Episode 16: MK United

Q1055-1 Jones: We know who our Father is, but who is your Father?

We have the power to drop out of our mind all discordant, inharmonious or fearful thoughts…. Now for a moment, let the Christ mind come forth. We don’t meditate here often, but our meditation therapy can be extremely helpful. Go back into your consciousness and think of the most refreshing water you’ve ever seen flowing – a rippling brook or a cool stream or a falls coming over a cliff – and just imagine your mind being cleansed. Cleansed from the self. Cleansed from your worries and your fears. Forget all things which are behind, everything that’s been done to you – there’s no use to remember it – just remember everything that is true. Whatsoever things are honest. Whatsoever things are just. Whatsoever things are pure. Yes, my children, forget those things which are behind. Let the Holy Ghost wash out all the hurts, wash away now, let the mind of Christ resurrect within you the mind that is God, and feel that gushing energy, that life-force, that illumination, that water-like remission that’s moving through your mind, (voice climbs) cleansing it, cleansing out the cobwebs in the name of Jesus. Just send that same power that’s now in you, send it down to every troubled organ. Send it to the heart and say, heart, you’re going to beat more soundly. Just visualize a good heart, see rich, red blood, rich, red tissues, a great pumping organ and say, I’m blessing you, heart. God has come forth. He’s come forth in your temple and you feel richer, and he’ll take the pain away from your body. Just put your hand, because your hand’s anointed with God’s presence, just put your hand on your body and say in the name of Jesus, I heal my body! In the name of Jesus. [Gong]

You're listening to Transmissions from Jonestown: this is episode 16: “MK United.”

In 1965, as Temple members followed Jim Jones to California, they had no idea that thousands of disaffected youths all over the United States would soon be making the same pilgrimage in search of the Summer of Love. As Indiana faded into their rearview mirrors, so did the mushroom cloud prophesied by their leader. As the Caravan made its way to Ukiah, winding its way through giant redwood forests, visions of paradise, just as Father had promised, with lush vineyards and sprawling ranches no longer only existed through stories and postcards. Not unlike the counterculture revolutionaries drawn to California, the Temple envisioned a land of opportunity with plenty of room to grow. California was progressive, diverse, and it is cultural soil unspoiled by the monotonous drudgery of the industrialized world. For Jim Jones, California would be an opportunity to reinvent himself with possibilities of limitless expansion. All the ideals he aspired to uphold would soon be swept up in a national movement. The once underground whispers fighting for progress and change would soon echo all over the United States until the din of revolution was impossible to ignore. California would serve as a safe haven, a mecca during this time of American identity crisis and cultural revolution.  If Jim Jones wanted to be a Christ-like revolutionary, this was the perfect time and place.

Q992 Mike Prokes: [“Our Father is calling His children together/They come from the north, south, the east, and the west/ They’re coming together to sing and to praise Him/ To sing and praise and glorify this socialist land” acapella song plays] I’m with Bishop Jim Jones, and Bishop, Peoples Temple has always been human-service oriented in terms of reaching out to peoples’ material as well as spiritual needs. Many religious leaders feel that the role of assisting people in a material way ought to be left up to social service agencies and not to the church, which they feel should be left to concentrate on saving souls. What was it that convinced you that religion must be made practical?

 Jones: The church’s inception on the day of Pentecost had very little to do with just the esoteric or the metaphysical. Certainly the new birth was the beginning. But after the inception of the Christ within, we saw manifestation in every phase of human life, a total restructuring of apostolic society. People selling their possessions and having all things common, going about from house to house, sharing, enjoying a humanistic relationship of a higher dimension and higher order. 

 A chance meeting at Ukiah’s palace hotel restaurant would alter the fate of the Temple and change the very fabric of Jones doctrine.

While Jones dined with Jack Beam and Temple member Joe Phillips they overheard a table nearby discussing church matters. Several members of the board for Christ’s Church of the Golden Rule, an organization that had somewhat recently broken away from their own cult leader, had no idea a young socialist preacher with radical plans was eavesdropping, hanging on their every word and hatching a plan. Christ's Church of the Golden Rule, based in Willits, California near Redwood Valley lived communally on a beautiful several thousand-acre ranch. Their leader had disappeared several years earlier, Jim Jones recognized an opportunity.  

Rebecca Moore: The Church of the Golden Rule was a new religion based in Willits California, and when Jones and other Temple members moved from Indianapolis to Redwood Valley, they encountered members of this church which really shared a number of values and beliefs, for example: living communally, sharing one’s income with others, running kind of communally owned businesses, and so on. I think in the back of his mind, Jones thought he could actually take over an existing group, which he does again when he tries to take over the Peace Mission, right, in Philadelphia. Because they did share these beliefs in kind of cooperative economies and communal living, at first glance it seemed like that might have been a good partnership.

 Mike Wood: Jim always thought of himself as the smartest guy in the room and a lot of times he was right. You know, I’m sure he always had in mind “if I can participate in an organization, maybe I can dominate it, you know, and If I dominate it, you know, it’ll add to my power and influence.” 

Jim Jones introduced himself to the Golden Rule and after some friendly conversation he was invited to tour their ranch. He immediately recognized similarities between his Church and what he hoped to accomplish in Ukiah and the Golden Rule. They were a tight knit group of Christian Scientists who emphasized their spiritual existence over the physical world and were open to manifestations of faith such as healings and discernments. They believed that God can physically heal the sick through prayer. They also believed that if God doesn’t heal you, it’s because of your lack of faith.

 Q1055 2 Jones: If you’re the temple of the Holy Ghost, you’re the body of God. The Holy Ghost is God’s spirit. So I’m just manifesting what you’ve been talking about. Oh, whatsoever things I do are true, and they’re beautiful and honest and lovely and of good report. And they’re pure. Why don’t you see God? Why don’t you see God? And my sermonizing would– would disturb you some, because the– (Pause) the nature of my spirit is much more quiet in ordinary terms. People gather around my animal shelter and children’s work, and they say, you’re– you’re such a quiet person. That’s the office that’s speaking now. The office of authority. One must have authority over mortality. Or mortality will eat us up like a terrible swamp. I have to deal with it with authority. I’ve got to speak and cry loud and spare not. But I’m really a gentle, very meek, mild mannered person. So please, don’t be deterred by what you’ve seen in just the sermonizing side. I am indeed a live wire, and there are many facets to my personality. If you want a friend, I’ll be a friend to the friendless. If you want a home, you’ve got a home. Anybody here that will try at all has got a home. “I feed the hungry. I clothe the naked.” (Matthew 25: 34-46) Upstairs is a little puppy...because of the spirit that’s in me. I’ve placed these animals in every meeting. I’ve got nine some dogs or something like that. And thirty some cats and all kinds of roosters. Old geese, old goats, and nothing’s ever been killed. In all this holy mountain in Redwood Valley, nothing has been killed, because he said in the last days, “nothing would be destroyed in all of his holy mountain.” (Isaiah 11:1-9) [Voice rises] I have found a key. I’ve found some preventatives that, if you use, at least as our correlation, no one that has used those things have ever developed cancer. I have to raise the dead here, so often. One woman I raised just a few days ago, she was three hundred and fifty, if she was a pound. Nobody but God could raise that woman up. He that keeps these sayings shall not die. There’s a ministry of life constituting twenty witnesses a day. Few ever try it. Why don’t you try? Why don’t you sup of me? Drink at my fountain. Touch me. Keep my words and see if I won’t come through with every promise that I have made unto you.

