The Peoples Temple

The Peoples Temple

Jon Mayled continues his series on cults and sects with an examination of the notorious Peoples Temple

Jon Mayled

Although the Branch Davidians and the Waco massacre are now probably better known than the story of the Peoples Temple, the latter remains one of the most gruesome events relating to new religious movements (NRMs). The Peoples Temple has been described as a Christian destructive, doomsday cult. It was founded and led by James Warren ‘Jim’ Jones (1931–78).

Jim Jones

Jim Jones was born in Randolph County. His mother reportedly believed she had given birth to a Messiah. He claimed partial Cherokee ancestry through his mother. As a child, Jones read and studied the works Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler. He also developed a great interest in religion. A confirmed communist, at one point he asked himself: ‘…how can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church. So I consciously made a decision to look into that prospect’ (Wessinger 2000).

Jones was surprised when a Methodist superintendent, despite knowing that Jones was a communist, helped him to ordination, and in 1952 he became a student pastor in Sommerset Southside Methodist Church in Indianapolis. (Other sources suggest he was actually ordained into the Disciples of Christ.) He soon left this church because it barred him from integrating African-Americans into the congregation, and in 1954 he started his own church, naming it the Community Unity Church. Jones had seen a faith healing in a Seventh Day Baptist Church and decided that performing healings would attract people and produce money which he could use to develop his social goals. Both Jones and some of his church members began to perform fake healings where chicken livers and so on were used and declared to be cancerous tissue. So successful was this method of fundraising that in 1956 Jones bought a church building in a racially mixed Indianapolis neighbourhood. Originally called the ‘Wings of Deliverance’, later that year it was renamed the Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church.

Good news for the poor

Jones was a great publicist and organised large religious ‘conventions’ in Indianapolis and other cities in Indiana and Ohio. These attracted up to 11,000 attendees, and Jones and the other preachers conducted ‘healings’ and revealed personal information that private detectives had discovered beforehand. Soon the Temple had increased its African-American membership from 15% to nearly 50%. They then hired an African-American preacher, Archie Ijames (1913– 2004). In 1959, the church joined the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) —a mainline Protestant Christian denomination in the USA — and was renamed the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel. The Temple then expanded its work for the poor and opened a soup kitchen providing about 2,800 meals per month for the poor, and also provided rent assistance, employment services, free canned goods, clothing and coal for the winter.

Jones had visited Father Divine (Reverend Major Jealous Divine, 1876–1965), the founder of the International Peace Mission movement. The Temple now began to teach that members should abstain from sex and adopt children instead. Jones began to adapt his preaching style to match that of Father Divine. He taught about their home for senior citizens, which he said was established on the teaching ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program). He knew that the congregation would associate this with the following passage:

‘There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.’

Acts 4:34– 35

Jones frequently used this text when arguing that Jesus was a communist. He then formed the Temple into a socialist collective, which he called ‘religious communalism’. Members donated all their material possessions to the Temple in exchange for the Temple meeting all their needs. The Temple’s religious teaching changed to a position between atheism and the idea that Jones was a Christ-like figure. Indeed, when Father Divine died, Jones claimed to be his reincarnation as a Messiah.

Separation from Christianity

An article published in Esquire magazine (1962) listed the nine safest places to be in a nuclear war. In 1965 Jones predicted that there would be a nuclear holocaust on 15 July 1967. The elect (members of the Temple) would create a new socialist Eden with Jones as ‘Christ the Revolution’. The Temple moved to Redwood Valley, California in July 1965. At this time Jones began teaching that traditional Christianity was a ‘fly away religion’. He said that the Bible contained great truths but was full of contradictions and absurdities. The Bible contained only a ‘Sky God’ or ‘Buzzard God’ who was no god at all.

In 1970, the Temple began holding services in San Francisco and Los Angeles and soon established churches in these cities. Membership had risen to almost 3,000. However, despite Jones’ egalitarian teaching, the Temple’s governing structure was almost exclusively white. Temple members were subjected to sophisticated mind control and behaviour modification techniques modelled on those used in the People’s Republic of China.

The Temple now used between ten and 15 Greyhound-type buses to take members across California each week for recruitment and fundraising. Jones rode in bus number seven, with armed guards and a section lined with protective metal plates. The Temple’s goal for annual net income from bus trips was $1 million. It also set up Truth Enterprises, a direct-mailing branch that sent out 30,000 to 50,000 letters every month to people who had attended Temple services or had written in after listening to Temple radio shows. Donations produced between $300 and $400 a day. The Temple became highly respected for its work among the poor, homeless and elderly.

DONATIONS PRODUCED BETWEEN $300 AND $400 A DAY. THE TEMPLE BECAME HIGHLY RESPECTED FOR ITS WORK AMONG THE POOR, HOMELESS AND ELDERLY.

Emerging criticism

In 1972, the first exposé of the Temple was published in the San Francisco Examiner, and the Indianapolis Star ran the first four parts of a seven-part story on the Temple by Lester Kinsolving. Jones threatened the papers with libel action and they stopped publication after the first four articles. Jones then made grants to Californian newspapers in support of the First Amendment:

‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’

First Amendment to the United States Constitution (17 91)

When, in 1973, eight young members defected from the Temple — the ‘Gang of Eight’ — Jones called 30 Temple members to his home and said that, in light of the defection, ‘in order to keep our apostolic socialism, we should all kill ourselves and leave a note saying that because of harassment, a socialist group cannot exist

’ at this time’ (‘Paranoia and Delusions’, TIME magazine, 11 December 1978).

