Jonestown

This was a Christian destructive, doomsday cult founded and led by James Warren Jones (1931-1978). The Peoples Temple was initially structured as an inter-racial mission for the sick, homeless and jobless.The Peoples Temple organization did not survive the mass suicide/murder in Guyana.

In the early 1960s Daniel Wright, an independent preacher, gathered a few followers who moved into adjacent homes in Martinsville, Indiana. Formerly known as “God’s Valley”, this community still exists and is stationed in Bedford, Indiana and Hyder, Arizona.

The Love Israel Family was the largest and most prominent communal group in the Washington to emerge during the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. Its founder and leader, born Paul Erdmann (b. 1940) in Germany, was raised primarily in Seattle and became drawn to the hippie culture. Their untraditional spiritual teachings and experimentation with sexual, drug, and other lifestyle practices aroused curiosity and controversy.

Stelle [IL] was founded in 1973 by the Stelle Group, a Chicago organization created by Richard Kieninger. The teachings Kieninger attributed to the Brotherhoods included a prediction that cataclysmic earth changes were to occur circa the year 2000, as well as recommendations for individual advancement through education, practice of Twelve Great Virtues and an emphasis on right action to improve one’s karma.

The community was founded in 1968 by Kirtanananda Swami and Hayagriva in West Virginia. New Vrindaban is a society based on Krishna Consciousness, or love of God. This community is strictly vegetarian and believes that meat consumption creates negative karma.