 The Church of the Golden Rule was founded on the idea of “Do unto others as is done to you.” Their members donated all their possessions and property, they lived communally, ran profitable businesses, and had strict rules about attending other churches or fraternizing with outsiders. Jim Jones expressed his desire to merge his Church with that of the Golden Rule; he offered to join and bring with him his followers from Indiana and Ohio. The board members considered Jim Jones' request, their membership was dwindling, and new members could replenish their congregation, but something about this charismatic, raven-haired preacher caused the board to handle any merger with Peoples Temple with caution. The Peoples Temple would be allowed to hold separate services on the ranch every Sunday, but on a trial basis.

Q1055 2 Jones: I pray thee, God, for this Christ’s Church of the Golden Rule. My heart aches for some of the things I behold, and I am pained within because of the divisive influences that are so evident. And I have– There’s nothing more that I can do except that thou wouldst open up some of those rigid places, hearts that are set against it. Oh, God, extend your mercy to Christ’s Church of the Golden Rule and the Peoples Church that we might fulfill our destiny. My God, my God. I hear the cry again. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem how oft I would have gathered you under my wings as a hen doth gather her brood. (Luke 12:34)” Or, as the old Proverb goes that we can lead people to water, but we cannot make them drink. 

Many years before the Golden Rule met Jim Jones, they had been a part of a far larger sect called Mankind United founded by the mysterious Arthur Bell. Mike Wood remembers The Golden Rule and the stories about Arthur Bell.

Mike Wood: A guy by the name of Arthur Bell just kind of comes out of nowhere sometime in the Depression, and he’s somewhere in California, out in, during the Depression, and a bunch of cults got started in the Depression because, you know, people couldn’t understand how, you know, because one day everybody’s fine, and driving new cars, and everybody’s got a job, and isn’t America wonderful? And the next day, you know, shit 25% of the population is unemployed. And so, you know, it’s just well fertilized soil for any conspiracy you want to hatch. And so Bell comes up with this idea of Mankind United and he writes this book, and the book kind of details, you know all this shit that the “hidden rulers” for thousands of years have done to keep human beings enslaved. I don’t know how the hell these guys get their jobs: the “hidden rulers,” seems like a good job to me, [laughs] where do you send your application, right? So, but anyway you know, apparently they all know each other and they figure out how to transfer power down through the generations and because of their connections, and wealth, and devotion to their particular nasty cause they’re able to enslave the world and all the events that you see happening around you are not simply happening independently and on their own. They’re all part of this grand conspiracy, and he figured it all out how to explain it and how to deal with it. And in his idea, there are these guys, we called them “the masters,” but he called them something else, I can’t remember what he called them, you may know. Anyway, they were like the good guys, they were the good trustees of society and as soon as Arthur Bell sold a certain number of books, or some certain number of things happened, a certain number of people came to believe in him then they would reveal their plan, and in a month or two and guess what, the world would be this wonderful place again. And he was the representative of these super...again it’s kind of a competing group with the bad guys, kind of the mirror image of that in a way, I guess. But, um, we retrans...Jim kind of retranslated that. But anyway what they did, they selected him [Arthur Bell] to be the chief administrator of something, you know, he had a nice title, whatever it was. His organization then was devoted to selling his book and trying to teach people the truth of his particular vision.

Jim Jones had adamantly spoken out against a conspiracy of institutional racism in America and warned the public of secret societies like the Klan. He said there were enemies pulling the strings of politics and controlling law enforcement, becoming unimaginably wealthy while the average American struggled to make ends meet or remained disenfranchised, forever locked in a cycle of poverty. He had witnessed torture and inhumanity in a third world country as it was taken over by fascists backed by foreign interests and the CIA.  The conspiracy laid out by Arthur Bell struck a chord that resonated with Jim Jones’ world view and galvanized his paranoia. The Klansmen in Indiana, the junta in Brazil, the rich old white lady who sneered down at the orphans were now a part of a grand collective whose sole purpose was the destruction of mankind. This deep realization that all things are connected was an experience shared by millions in the 60s; for many it was a psychedelic dream, but for Jim Jones, it was a nightmare of snakes, mushroom clouds and the evil shadow forces who ran the world.

Q1027 Jones: And I think that some of these people that are teaching us hate, are paid provocateurs. I think they’re paid agents. I think there’s reactionary elements in this country that want to take over. They want a de jure fascism. They’ve got a de facto fascism. They want an actual tyrannical military state, and they’ve got groups acting like they’re liberationists, whipping up hate, doing it in the name of revolution – “right on!” – waving a red flag, talking socialism, communism, but they’re being paid by rich, hidden rulers.

 Mike Wood: I have to tell you, this is somewhat facetious. I've often wondered is there a school for cult leaders because they all do the same shit. I think, you know, you're dealing with narcissistic individuals who are finding, because of the way the human mind is constructed, kind of plows the same ground all the time. Coincidence plays a much greater role in our lives than people want to believe. And think about the necessity of believing in a bad certainty. Think about it in a context of our evolutionary history. If for example you’re sitting around a campfire one night and you hear a rustling in the bushes, you’re going to imagine it’s a bear, or a lion, or a tiger and you’re going to get up and run your ass off to get away from it. Now, if you’re wrong and it’s just a rabbit, you’re going to be embarrassed, but guess what, you’re still going to be alive to be embarrassed. On the other hand, if you’re sitting around the campfire one night and you hear rustling in the bushes and you think, oh, it’s only a rabbit and it turns out to be a bear, guess what? You’re going to be dead and your genes are not going to carry over into the next generation. People have a need for certainty, and they have a need to make that certainty look a particular way just for survival purposes, and that has stayed with us as a basis as to why conspiracy theories are so popular, and why people just can’t accept the idea of coincidence. It reminds me, I don’t know why, of the scientific method. You know the only reason the scientific method works, it’s not the scientist’s method, it's the fact that there’s structured, peer-reviewed criticisms that has to be observed whether we like or not. And that’s why science is such a good thing, because it helps us deal with the fact our belief systems are really fucked up. But it is the fact that, basically all these cult leaders succeed because of their ability to weave conspiracy theories in a compelling manner to an audience in pursuit of their own goals of wealth and power.

Arthur Bell claimed that a group called “The Sponsors” contacted him and brought him into their international legion of vigilantes. “The Sponsors” were a group of wealthy people who in 1875 made contact with a superhuman race who lives in the center of the planet. “The Sponsors” were warned that a grand conspiracy of hidden rulers were responsible for all the war, injustice, and poverty in the world and that their sole aim was to enslave mankind. “The Sponsors” determined that the world’s problems could be solved, and the hidden rulers defeated through the use of secret technology. Arthur Bell claimed that all “The Sponsors” required to release the technology and save the world was two million followers willing to give all of their property and worldly possessions to Arthur Bell and his sect, Mankind United.

