{"id":737,"date":"2014-12-06T02:08:57","date_gmt":"2014-12-06T10:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/?p=737"},"modified":"2014-12-06T02:08:57","modified_gmt":"2014-12-06T10:08:57","slug":"jim-jones-jesus-of-the-jungle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/2014\/12\/06\/jim-jones-jesus-of-the-jungle\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Jones: Jesus of the Jungle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jim<\/a>About a generation ago, a charismatic preacher and self-proclaimed Jesus called James Warren Jones took about a thousand of his followers to Guyana, to hack out of the jungle a righteous community called (naturally) Jonestown.\u00a0 It was to be an egalitarian Heaven on Earth, a place where the colony\u2019s children could grow up safe and free, without racial prejudice or government persecution, and the old people could live out their lives in peace and the best of care.\u00a0 What happened then added at least two expressions to the language: \u201cJonestown,\u201d as shorthand for a suicide cult; and the phrasal verb \u201cto drink the kool-aid.\u201d<\/p>\n

This messiah, commonly known as the Reverend Jim Jones, was born in 1931 in tiny Crete, Indiana, only child of working-class parents.\u00a0 As a kid, he made an early start on messiahship by preaching sermons on his porch to other kids.\u00a0 As a young man, he set up as a faith healer, removing cancers with an odd resemblance to chicken livers; he preached serially for the Methodists and Pentecostals, but fell out with both.\u00a0 In 1955 he founded his own church in Indianapolis, mixed-race in an era when this was unusual, with services in a style more common in black churches, and a theology mixing old-time Pentecostalism with socialism and civil rights: the Peoples Temple.<\/p>\n

In 1957, he was \u00a0mentored by the superstar evangelist Father Divine, full name Father Major Jealous Divine, born \"FD01\"<\/a>George\u00a0Baker, aka God, messiah of the Peace Mission religious movement since 1932.\u00a0 Relations with Father Divine were warm at first, but\u2014according to Father Divine\u2019s wife, Mother<\/em> Divine, a Vancouver girl some 40 years younger than her husband, and still around\u2014they fell out when Jones announced that he<\/em> was in fact God, and the natural heir to the lucrative Peace Mission empire.\u00a0 This began a long-standing feud between Jones and Mother Divine, the designated successor, who spent the next twenty years fending off Jones\u2019s takeover bids.\u00a0 After Father Divine\u2019s tutelage, however, Jones\u2019s own ministry changed\u2014notably, miraculous healings became a greater feature of his services, using shills planted among the believers for the purpose of being miraculously healed.\u00a0 His church flourished.\u00a0 New members\u2014and money\u2014rolled in.<\/p>\n

Many good works were done in this period.\u00a0 In particular, Jones was strong on racial equality.\u00a0 He and his wife Marceline were the first whites in Indiana to adopt a black child, and eventually acquired a \u201crainbow\u201d family of children of different ethnic origins.\u00a0 In 1960, he was made director of the Indianapolis human rights commission.\u00a0 In 1961, though he had no theological training, he was ordained by the Pentecostal Disciples of Christ.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, cracks were already showing in the Temple fa\u00e7ade.\u00a0 Jones was the true emperor of his little empire; disenchanted members were harassed if they attempted to leave; dark rumours of corruption and abuse began to circulate.\u00a0 When things began to get slightly too hot for him in Indianapolis in the early 1960s, Jones claimed a vision of a coming nuclear apocalypse that would leave the Midwest, including Indianapolis, in smoking ruins; he, however, would lead his worshipful congregation to safety, to await the rise of a socialist paradise from the ashes of the war.\u00a0 In this case, \u201csafety\u201d meant a church commune in Ukiah, Northern California, which Jones had heard would be one of the nine safest places in the world during a nuclear holocaust.<\/p>\n

