The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

by Jeff Guinn

When Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, thwarting enemies who sought to capture and humiliate him, Jimmy was impressed.

A Mr. McFarland took over an old storefront on Highway 36, just across from a grocery store, and announced the opening of an Apostolic church. He stuck up flyers all over town promising that if people came to the services, there’d be speaking in tongues. The pastors of Lynn’s other churches didn’t like it. These Apostolics,

These Apostolics, whom some called Pentecostals, were actively trying to recruit. Briefly, it worked. People in Lynn had never seen anything like it, folks actually dropping down on the floor, rolling around, babbling gibberish. It was wonderful entertainment.

whom some called Pentecostals, w...

trying to recruit. Briefly, it worked. People in Lynn had never seen anything like it, folks actually dropping down on the floor, rolling around, babbling gibberish. It was wonderful entertainment. Townspeople went once or tw...

Where he’d earlier quoted scripture and urged loving brotherhood, now he spat out angry diatribes dismissing the Bible as propaganda and suggesting himself as a modern-day prophet.

Jones usually stopped just short of declaring himself to be God. But from that time forward, he led his congregation toward that conclusion. A sermon he delivered in 1975 offers the best example: “The mind that was in Christ Jesus is in me now. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. If you think you see a man, a man I am. But if you think you see God, God is here. What matters is, ‘Who do you say I am?’ ”

But he would no longer have the capacity to learn from mistakes, because he didn’t believe that, as a superior incarnation, he could make any. In the future, anything that didn’t work exactly according to Jones’s desires would be the fault of flawed followers or implacable enemies—and, with each passing day, Jones became more convinced that he had enemies everywhere.

But he expected his closest associates to acknowledge him as godlike and this troubled some of them, Ross Case and Archie Ijames especially. It took Ijames some time to come around. Case never did. But other Jones followers either believed immediately—they were certain they’d seen him demonstrate otherwise inexplicable powers—or, like Jack Beam, didn’t care what outrageous claims Jones made about being God. The socialist principles that he shared with them were what mattered.

Jones knew how to insert himself in controversy, how to exploit black frustration and confront white opposition.

Similar a la tendencia neopentecostal actual en Costa Rica

“I will not work on a religious basis under any circumstances where I cannot work in the name of Jesus for his glory.” Case anticipated a clean, friendly break. He’d continue living and working in Ukiah, enjoying an ongoing relationship with Temple members there. Jones saw Case’s decision as betrayal, and made other plans for him. But those had to wait.

Once informal, cordial connections were established, Jones would personally call the individual, building a relationship, discussing some shared critical concern—better local school curriculums, the need for cleanup around a local lake—and offering the Temple’s help if ever the church’s new friend required it. After hanging up from one such conversation, Jones beamed and boasted to the associates around him, “I never played chess, but to me, all of this is like chess. You move pieces around.”

In subsequent Sunday sermons, Jones began stressing his visions. He kept them both catastrophic and vague. In August 1966, he announced that Peoples Temple was about to enter “an accident cycle.” This dangerous phase would run through September 16. If everyone was careful, if they believed in Jim Jones, it was possible for Temple membership to emerge from the crisis without a fatality.

as a reward to young Mike Cartmell for rushing into the ravine with him after the Freestone car crash, Jones informed the teenager that he was the reincarnated spirit of Trotsky.

Jones still recognized Jesus as more than human. It was just that imperfect men had written an equally flawed book about him.

Perhaps there weren’t that many members now, two hundred or so, but more were coming. In the meantime, his current flock should enjoy him in a more intimate setting while it could: “You’re getting the best of me. In four or five years, when there are masses around me, I’ll be talking more simply. I’ll have to dumb it down for the larger audience.”

The subterfuge involved was simple. Plants in the audience would call out for Father Jim to heal them of the dread disease. They would be escorted to bathrooms by other Temple members in on the act. There, they’d unwrap smuggled packages of rotting chicken innards and return claiming that the sufferer had “passed” the tumor at Jones’s command. To heighten the effect, Temple members not in on the plan would be handed the foul-looking, smelly trophies, and ordered to march up and down the aisles, presenting the ghastly lumps as proof of the healing. Only the most gullible were selected for this responsibility. Jones instructed these followers not to let any visitors look too closely at, let alone touch, the supposed

tumors. If someone tried to examine one too closely, Jones said, its bearer should swallow it immediately, since the cancers were so contagious that contact would likely cause instant infection. The selected tumor bearers blanched. Wouldn’t they get cancer by touching the tumors, too? Jones promised that he’d use his powers to prevent it.

his usual Redwood Valley sermons rarely cited the Bible except to denigrate it,

Jones even allowed his older sons and their friends to observe the tricks involved in his healings. Far from being disappointed, they enjoyed the entire process, especially when the healings were completed.

There were numerous unhappy marriages within the Temple, often because of Jones’s matchmaking. Even the happiest unions involved members whose first loyalty was to Jones rather than to each other. Marriages to outsiders were never approved.

Many in Jonestown were part of extended family units, joined in the settlement by spouses, children, cousins, parents, or assorted in-laws. So, more than ever, Jones encouraged followers to spy on each other and report any hint of disloyalty. Someone unhappy in Jonestown and ready to run away ran a grave risk by discussing it in apparent confidence with family members or friends. No one completely trusted anyone else, and if Jones found out, punishment would result.

There is nothing humane about death by cyanide. As a means of suicide, its only advantage is absolute lethality if taken in sufficient dosage. Cyanide robs the body’s cells of the ability to absorb oxygen in the blood. Suffocation is sure—and slow. In The Poisoner’s Handbook, Deborah Blum writes, “The last minutes of a cyanide death are brutal, marked by convulsions, a desperate gasping for air, a rising bloody froth of vomit and saliva, and finally a blessed release into unconsciousness.” As the nurses used syringes to squirt poison into the mouths of the first few infants, many parents herding their children forward hesitated, particularly when the babies began foaming at the mouth and convulsing.

But the Jonestown deaths quickly became renowned not as a grandly defiant revolutionary gesture, but as the ultimate example of human gullibility.

“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” became a jokey catchphrase for not foolishly following deranged leaders.

Demagogues recruit by uniting a disenchanted element against an enemy, then promising to use religion or politics or a combination of the two to bring about rightful change.

Politicos