Arthur Bell promised that once they had sold enough copies of his book and had enough followers “The Sponsors” could guarantee a 4-hour workday and universal income. Freed from our oppressive middle-class lives, Arthur promised that all homes would come equipped with radios, televisions, and machines that can record video with a swipe of the finger. He claimed to have a ray machine strong enough to knock out the eye sockets of people thousands of miles away or raise the dead who died millions of years ago on other planets. 

Q932 Jones: Man can evolve. Man can grow up till he can be trusted. That’s what we’re saying. The perfection of man. Christians say it, but they don’t believe it. [Karl] Marx said it. He said man is capable of perfection. Christians say that you must be perfect like God is. That’s what he said. But when you start practicing perfection, the Christians say, it won’t work. Say, you gotta go to heaven to be perfect. And that’s the biggest cop-out in the world. If you die a devil, as a tree falls, so shall it lie. You’re goin– If you’ve been a dollar-grubbing, miserly creep here, you’ll be a creep, and you’d make a hell out of any heaven you went to. But the church tells you, you can’t be good till you get to heaven. That’s what they tell you. (struggles for words) Those– those uh, dreamer– dreamy-eyed socialists. Well, I’ll tell you. We’re going to have to dreamy-eye together, or we’re going to get blowed up together. We’re gonna live together, or we’re gonna to die together. And being that I made you somewhat uncertain about your heaven, you better get about doing what Jesus told you to do, build a heaven here. He said, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth. Said the word is nigh you, the kingdom of heaven is within you. Here’s where heaven’s gonna have to be made. We’ll make a heaven out of this place, or it’ll be a hell. And if we don’t make a heaven out of this place, nobody in the universe is going to trust us to go to another planet or another heaven, whichever you choose, And the– no planet’s going to– no heaven’s going to take a bunch of people that were too creepy that they were so lousy they wouldn’t do anything to make this a better world. Now you better– see, this is– see, we’re asleep. 

Arthur Bell claimed to have learned all he knew from a 15-year educational course taught by “The Sponsors” that he now offered to his followers at discount rates. He kept his people busy with training programs and recruitment. Arthur said he was so busy he had to have seven body doubles, supplied to him by “The Sponsors” so he could be many places at once. His role in the legion of vigilantes necessitated that he spy on the “Hidden Rulers.” Espionage and the supposed doubles made for a convenient excuse to cover his elaborate and frequent outings where he drank and mingled with the rich and famous. In reality, Arthur was spending all of the money he took from his followers on fancy cars, apartments, mansions and lavish vacations.

During World War II, Arthur Bell was arrested for wartime sedition. He preached against the War and exploited people in one of the nation’s darkest hours. He was convicted, but despite this, Arthur Bell went on to create Christ's Church of the Golden Rule, a legitimate church with tax exemptions. Followers of the Golden Rule were required to give up their possessions and Arthur Bell now owned several hotels and restaurants, a beach club, and even a cheese factory.

Arthur continued to live his seven double lives spending his follower’s money and flaunting his extravagance. The attorney general of California received complaints from followers who had left the church and wanted their property back. Arthur Bell suddenly announced that “The Sponsors” had contacted him one last time to tell him that the mission had failed. Humans did not deserve utopia. Arthur was exposed as a scam artist and his fortune exhausted by court cases. In 1951, Arthur said goodbye to Mankind United and the Golden Rule. He promised the few followers he had left that in the moment just before their death they would transcend to another planet. And just like that, Arthur Bell disappeared into the ether leaving behind the remnants of one of the most fascinating cults to ever roam the hills of Northern California. 

Mike Wood: I dunno, sometime probably, I don't know during World War II or just after or before he created Church of the Golden Rule in order to establish a charitable organization for tax, really for tax purposes. It was charitable organization, a church, and so it’s a charitable organization and then the Church of the Golden Rule bought Ridgewood Ranch. Ridgewood Ranch had been owned by the Howard family. Now Frank Howard was famous in the 1930s because he bought the racehorse Seabiscuit. Now, that may not mean anything to you or even me now, but in the mid 30s horse racing was really, really, really popular in this country. You know, baseball was the national game, and horse racing was right behind it, and the NFL was really kind of Junior League stuff, and there was no NBA, so horse racing was a big freaking deal. Seabiscuit kind of comes out of nowhere as this horse to beat, and Frank Howard was a great marketer, and you know, he was able to get a lot, in fact he got so much press for it in 1938 that Seabiscuit was referenced more times in the newspapers around the country than Franklin Roosevelt, who was the President then. You know, after Seabiscuit retired he moved up and Seabiscuit spent the rest of his life at Ridgewood Ranch and is buried there someplace, nobody knows where. But the stable is still there, and you know it’s a big, beautiful freaking ranch and so, Arthur Bell buys it for the Church, the Golden Rule Church, right? So, sometime around 1950 California tax authorities got wise to them and cults weren’t so popular [laughs], so basically, you know, they sued his ass. And one of the stipulations that he made with them, I think in order to avoid prison time was that he leave the organization period. He just basically upped stakes and took off and faded into the mists of history, still leaving the Church of the Golden Rule and ownership of Ridgewood Ranch. We come along in 1965, so we had this little church and on Henry St and Henry and Bush in Ukiah, and there were at that point when I got there in October of `65, there must've been you know 25 members, [laughs] wasn’t much, and then very soon after that Jim made arrangements with the people in Ridgewood Ranch to rent one of their, one of their buildings, it was their schoolhouse, it was really nice, for our meetings on Sunday, so we rented it for the whole day and they gave us access to any place we wanted to go in the Ranch. And sometimes a lot of members [of Church of the Golden Rule] would come from Ridgewood Ranch, and come and go to our services, and some of them even joined like, for example, Carol Stahl. We were there every Sunday, in fact I even worked on the Ranch after I graduated from high school in the pallet mill just before I went to college and a couple of other guys Jack Beam, and Jim Pugh worked up there as well, so did my dad, and Ricky Stahl worked there, he and I were best friends, and we, you know, I worked there in the summertime making pallets and then went on to Santa Rosa Junior College. Must be a billion-dollar ranch, I gotta tell you nowadays. But it was hard as hell to get to you had to come down and you had to turn left on 101 when you're going north, which is not an easy thing to do because in fact it’s a freeway. But you turned left, you went down this road, just zig zag zig zags down the hill until you got to the valley and that's where all the buildings were. At the top on 101 there was this, it was called Ridgewood something or other, anyway that was like, it was like a little, it was a little rest, not an official rest area, there's a gas station, I think a hotel, and just a little sundry shop, that kind of thing, maybe there was an apartment there or something. But just, it was just, you know, kind of a mini mall basically and you could get gas there and all that, and the Church owned that. So that was part of their operation, but there was a big kind of, it was a big kind of rustic gateway down the road to Ridgewood Ranch, and the road was very, you know it was a private road and they didn't really invest much money and so it wasn't very good road, but it was, you know, you got down there and you got back up. And it was, if you, I'm sure you remember the story of my, you know my slide down the hill behind Jim, well we're coming home from Ridgewood Ranch that night. You know we were very closely connected to Ridgewood Ranch and I was just a kid I was just a senior in high school and first year in college, so I wasn't involved in church operations, but I kept hearing, I think I heard it from Jim in late `67 that we were trying to make a move on the Golden, Church of the Golden Rule just like Jim attempted to make a move, later on on Father Divine’s World Peace Mission, and basically they kicked our asses out you know, they figured out what's going on and Jim said, he didn't say that we got our asses kicked out, he just said well, “you know, they wouldn't respond to principle the way I wanted so I didn't, I couldn't see any, continuing any relationship with them.” I mean, [laughs] it's like that old story about, you know, my boss decided to stop paying me and I agreed not to go to work anymore. That's when we started meeting in the garage at the parsonage and earlier that summer, Jim had built a pool in the in the vineyard; there was like a five-acre vineyard from the parsonage up to East Road, and he built this swimming pool in that, which was an odd thing to do, and then we built the church around the swimming pool. So that's how we got the Redwood valley church built, and that was, I think that was finished by the end of 1968.