Jones was a hit in California.\u00a0 Over the next ten years, his following grew to over 3000 members, and opened branches in LA and San Francisco.\u00a0 The Peoples Temple became known for good works among the poor black communities, and got much good publicity; and Jones got to rub shoulders with such luminaries as Angela Davis, Jane Fonda, Rosalyn Carter, and Mayor George Moscone.\u00a0 In 1976, he was co-opted to the San Francisco Housing Authority.\u00a0 Friendly politicians knew Jones could lend them instant crowds by the busload, for rallies or protest marches. The kid preaching to his schoolmates in small-town Indiana had come a very long way.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The rainbow family<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But what was happening inside the Peoples Temple?\u00a0 Jones was the absolute dictator of everything from beliefs to behaviour\u2014even to thoughts, so far as he could control them, which was surprisingly far.\u00a0 The memoirs of defectors give a sense of a kind of slavery, willingly undertaken in the first place, and astoundingly hard to break free of.\u00a0 The commitment he demanded from his followers was total \u2013 they were to cut themselves off from all relationships outside the church, most especially family, except those whom Jones was trying to lure into membership.<\/p>\n

Then there were time commitments: all spare time, up to the early hours of the morning.\u00a0 The temple was to be the centre of the members\u2019 world.\u00a0 As well, there were heavy financial commitments.\u00a0 Devotees were to liquidate and donate all assets to Jones, along with all earnings from outside jobs, savings, welfare cheques, and money borrowed from unconverted family members.\u00a0 They were encouraged to sell their houses and move into the church commune, where Jones could easily control them, either directly, or through spies who would report even the slightest hint of deviation.\u00a0 This ensured members would not form bonds that might compete with their 100% allegiance to the good pastor.\u00a0\u00a0 Any deviations, including even hints of selfishness, sexism or racism, or even lack of cheeriness or courtesy, could be severely punished.\u00a0 Living conditions were spartan, and possessions at a minimum, lest material desires distract the faithful from Jones and from socialist principles. \u00a0At the same time, Jones lived in great comfort, and was addicted to a variety of drugs by 1974 at the latest.\u00a0 This did not help his rationality quotient any.<\/p>\n

Sexual commitments were also demanded. \u00a0Jones was bisexual, though he styled himself the only real heterosexual on the planet.\u00a0 But by the peculiar logic he sold to his followers, they<\/em> were supposed to be celibate with each other, even their own spouses, but be ready to have sex with him, a privilege he exercised with both male and female devotees. \u00a0The lower ranks, though, were encouraged to produce lots of babies.<\/p>\n

\"jones1j\"<\/a>The penalties for any deviation\u2014even suspected thoughtcrime\u2014were brilliantly effective.\u00a0 Scapegoating and shunning were common, but the main technique was called \u201ccatharsis.\u201d This involved public confession and humiliation, often including having to strip naked in front of the congregation, followed by beatings, spankings, or boxing matches with stronger opponents.\u00a0 Those must have been some<\/em> church services.<\/p>\n

The belief system that tied these people to their messiah, which has been called \u201capostolic socialism,\u201d was no orthodox form of Christianity. \u00a0A Marxist and keen admirer of Stalin, Jones melded Marxist-Leninist rhetoric with his own bizarre religious ideas, mainly involving himself. \u00a0\u00a0He was<\/em> God, but he was also a reincarnation of Jesus, the pharaoh Akhenaten, Buddha, Allah, Lenin, and Father Divine.\u00a0 His followers were to call him Father\u2014or Dad.\u00a0 In his own words:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI am causing untold thousands to believe in the Jesus of ancient history by the great miracles of healings, prophecies and discernments I perform in His name!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was in almost the same breath as he stomped on the Bible, and declared, “I come as God Socialist!”\u00a0 And since most of his followers began as devout black evangelical Christians, how did he get away with it?<\/p>\n

First and foremost, he had charisma.\u00a0 He was bright, narcissistic, and very likely a clinical psychopath, with all the plausibility and chameleon charm of the type.\u00a0 He also cheated, performing carefully orchestrated healings and miracles\u2014like changing water into wine\u2014to attract and hold new members.\u00a0\u00a0 Many thought they were joining a fundamentalist Christian church, and stayed because of Jones\u2019s seductive personality.\u00a0 He was the glue that held it all together.<\/p>\n