In 1974, the Peoples Temple leased 3,800 acres of land in Guyana. The community there was called the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, or ‘Jonestown’. It had as few as 50 residents in early 1977. The Guyanese government gave the Temple permission to import certain items ‘duty free’. Bribes to customs officials helped the Temple to bring in shipments of firearms and drugs. The Guyanese immigration procedures were also compromised to stop the departure of Temple defectors and curtail the visas of any Temple opponents.

The Peoples Temple in Guyana

In 1977, after being notified of another article that was to appear in the New West magazine, Jim Jones left for Guyana and encouraged Temple members to follow him there. By the end of 1978 the population of Jonestown had grown to over 900 people. When Jones moved to Jonestown films were banned and replaced with Soviet propaganda shorts and documentaries on American social problems. Initially, Temple members worked 6 days a week, from approximately 6.30 a.m. to 6.00 p.m., with an hour for lunch. This was later reduced to 8 hours a day for 5 days a week. After work, members had to attend several hours of activities in a pavilion, including classes in socialism.

Temple members lived in small communal houses and on many days their meals consisted of nothing more than rice, beans, greens and occasionally meat, sauce and eggs. As a result of the poor diet, medical problems, such as severe diarrhoea and high fevers, struck half the community in February 1978. Various forms of punishment were used with members who were considered to have serious disciplinary problems. These included imprisonment in a plywood box measuring just 1.8 × 1.2 × 0.9 metres, and forcing children to spend a night at the bottom of a well, sometimes upside down. For members who attempted to escape, drugs such as chlorpromazine, sodium pentathol, chloral hydrate, pethidine and diazepam were administered in an ‘extended care unit’. Monthly welfare payments of $65,000 from US government agencies to Jonestown residents were signed over to the Temple. In late 1978 the Temple’s wealth was estimated to be approximately $26 million.

Jones’ health worsened in Jonestown. He complained of high blood pressure, strokes, weight loss, temporary blindness, convulsions and insomnia. Much of this was attributed to abusing injectable diazepam, methaqualone, stimulants and barbiturates. Jones’ mental state also deteriorated rapidly during 1978. He had a deep-seated persecution complex, paranoia and megalomania, which grew steadily worse.

The ‘Concerned Relatives’

In late 1977 and early 1978, Tim and Grace Stoen held meetings with other relatives of Jonestown residents at the home of Jeannie Mills, another defector. They called themselves the ‘Concerned Relatives’. Tim Stoen led letter-writing campaigns to the US secretary of state and the government of Guyana, and travelled to Washington to attempt to begin an investigation into the Temple.

Leo Ryan, a San Francisco congressman, visited Jonestown on 17 November 1978 to investigate claims of abuse made against the Temple by the ‘Concerned Relatives’. While he was there a number of members told him they wished to leave. Therefore, on 18 November they went with him to the airstrip at Port Kaituma. When they arrived they were met by Temple security guards who opened fire on them. Ryan, three journalists and one of the Temple defectors were killed.

There is a 44-minute cassette tape, commonly called the ‘death tape’, which was recorded at a meeting Jones called under the pavilion in the early evening of that day. Before the meeting, Temple aides prepared a large metal tub with Flavor Aid, poisoned with diazepam, chloral hydrate, cyanide, and promethazine. Jones urged all Temple members to commit ‘revolutionary suicide’. He said ‘Let’s make it a beautiful day’ and mentioned possible reincarnation. According to one Temple member who managed to escape, the first to take the poison were Ruletta Paul and her 1-year-old infant. A syringe was used to squirt poison into the infant’s mouth and then Paul squirted another syringe into her own mouth. The poison caused death within 5 minutes.

Jones told them:

‘Die with a degree of dignity. Lay down your life with dignity; don’t lay down with tears and agony…I tell you, I don’t care how many screams you hear, I don’t care how many anguished cries…death is a million times preferable to ten more days of this life. If you knew what was ahead of you — if you knew what was ahead of you, you’d be glad to be stepping over tonight.’

Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project

A total of 918 people died, including 276 children.

JONES’ MENTAL STATE ALSO DETERIORATED RAPIDLY DURING 1978. HE HAD A DEEP-SEATED PERSECUTION COMPLEX, PARANOIA AND MEGALOMANIA, WHICH GREW STEADILY WORSE.

Conspiracy theories

Some people have said that the Peoples Temple was an experimental laboratory operated for or by the CIA in order to perfect mind-control techniques. Others have suggested that Jones worked closely with the communist governments of Cuba and the USSR in the hope of eventually moving the Temple to the USSR. Some argue that Jonestown was a highly successful grass-roots demonstration of what people could accomplish once they break free of capitalism and join in a common cause. They claim that the US government assassinated the people at Jonestown because they could not allow it to succeed.

Conclusion

Despite claiming that the Temple was a Christian organisation, Jones was an atheist by the time he went to Guyana. It would seem that to label the Jonestown killings as mass suicide is to ignore the evidence: it is probably best described as mass killing.

Jon Mayled is the author of many religious studies textbooks.