I can’t find mention of Arthur Bell or Mankind United on the tapes. Were Peoples Temple meetings at the Golden Rule influenced by Mankind United’s Mythology?

Mike Wood: Oh absolu, yes, that’s a very good question. The answer is yes. He changed the verbiage and changed the notion of who “The Sponsors” were: he began calling them “Masters” and this were not simply earthly beings but they were people who had transcended the the physical plane and were now sort of running the universe or the Galaxy or solar system or you know some bigger operation than the earth can handle. And they included all the great minds of the past that you might think of, funny they were all men. Men like Gandhi, and Einstein, and Jesus, and Buddha, and you know, whoever the fuck else he wants. And so, you know Jim was their messenger here on, who they called...

 Q928 Jones: So be very quiet. As I Lenin, Jesus, Buddha, the Baab, God Almighty…

 ...They were called “The Masters” and Jim was called “The Messenger” and then after a while it got kind of confused, and Jim was one of them and then after a further, I think this time he revealed to us that in fact he was the boss, which was not a surprising development [laughs]. So, that's how we incorporated some of their language, I think you can actually find Arthur Bell’s book online. You'll find that Jim would use some of the language that like “Hidden Rulers” for example, and how this grand conspiracy was operating to hurt people and how we had to fight it, and the only way that we could that would be with Jim leading the way. And that, you know, the people in the Christ Church [of the Golden Rule] had the literature, and did the literature, but he was really the best interpreter of that literature. So that's kind of how he folded that in. Now the church services then were really pleasant affairs, they weren't at all like the later services where everybody sit up and gave testimony and that kind of thing, they're kind of casual, just kind of meetings, and Jim of course would spend much of the time talking, and we'd sing a few songs, and then but then we’d all have lunch together, and since I was one of the kids and we’d go out and swim in the swimming pool, and go ride horses or hike. It was really terrific. I really enjoyed it. You know, you had this community that lived there and then around it was just these beautiful natural surroundings; a river ran through it, and it was just, it was nice, and I was very disappointed when we left.

 Jim Jones didn’t leave the Golden Rule empty handed. A former member who joined Peoples Temple, Carol Stahl wrote that she remembered Arthur Bell and Mankind United had been targeted by the government and accused of being communists because of their communal living and socialist doctrines. Not only did Jim Jones’ apostolic socialism appeal to her already held ideals, she had fallen in love with a Peoples Temple member and the Golden Rule board would not allow her to attend both churches.

She wrote that as Peoples Temple became more influential in Ukiah and Redwood Valley, they began to have harassing phone calls, the substance of these phone calls was always the same: Black people are not welcome here. Jim Jones claimed that before the Temple came to Redwood Valley it had been a “sundown town.” Carol wrote that animals owned by the Temple were poisoned, the Church had been shot at and people’s lives were threatened. Life around Jim Jones caused you to think, you had to make a decision about what side of the race debate you were on, you could be risking your life, you could not remain complacent.

The entire country mirrored Carol’s thoughts after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. MLK had inspired generations of Black and white people to march for equality together, after he died, many religious leaders in the country were inspiring Black and white people to worship together.

Mike Wood: The growth spurt really occurred very shortly after we finished the church. I helped build that damned thing, so I know something about it. It was pretty cool, it was a nice building. It's really, we were really proud of it, it was really beautifully designed. I mean, there's west house, there’s east house; east house, east house, there was the Temple and then there was the parsonage back in the back, and the Russian River ran right next to it. Jim bought this, basically you know, this home on over 5 acres of grapes. So what do you do with them? Traditionally they had an arrangement with Parducci [Wine Cellars], so Parducci would actually come up and buy the grapes. So our job when I first got there, in fact, yeah the very first year I got there, October is the grape harvesting season, so you know out we go to harvest the grapes, and Rick and I spent the whole night throwing grapes at each other [laughs]. Yeah, that was what went on for two or three years, and then they you know scraped it off and built the Temple. Martin Luther King was murdered in, I think February [April], if I'm not mistaken of `68, and that's when we went down to Macedonia Baptist Church brought some of their members back up, and we met in the fairgrounds, and did that a couple of times. So the church was beginning to grow even then, because we would, you know we rented the Benjamin Franklin Junior High School, which is just up Geary Boulevard from where the church we bought. We finished building the church and then we bought the buses around that time too, and then we started, then you started to see a big influx of people, 'cause we were going more places; we were going to Los Angeles, we went to Seattle, we went to Vancouver, British Columbia once, and we had meetings in, you know, in East Fresno, not many, and in Oakland, again not many, and then in Los Angeles and San Francisco and so we had three principal churches there by 1971. Redwood Valley kind of fell into a hole; it became the least important of all three.

Peoples Temple, during this period of expansion, was finally seeing the fruition of their social programs and community outreach events that had helped Jim Jones achieve the influence and reputation he had enjoyed in Indianapolis. Temple members were passionate about caring for children and seniors, confronting institutionalized prejudice against people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community. The Temple moved its headquarters to San Francisco.

Rebecca Moore: With the move to Redwood Valley, and then expansion down to San Francisco and Los Angeles, I think all of those things that were kind of in nascent form in Indianapolis really flowered, and so especially in San Francisco, where there were programs for senior citizens. We look at the notes and records that Temple members took of their activities in San Francisco: they’re getting together people to attend court appearances, for you know, someone who's, you know, who's being sentenced for a, on a drug charge, so in addition to the family member, all sorts of other members are going, to kind of put up a show of support for this individual. And you know, obviously there were health care screenings, and you know food, things like that. So, on the one hand they’re talking about trying to establish this world of apostolic socialism, and to live it, not just kind of preach it, or hear about it on Sunday, but actually to live and implement this in their day-to-day lives.