Second, he frightened them.\u00a0 In the Temple\u2019s sealed-off world, Jones convinced his followers that powerful capitalist forces were out to destroy or enslave them, that the US government was building concentration camps for black people, and that their only hope lay in him.\u00a0 The galloping paranoia he induced in them has a lot to do with the fate of Jonestown.<\/p>\n

Other manipulations helped.\u00a0 While salting away large sums in Swiss bank accounts, Jones projected himself as the only true friend of the poor, especially among the black community.\u00a0 The temple\u2019s outreach was charitable on the surface; many poor people were helped financially, and made to feel valued.\u00a0 Members who had no cash to donate could donate labour instead, effectively becoming a pool of willing slaves.<\/p>\n

His followers fell into two groups, with interesting differences.\u00a0 Although the Peoples Temple was theoretically egalitarian, it was structured as a standard social pyramid. Jones was, of course, in sole occupancy of the top of the heap.\u00a0 Close to him was a high command of about a dozen \u201cangels,\u201d perched atop 100-150 members of the upper echelons, the \u201cplanning committees\u201d.\u00a0 These were mostly white, middle-class, and educated.\u00a0 Below them were the hoi polloi: up to 3000 \u201cordinary\u201d members, mostly black, working class and uneducated.\u00a0 The harsh discipline and \u201ccatharsis\u201d sessions were largely aimed at the angels and upper echelons, reminiscent of Orwell\u2019s novel 1984<\/em>, where party members were terrorized and scrutinized, but the proles were pretty much left alone.<\/p>\n

\"jones3j\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The appeal was different for these two strata.\u00a0 The lower level was drawn from the desperately poor.\u00a0 For them, Jones played the Good Shepherd, offering community, food, and certainty about the world.\u00a0 All he asked in return was total devotion and unquestioning belief.\u00a0 His appeal to the educated middle-class whites was different.\u00a0 This was the 1960s\u2014such people drawn to him were fed up with western materialism and Viet Nam, and terrified of nuclear war, and they were therefore easily seduced both by Jones\u2019 apparent commitment to social justice, and his bizarre claims about government conspiracies.\u00a0 Jones gave them a cause, a higher purpose.\u00a0 And in the isolated, underfed, overworked, hothouse atmosphere of the Peoples Temple, cut off from reality checks, the amoral things he ordered his followers to do made perfect sense.<\/p>\n

The Reverend\u2019s chief terror was defectors, potential whistle-blowers.\u00a0 Against them, Jones used the faithful to mount campaigns of \u201cdirty tricks,\u201d threats and slander, possibly right up to murder\u2014which still made fine sense to the faithful, because the world was out to get them, and any means of defense was justified.<\/p>\n

\"jonestown-brochure-10\"<\/a>Meantime, Jones was prospecting for a place in wilderness.\u00a0 He found it in an isolated corner of Guyana, and thus Jonestown was born.\u00a0 It was to be a socialist utopia, with him at its centre, safe from the capitalist warmongering US government. Some trusted lieutenants went out to start building the infrastructure, and Jones gradually began moving out a few of the faithful.\u00a0 To reassure those remaining in California, he distributed brochures of happy, smiling residents accomplishing wonders of construction and cultivation in the wilderness.<\/p>\n

In fact, these were fairly close to the truth. According to residents fortunate enough to be away from Jonestown on the critical date in 1978, Jonestown was<\/em> a happy place, just so long as Jones was not there.\u00a0 Living conditions were basic and the work was hard, but they were building something they believed in, and the atmosphere was relaxed and optimistic.<\/p>\n

But back in California, things were\u00a0 beginning to go sour as Jones\u2019s paranoia and addictions spiraled out of control.\u00a0 Worse, dangerously well-informed defectors began talking to the media: the public beatings, the Swiss bank accounts, tax evasion, conspiracies to murder and harass, sex, drugs, and mind control.\u00a0 A devastating expos\u00e9 was set to come out; the feds were interested in the possibility of tax evasion and alleged human rights abuses.\u00a0 Clearly, Jones was about to be issued a huge reality check.\u00a0 In a panic, he began a mass exodus of his followers to Jonestown in the summer of 1977, days before the expos\u00e9 was published.<\/p>\n

