The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

by Jeff Guinn

Gradually, Jones won his wife over to what she once would have considered radical ideals. Marceline would never have believed herself to be a racist, but she came to her marriage with little real understanding of the plight of American blacks. Through her husband’s ministry, Marceline became committed to racial equality. She also accepted some of his other beliefs, in particular the possibility of reincarnation and the inconsistencies of the Bible. Marceline knew Jim Jones too well ever to think of him as God or the returned Christ, but she did agree that he had powers which transcended normal human limits. At some point Marceline discovered that most, if not all, of his healings and prophecies were stage-managed. She accepted the deception, to the point where she would eventually claim that her husband miraculously cured her of cancer.