 Q932 Jones: My God. (Shouts) Concentration camps, I’m talking about. (Pause) All they need’s a stroke of the pen. Twenty-four hours. Say, “aw, it can’t happen here.” You must not know the Japanese. Don’t you tell me, you silly people, that it can’t happen to us. …We don’t have anything, the preacher’s got it all. All we’ve got for our money, they– they’ve got some great big church, they’ve robbed us blind, we’ve made some Uncle Tom rich. (Pause) We’ve built fine churches and our homes are– we don’t have– we don’t own anything. A– we owe our soul to the company store, trying to keep up with Whitey. (Pause) We have the biggest color TV, biggest Cadillac, we think that’s gonna make us free. That makes us more in prison. That’s why I don’t own a car, I don’t own any new furniture, I never buy any new clothes, I have never bought a new pair of shoes in my life, and that’s why I am free, because I don’t have to have anything. That’s why I can speak my piece, because I don’t owe any bills. I’m not afraid of losing my job, because I know I can go home and eat some greens on our church property. (Pause) (Shouts angrily) I’m free. You’re not free with your Cadillac. You’re doing just exactly what the Man wants you to do. Buy his goods, so you’ll never have any real economic freedom. He wants you to buy everything he advertises on TV, so he’ll keep you perpetually owing your soul to the company store. You’re not free. You’re a slave!

 Laura Johnston Kohl, a former member of Peoples Temple who joined in California, remembered Jim Jones as a student of history who knew exactly what he was doing when he formed his Church.

Laura Johnston Kohl: In Redwood Valley, so there was a lot of animosity around Peoples Temple being there. The area itself was pretty racist. That wasn't, I wasn't the only one who had issues come up. I mean people had issues come up at work, and they were Black and applied for work, or people you know yelling things they as they went by the Temple, and stuff like that. And Jim’s house backed up against the railroad track, there was like pretty easy access. And, I just feel like probably two things: one thing is it seemed like it was kind of risky, people could just drive on the property two different ways and go right to Jim’s house, 'cause the church was right on kind of a main road in this rural community, so somebody could drive right on the property, go straight to Jim’s house and do any kind of damage. The other thing, is you know, it was in Jim’s best interest for him to convince us that we weren't being paranoid, we were being cautious. I mean he was paranoid always, and so he needed to transmit that to us, that we should be paranoid, because you know, whether we were being monitored by the government, or whether there were local racists, or whatever it is, we were at risk speaking our minds about integration and the different things people believe. I think that that's true, but also one of the things that cult leaders have, over the years one of the ways that they control people who are part of a cult, is by doing a “we- they” philosophy and so, Jim was a student, usually a scholar of who made cults work effectively. You know, Hitler did it by saying the Jews were all the problem not anybody else. I mean Father Divine did it, even with his Mission, saying that people outside didn't want an integrated church, and paranoia was something that he, you know even mentioned to Jim when Jim went to him with some ideas on how to do it. So, I think that there was animosity in Redwood Valley, and that Jim just kinda ran with it, so that we feel particularly, you know estranged from the community we are in.

 Q1054-4 Jones: If it’s good, it’s God. And I just want you to get free. Because churchanity is a death, and when you are s– free to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free, and be not again entangled with the yoke of bondage [Galatians 5:1]. That’s my desire for you, to let you have what I have and more. I hope you can see a picture of what I’ve taken, and reproduce a greater one in yourself [John 14:12]. ‘Cause the world needs Jesus, and the only place they’re going to find Jesus, child, is in you. You are living epistles, the only one they’re gonna read. So read me well. Don’t jump the gun. Don’t go out and think that you’re going to get this realm overnight. I’ve come through lynch mobs, I’ve been shot at and shot down before your eyes, and you saw me picked up. You put the– in fingers in my– the holes in my chest, and I brought this about the healing, because I recognized none other in this tabernacle but Christ. Said I cannot die. My people need to see the Christ in me, to bring forth the Christ in them. I cannot die. My people not ready, so I said I Am. Hmm. That’s the key.(cries out) I said I am not ready, (calms) and all that blood that was all over me, I got up, as you well saw, and that night healed a man by just sending the word, there was an (stumbles over words) epileptic seizure – he’s right over there in the choir someplace – I just reached out and said arise. Preached all night. So take a good picture, take a good picture, watch me closely, learn my mannerisms, learn the patterns of devotion, my spiritual paralife, and my social administration, just a sense of concept of dispensational, principles that I demonstrate every day. Learn all these principles closely, ‘cause I’m a living Acts of the Apostle. I’m one of those acts – maybe a small act – but I’ma– gonna make an act that’s going to help the work for Jesus.

 David Wise: The belief system that the Apostle Paul had, where you are going to be all things to all people for the sake of the cause. In the Apostle Paul’s case. it was the early Church Christianity, and so what happened to the Apostle Paul? They killed him.

On a beautiful afternoon in Redwood Valley, the Church hosted an outdoor potluck gathering Temple members old and new before services. As Jim spent more time in San Francisco and on the road, Sunday’s like these with father in attendants, casually mingling and enjoying the company of his followers was a rare treat in Redwood Valley. San Francisco and Los Angeles required most of Dad’s time and attention. Besides, Redwood Valley was far smaller, more intimate, and the people who lived there were some of his oldest and most trusted followers.

The scene could have been mistaken for one of Father Divine’s heavenly banquets until shots rang out creating a scene of terrified chaos. Amidst the toppled food, frantic parents and startled old ladies lay Jim Jones holding his chest, his yellow shirt splattered with blood. They had killed Jack, Martin, and Bobby, they killed Fred Hampton and tried to poison Castro, now they had come to take Father.

 David Wise: I was right in the meeting hall, everybody kept saying, “Oh, Jim has been shot.” So, I wasn't out there where he was and then next, soon he came in the door with blood all over his shirt holding his hand over an imagined wound, I suppose. But he got behind the pulpit and did an incredibly dynamic speech. Man, he was really convincing about, he made everybody truly believe that he might change the world, and the whole idea, a dream of a national movement. Oh, he was going to, like run for office or start an actual grassroots movement. Instead, he wound up, you know, poisoning all the people that he had trained with that dream.  

Denise: I do believe that they had weapons, but I don’t remember seeing them. But I do remember they had an incident where there were weapons fired outside the Church during one of our Wednesday night meetings, and basically, what I found out later was that that was contrived. Yeah, it was not, there was really no threat, that was just someone from within the Church that was doing that, to like make everybody afraid. I think that, you know, it was kind of like, more of a way to...fear is a very tight bonding thing, and I think it was kind of their way of like instilling more and more fear in us.

 Vern Gosney: It was blended with truth. I mean, there were government infiltrations into organizations. The Black Panthers were you know, being destroyed, there were assassinations, there was Chile. There were many things happening that were horrible, so there was truth mixed in with his message.