In the following months, Heart of Darkness<\/em> met 1984<\/em> in the Guyanese jungle.\u00a0 Jonestown became a virtual concentration\"Jonestown_Houses\"<\/a> camp.\u00a0 Jones was in a bad way when he arrived, addled by drugs and enraged at the dark forces of the CIA.\u00a0 And with Dad<\/em> in residence, life at Jonestown became very hard.\u00a0 All the vicious mind-control and punitive techniques were intensified. New arrivals had all but the most basic necessities taken from them, including prescription drugs, which vanished into Jones\u2019s private stock.<\/p>\n

Isolation was complete. The faithful were trapped in the middle of a wilderness, without passports or practical access to transport.\u00a0 Communication was filtered through Jones and his fanatical inner circle\u2014a ham radio was used to pass coded messages to his outer empire.\u00a0 For example, \u201cSend more bibles\u201d was code for \u201csend more guns\u201d.\u00a0 Letters to the outside were censored, and woe betide any who failed to express revolutionary joy at living in this workers\u2019 Eden.<\/p>\n

Each day held hard labour from sunup to sundown, followed by a sparse evening meal of beans and rice, and then by endless meetings presided over by Jones, or mandatory classes in Marxist theory and the Russian language, in case Jones decided to relocate the colony to the Soviet Union.\u00a0 After residents were allowed to stumble to bed, Jones harangued them all through the night, on tape over loudspeakers, rambling monologues on socialism, his own divinity, and the dangers surrounding the colony.<\/p>\n

Most significant were the escalating terror tactics.\u00a0 Armed guards were everywhere.\u00a0 No one dared complain about worsening conditions; punishments became more violent.\u00a0 Worst of all were the \u201cwhite nights,\u201d when guards herded everyone out of bed to the pavilion, where an agitated Jim Jones would announce Jonestown was under attack, and \u201crevolutionary suicide\u201d was the only way out.\u00a0 A vat of Flavor-Aid would be brought in; Jones would say it was laced with cyanide, and order his faithful to line up and drink, and they did.\u00a0 But these were only drills.<\/p>\n

Disturbing reports filtered back to relatives in the States, who became worried that their loved ones were trapped in the wilderness by a tyrant and conman \u2013 which was arguably true.\u00a0 Congressman Leo Ryan flew down to Guyana to investigate, landing at the nearest airstrip, Port Kaituma, on Friday Nov. 17th<\/sup>, 1978, with some journalists.\u00a0 He was not the first US official to visit, and the people of Jonestown were well-rehearsed.\u00a0 Guests were shown a carefully arranged and prettied version of Jonestown.<\/p>\n

\"ParksFamilyWantLeavj\"<\/a>The congressman, won over, made a speech about how great it all was.\u00a0 Everybody cheered.\u00a0 But next morning, a few people slipped notes to Ryan and the journalists\u2014get us out of here.\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0Confronted with this, Jones said \u2013 sure!\u00a0 They could leave if they wanted to.\u00a0 Amid chaotic scenes, about fifteen of the no-longer-so-faithful left Jonestown with Ryan and the journalists, for the airstrip.<\/p>\n

This part of the story is no doubt familiar.\u00a0 Before the planes could take off, a flatbed truck covered with gunmen pulled up on the field and opened fire. \u00a0A Jones loyalist planted among the refugees began shooting inside one of the planes. \u00a0Ryan was killed, along with three journalists and one of the would-be escapees.\u00a0 Most of the others were injured.<\/p>\n

