jones was obviously infatuated with the idea of control. As a child he found extreme gratification from the attention he received while preaching the gospel to pedestrians; he had some degree of control over them for those delicious few moments. Also, aside from the speculation that he employed "mind control" to keep his followers in line, it has recently been discovered that, once he had moved his congregation to California under the pretenses of ensuring safety from a thermonuclear attack, he began taking measures to influence and eventually dominate politics.