 Thomas Beikman: They used to have a big picnic between services in Redwood Valley. We were all out there in the big old parking lot and stuff. And we heard a gunshot. Well, he fell down, had a bunch of nurses run up there and one of them stuck her finger in the hole, and he got up and walked back to the house. It was all a con, but, you know, at the time, I didn’t know, I was a kid, it scared me. I was out walking the dog, heard a gunshot and my legs just gave out on me. I mean honestly, that’s.... Yeah, that’s, it really had an effect on me.

 Mike Wood: Well, you know about the one where Jim was supposedly shot, and blah, blah, blah, that’s all bullshit, he made all that crap up, there’s not, there's not a bit of truth to it. And he certainly didn’t raise himself from the dead. And they had that goddamned shirt in a, you know, on the wall in the Redwood Valley Temple in a case, so that we could, you know it was one of our religious icons. No, that was total bullshit. I was not involved in it, by the way, it’s just some of the other bullshit. [Laughing] The other time I had an incident with Jim with a gun was he wanted to fire a pistol. I don’t why, but he wanted to fire, well, it’s just a warning shot. I said, Jim, there’s no such thing as a warning shot. I remember my choice with the crossbow, this was a well-earned lesson. I said when you shoot a warning shot, that’s a real shot, it’s gonna come down someplace just as fast and hard as it left the damn muzzle of the weapon. He said, “really, you think that’s true?” I said “I know it’s true, man.” So he shot someplace else. Jim and I imagine Jack Beam was in on it, you know, shot the gun and then decorated Jim with some pig’s blood, or, remember we had a lot of animals running around, you know, some animal's blood and pretended to be shot. And don’t forget, Jim was a great prankster.

 David Wise: So as far as being all things to all people fits right in there with the Apostle Paul, who said the end justifies the means, basically. And this is all the road to Hell. Being all things to all people is just a prescription for the justification of being a liar. If you see me as God, I’m God, you see me as your friend, I’m your friend. Now, I guess for somebody like Jim, and you had people faking, and he knows that he can’t trust them, he can’t trust them to be real, now he has to entrap them with various designs where, because he can’t trust them. What a web we weave when we first begin to deceive.

Q1059 1 Jones: Oh, I want the persecutions to come on. There’s a great love here. They’re not going to tell this story. No, they’re not. But I’ll tell you, the tide’s against them. They may bring us down, down, seemingly, in natural circumstances, as they did Jesus so many days ago, when they hung him on the tree, and he seemed to be a loser, and laid away in a tomb, but my followers got me out of the tomb there, and they’ll always get me out of the tomb. I shall always come out. You can’t keep me in a tomb. You can’t keep the Christ idea, the revolutionary idea of socialism, you can’t keep it in a tomb. You tried to nail me with a few guns not long ago, shot me down before all this congregation, my people scream in such agony, I don’t want to ever hear that agony again, they screamed as I fell on the floor, blood gushing out of the holes in my chest. But I said I’m not ready. My time hadn’t come. You weren’t organized yet enough. You weren’t the little gods that I want you to be, because I’m Daddy God, and you’re my baby gods, and I want you to be just like me. (Pause) And I rose on that floor, and I said I’m not ready, and they put– the nurses put their finger through the three holes– they said, well, you can’t continue. You must go to the doctor. I said, I am the doctor and I am the lawyer, and I’m all I need. So if we did it once, we can do it again. And if you’re not careful... then they will take me and do with me what they will. But my name will get known, and you won’t be able to separate yourself from me, ’cause I’ll be on every TV, and on every radio, and in every newspaper, and you won’t be able to say I never knew him, because every time you wake up, I’ll be hauntin’ you, because they’ll be talkin’ more about me than they’ve ever talked about anybody. When I get through– when I get through, they’re gonna be talkin’ about me.

 When Jim Jones was supposedly shot, witnesses saw him fall clutching his bloody chest. He was led to his house by Marceline, Jack Beam and Archie Ijames. He was never looked at by a doctor, and the police were never called. Jones misdirected his security, pointing in the opposite direction from where the shots were heard to have originated. He later claimed he did this on purpose to protect the gunman from being torn apart. When Jones emerged, he showed his flock a bloodied shirt and stuck his finger through the bullet hole. He claimed to have healed himself, though some believe he was resurrected. Father now claimed he could raise the dead.

 Once again, Jim Jones had tested the limits of his power to manipulate his flock. He had performed a Christ-like resurrection with little to no consequences but with enormous benefits to his reputation. As his congregation grew, he needed more inner circle members to help him run things, that meant more people knew how the Temple got its funds and faked faith healings amongst other things. The assassination attempt proved that they would need tighter security measures, more members only meetings and secret groups to handle the conspiracy plot against Jones. Just as Father warned, “hidden rulers” were coming out of hiding and attacking the Temple and its leader, they would need to be ready for anything. In reality, Jim Jones was not just paranoid of outsiders, he was afraid of his own people. As more inner city youth joined the Temple, former gang members, drug addicts seeking recovery, and troubled individuals with violent pasts came to Jones for help and protection, Jim Jones’ reality was shifting from that of a religious leader, to the leader of a political movement. 

 Acting Captain of the San Francisco Police Department and former member of Peoples Temple, Yolanda Williams remembers when Jim Jones started beefing up security and the effect it had on the Temple.

 Yolanda Williams: When we first started of course, there was no security or anything. Everything was just free, everybody was just relaxed, it was a very peaceful, loving environment. Everybody trusted everybody. You could leave your car unlocked, you could leave your doors unlocked. I mean, everything was just cool. But, at one point in time he claimed that someone had tried to take a shot at him. And it was after that supposed attempt to take his life that he said, you know, I never wanted to do this, but I think I’m going to need security. And that’s when he started first, with a few security officers, bodyguards, whatever you want to call them, and they would be with him everywhere. And then later on, it became that when Chief Gaines was Chief of Police here in San Francisco, some of these security guards started getting permits to carry firearms, so then it became armed security guards. But they would all wear like black suits and they’d have, most of them would have like berets on, they would kind of look like a Black Panther. They had on black suits [chuckle], so men in black. They would be with him and if you wanted to talk to him you’d have to get their authorization or get their attention and he’d have to acknowledge or approve that you could come over and talk to him and then you could have a personal conversation with him. So, things became very organized and the accessibility to him was far less than it had been in the past. So, he became more like a ruler, authoritarian, a leader, almost like presidential. And in his mind he was the President.

As the Temple expanded in California, and the demographics of the congregation became more diverse, a group of metaphysical spiritualists who studied the works of Edgar Cayce joined. Edgar Cayce, known as the sleeping prophet, was famous during the early 1900s. According to legend, Edgar Cayce read his Bible daily, and by the age of ten had read the book many times through. He wanted desperately to be a missionary, but was left with only the prospects of becoming a farmer as his family could not afford to send him to school. While Edgar was reading his Bible in the woods an angel appeared and granted him divine powers. From that moment, Edgar didn’t need to read his Bible, he could now quote it verbatim. The angel had granted him the power to memorize any book he slept on top of. Friends and family tested Edgar’s abilities and were astonished. His divine gifts made national news and doctors from all over came to test Edgar’s prophecies and attempt to prove he was a fraud. He proved not only could he memorize books, but he could also heal the sick while in a trancelike state. To this day, Edgar Cayce is one of the most well documented spiritualists, many claimed his powers were authentic.