Back in Jonestown, the Reverend ordered a \u201cwhite night,\u201d which many at first thought was another drill.\u00a0 The table in the pavilion was covered with syringes and cups of purple liquid.\u00a0 When all but a handful were gathered around him, Jones started to talk.\u00a0 An audiotape exists of what followed, and the few survivors tell consistent tales.\u00a0 Jones played on the siege mentality he had fostered in Jonestown:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Don’t be afraid to die. You’ll see, there’ll be a few people land out here. They’ll torture some of our children here. They’ll torture our people. They’ll torture our seniors. We cannot have this\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThey\u201d in question were not specified: but whoever the enemy, it was better to commit an act of revolutionary suicide, in protest against the racism and fascism of this world:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Lay down your life with dignity. Don’t lay down with tears and agony. There’s nothing to death\u2026it’s just stepping over to another plane. Don’t be this way. Stop this hysterics. This is not the way for people who are Socialists or Communists to die.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jones did not have it all his own way.\u00a0 A few protested, particularly one Christine Miller, who was shouted down\u2014not by Jones, but by the crowd.\u00a0 Which shows how ready the majority were to continue believing in their messiah, even after the strange hell Jonestown had become.\u00a0 One woman on the tape said:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2026it’s been a pleasure walking with all of you in this revolutionary struggle. No other way I would rather go to give my life for socialism, communism, and I thank Dad very, very much.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>And so it began.\u00a0 The syringes and cups on the table were for the children, who died first.\u00a0 Evidently they did not like it much.\u00a0 Jones is heard calling for the mothers to stop exciting their children, that they were only crying because the taste was so bitter.\u00a0 A man\u2019s voice is heard on the tape, reacting to the deaths of the children: \u00a0\u201c\u2026I’d rather see them lay like that than to see them have to die like the Jews did, which was pitiful anyhow. And I just like to thank Dad for giving us life and also death.\u201d \u00a0<\/em>And when the children were dead, it was time for the adults.<\/p>\n

\"jonestown6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some have questioned whether Jonestown was a case of mass suicide, or mass murder.\u00a0 Clearly, it was both.\u00a0 Many people willingly lined up and drank the poisoned potion.\u00a0 Some, including Christine Miller, were forcibly injected with poison, or forced to drink, and a few were shot.\u00a0 (The true ratio will never be known, as very few autopsies could be performed.)\u00a0 The security guards let only five people through the cordon; the rest died.\u00a0 As the line moved up, security guards helped those who had already drunk the concoction to move outside the pavilion, to keep the aisles clear for the rest.\u00a0 Others moved off in family groups, to lie down and die together.\u00a0 But many wanted to die close to their messiah, so in the area around Jones\u2019 chair, the bodies piled up five or six deep, with children in the bottom layer\u2014one of the factors that led to very low early estimates of the death toll.\u00a0 Jones himself died of a bullet in the head, possibly shot at his request by one of the inner circle.\u00a0\u00a0 There is also evidence that about fifteen of the inner circle remained alive for several hours after Jones was dead, cleaning up and taping news reports off the radio, before drinking the kool-aid themselves.<\/p>\n

In all, the death toll at Jonestown was 913, including 276 children.\u00a0 This was the end for Peoples Temple, and for Jonestown.\u00a0 The latter, abandoned, has been gradually returning to the jungle, and is naturally said to be haunted.<\/p>\n

Was the tragedy inevitable, given Jones\u2019 personality?\u00a0 No, it was not.\u00a0 It is an odd irony that things could easily have gone the other way\u2014given a little more time, the Peoples Temple could well have routinized<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0Early Scientology, for example, shows much the same pattern; but as Ron Hubbard aged, he was increasingly sidelined, and his young and efficient inner circle took over. \u00a0See also Christianity, Islam, and the Latter Day Saints, for starters. \u00a0In fact, I suspect\u00a0that many ideologies, if traced back far enough, could be linked to the routinization of a charismatic personality cult. \u00a0 The trick to a cult’s survival, it seems, is to hang on long enough to outlive the messiah, and hope the successor has some solid business sense.<\/p>\n

At any rate, this could well have been the path\u00a0followed by the Peoples Temple if the crisis had not been precipitated on that day in 1978, at a time when the psycho messiah was still in control.\u00a0 As years passed, the inner circle would have taken over as Jones aged and slowly killed himself with drugs; the misery would lessen, conditions would normalize, and the People\u2019s Temple would become just another harmless weirdo sect, rather than a byword for suicidal fanaticism.\u00a0 And in fifty years…perhaps a perfectly respectable religion, with Jones fondly remembered as the revered founder.<\/p>\n

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