Q357 Jones: Because of people like our Sister Evans, who would have died of this tumor and gone blind but now is healed. Healed, just because she had faith in the God that was working in this picture. Spirit…. I didn’t know what to do, except mind the inner voice, but in the inside, my natural mind said, “Oh, dear! Fight the system, fight the system.” But I didn’t. I listened to the Spiritual voice as I always do. 

 Edgar was disturbed by his ability to diagnose patients using words to describe the anatomy and medicines he had never heard of but were familiar to the doctors around him. Edgar wanted to help people not accidentally kill them with false diagnosis. Often his readings included complicated chemical combinations, sometimes perplexing to pharmacists, that were administered to his patients for serious conditions. As his fame and fortune grew Edgar became fearful of his powers. People all around him wanted to exploit his ability to heal by exploiting the wealthy people who sought him out for readings. Edgar questioned the source of his powers and the identity of the winged woman who had bestowed upon him this sorcery. Was this God working through Edgar? Or the Devil? 

 Q1035 Jones: God was out there and He looked over the vast horizon of time, and He was lonely. That really killed me. That always got to me. So He looked out— and so they say, He’d make man. What’d He make man, Billy Graham says, He made man to worship him. Now you know if I told you, come over to the church tonight, ’cause I’ll give you the privilege of worshipping Jim Jones, you’d say, I’ll tell you where to go and where to stay put. He had some angels up there, too, I guess He had to make them too. But the angels, they didn’t worship him enough. They just went away around saying, “Uhh.” He wanted to get somebody that could— that uh, was smart enough to go wrong, and then know that they were going wrong, and have all kind of things happen to them so they’d have to eat the dirt, then say I’m sorry, so he could forgive them. No, I won’t go over that twice, but uh, something like that. The angels— the angels couldn’t do anything wrong. That wasn’t enough. He had all those angels bowing and flapping their wings and the cherubims, the seraphi— that wasn’t enough. (Pause) And one of those angels was too much for Him. He made— the most beautiful one He made. Lucifer. He made him the most beautiful angel, and that cotton-picker, he wasn’t—

 Congregation: Laughs, light applause

 Jones: (Laughs) Ol’, Lucifer, Lucifer up there, and he said, “Ha, ha ha. He give me too much of his brains, He give me too much of his looks,” he looked out over that mess and he said, “ahh, I’m not going to go around here bowing and scraping anymore,” and he took a third of his angels, and run off with them.

 Congregation: Laughs

 Jones: Took one-third of God’s angels and run off with them. And that’s the kind of foolishness you been worshipping all these years. You been worshipping such nonsense as that. Don’t make an ounce of sense. [You] Say, oh, you’re talking about Lucifer being now, uh, what kind of a guy— I, I wonder what you’d done if you’d been Lucifer, I think that story, or that analogy is so good, that— that Lucifer once said, somebody met the Devil, said, said, Lucifer, what in the world ever caused you to leave Heaven? What in the world ever caused you to rebel against God? He said, I’ll tell you in just five seconds, he said, I’ll show you why I left Heaven. He said, now you uh— He said, you know what I’m going to do, I’m gonna get up on this barrel, and he said, I want you to run around that barrel and say Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, and after about fifty times around that, the old— old fellow says, “you know, I’m tired.” He said, that’s what got the matter with me, that’s the reason I left Heaven.

 Congregation: Applause

 Jones: You know what, you’re so brainwashed, some of you can’t even laugh at that. That’s funny.

 Congregation: Laughter.

 David Wise: He told me one time, he said “Dave, I notice they’re having a little church meeting down at the end of the street,” He said, I want to have a little bit of fun, I said really? He said, walk down the end of the street there on Hoover, and then he said, we’re gonna go in there. He said they’ve got a testimony line leading halfway down the wall. So we walked down the street and go into this Pentecostal type church, and he goes right up, being so sweet and so diplomatic, and just takes the microphone right out of the hand of the head person at the front of the line and looks out over everybody and smiles and he starts talking and preaching like real Pentecostal-like about Jesus and then he says “Hail Satan, Hail Satan! Thank you, Jesus! Hail Satan! Thank you, Jesus!” And then we left and he laughed real big like that was so funny [laughs].

San Francisco in the 60s was a haven for new religious movements and political activists. When David Wise joined Peoples Temple in San Francisco, he was a Hari Krishna.

David Wise: So, I was looking for something sincere and real and true, and so the Peoples Temple was described to me in that way. And when I went and checked them out, I was just overwhelmed, it was completely different than any group of people I had ever met. More than just if you went to a Pentecostal church and you went in there and people hugged you, these people were smart and they were all very, very sincere. And it was a group of all colors acting humble and acting like they were family. Jim Jones’ preaching, I had to pretty much forget; it seemed to be just about a bunch of healings and I wasn’t impressed by them. He had these sunglasses on, like... he had a sign underneath him: Reverend Jim Jones wears sunglasses so as not to distract him when he’s receiving revelations in the Spirit. But people’s description of him about how he was humble and he didn’t purchase like rings, or new clothing. He was non materialistic similar to the Hari Krishnas, except that he believed in using material as, to do good in the world and to be involved in the world. And, so I was interested in real, free communities, not just a bunch of people that were like sort of slaves in a Hari Krishna cult, where they’re like not free to go out on the street and they’re like all being kind of controlled. We later see Jim Jones coming to actually become what he told me I was trying to get away from when he said that the Hari Krishnas were not socialist enough for me. 

As a former Hari Krishna and Peoples Temple pastor, what do you think attracted New Agers and people interested in Eastern mysticism to the Temple?

David Wise: I think mysticism was because he wouldn’t have been able to get as much cooperation amongst the intellectual elite, who did think, who did have sort of an air of superiority about them. There was this big hippie element that broke into a lot of different pieces and a lot of the intellectual whites, and Blacks, and Hispanics that were in the group, really believed in some type of a revolution or a change that was going on in those years. They knew that carpet bombing Vietnamese women and children who didn’t even have vehicles, they lived in thatch roof and their saying was “an com chua,” have you eaten cooked rice yet? 

What percentage of the leadership in Peoples Temple believed in God?

David Wise: Oh, the leadership of Peoples Temple was entirely atheist. [Narrator: I thought so.] Good job. Everybody, hold it, we can’t say that. The New Agers, before there was such a term, were thick, only like the inner, all the way up to Jim Jones there was too much superstition in areas of the zodiac or just kind of new age stuff, you know, but not everyone; some were just bold-assed, bald-tire atheists. OK, so, the leadership thought they were involved in a surreptitious plan to use religion to introduce socialism. But Jim jumped ship, he decided to make himself God. He really didn’t feel safe because he was engaging in things he didn’t want to be found out or in the news. So now he suddenly was creating skeletons in his closet, and didn’t want.... Suddenly, he’d started out, he wanted to be a mayor, he wanted to be a president, he wanted to be… So, I turned the papers in, I. Not only got my shots, it’s just a condemnation, I’m thinking for people like us it’s like wow, we need to listen to you when you talk about society as a cult. All the people where I’m trying to do good in the world say [mock voice]: “Hey, did you read about, he knew Jim Jones?!” 

David Wise: I try to tell people, yeah he went mad. Why do they think I got away and told people about it? But I’m not gonna lie about any good parts. Anyway, I was in charge of a castle. It was like a castle. You remember when you talked about the people like, played body doubles and all that? For a while, everyone was dying their hair black and blow dried it up with a dryer. Boy, did I look different. Like some other form of Elvis like you never saw, it was like.... This girl was  making these dashikis. She made me this really lovely blue one and one of the greatest regrets of my life is that. I had my hair all fixed up, and I had a tie wearing, instead of wearing a robe, I was outshining the robes, wearing my own crap. And Jim Jones, I was sitting beside him, and Jim said, it was almost sort of like a you know, “is she good” type of a, form of a statement? Something, whatever he said, and I thought, and I said Jim, I’m not doing anything with her, you know, like that. And he said that is really a handsome dashiki there, you have there, that really is good looking. And one of the greatest regrets of my life is in that moment I did not take it off and give it to Jim Jones. 

David Wise was an associate pastor for Peoples Temple in Los Angeles. The Temple had a massive church on Alvarado Street Dave liked to call the castle. Hue Fortson was also an associate pastor for the Los Angeles Temple. Unlike David, who was a Hari Krishna when he joined Peoples Temple, Hue Fortson came from a more traditional religious background. He shared his memories from his first visit to Peoples Temple. 

Hue Fortson, Sr.: Actually, my mother went to one of the meetings in downtown Los Angeles. The Knight and Grand, a little hotel there, had an auditorium inside the hotel. She came back, she was very excited, she said it’s a mixed congregation, there’s Black people, white people, all different kinds and even the choir is made up of young people and senior citizens. She just kept raving about it and I said, “Eh, OK,” and so in my mind, I said I will go down there myself one weekend and I’m gonna kinda pick holes in it and come back and bust her bubble. However, because I was Episcopalian at the time, and our whole service was one whole hour. I was also an acolyte and an altar boy so I knew what to do and what not to do, when to carry the incense on two special days and then the other was bring in the cross, bring in the Priest, and going through the whole procession for one hour, so I had that down pat. So, interestingly enough, I was somewhat impressed when I actually sat down and saw, I don’t want to say act, but this whole area of them doing a supposedly worshipping to God, because everything at that time was the Lord Jesus Christ working through Pastor Jim Jones. That’s what was said at most of the testimonies of how the Lord healed them or delivered them from certain situations. So, I’m just listening, taking all this stuff in, and then when Jim Jones actually did come out it was kind of different because he wasn’t in a suit, he was in a pair of black slacks, black shoes, and he had like a velour, back in those days that was something fancy, a velour shirt and it was striped, and interesting enough he had these sunglasses on. And so, he came out and sang a couple of songs with the group and from there he began to go into a very small portion of actually scripture, but he tied it into the things that were happening in our neighborhoods. As far as he was concerned the local churches were not addressing the area of people that needed a place to stay, homelessness, drugs, at that time the big drug was LSD and heroin. So that kind of impressed me, and I said OK. So, I came back again to try to once again find these holes and I couldn’t find the holes. I wasn’t so much impressed with the so-called healings at the time, because at that time he was supposedly calling people forth and telling them about their lives and telling them they had conditions. Some of the women he would tell them to go back to the bathroom with a nurse and then when they did come back they were crying, and boo-hooing, and slinging snot, and going forth like they really had been healed. Now whether they were or not, that wasn’t my call, I didn’t know, but it was interesting, it caught my interest, and like wow, OK. So that was some of the things that grabbed my interest and I’m thinking wow, this is a lot different than the Episcopal church. So I began to look at it, and at that time my girlfriend, who later became my wife, Rhonda I guess after about a month, a month and a half, I decided well, you know what, and I shared with her and she agreed that this is a place that I think we can do something to help people, and `cause it seemed like it was helping people according to what they were saying in the little brochures that I had read about the Peoples Temple; it wasn’t so much about Jim Jones it was about the Peoples Temple, the group doing something, so I felt like I could be a part of it to help people, and Rhonda had the same thought as well. A little after that we actually left St. John’s and then we had gotten married, and folks couldn't understand. And we tried to make them understand, and I’m speaking of family members and even some of the old church members. They were like, “no, this is the place.” And I’m like, no, you guys need to see something else, I said because they’re doing a lot for people, whereas we’re coming every Sunday and that’s about it. So, that was my judgment call. 

How would you describe the ideology of Peoples Temple?

Hue Fortson, Sr.: At that time he was talking about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, but it would be on a low level. And he would always talk about Jesus Christ, he would bring Jesus Christ in as the pot stirrer. In other words, He came in and He changed things around, He was the revolutionary. He came in and changed things within the church system, because the things that needed to be done in order to meet the needs of God’s people weren’t being taken care of. So, we have to be like Jesus Christ did, He came in and He began to change the religious system. As a matter of fact, his famous words was “religion is the opium [opiate] of the people.” He would constantly throw that out, he said religion dulls you, you only do what they say to do as opposed to if someone has need in front of you, you take care of the need right then and there. The Church would always talk about that we want to set up a feeding program, which they eventually did, moreso in the Bay Area than here in Los Angeles. I think because of constraints and such, and even in Redwood Valley, that’s where it originally started, and then they migrated down to San Francisco. And, I think, my own opinion because of political ties that they wanted to get, and he did get. He would also in most of his, I don’t even want to call them sermons, most of his speeches, if you will, he would always make mention of well, we feed, we’ve taken in 200 young people who were once on drugs and got them delivered. Now how that process went through, I could not tell you, and that’s been almost 42 years ago. But he bragged about that. We had a many a people come forward and say I was on LSD, or I was on Heroin, or I was on, wasn’t crack at that time some other kind: pill poppin’, but I’m now set free and now I’m living my life doing what I need to do, and that kind of thing. So, that was exciting. He bragged the fact that at his church they would take young people, whether they were on drugs or not, who wanted to advance themselves in life, they would provide junior college education for them, and then some that really would excel they would work out somehow to get them into a four-year university. And one intern I can think of was Larry, Dr. Larry Schacht. He lived in Los Angeles with us for a while, and then he actually, I think went down to Mexico to finish his graduate studies, and then he came back, and he was, however they did it, he was a full-fledged doctor. And then from that time until he went down to Jonestown, to begin down there. So, that sounded good and they were having young people that were becoming plumbers, carpenters, electricians, social workers, school teachers, and the only request was we want you to come back, in other words pay it forward, come back and help somebody in your community, specifically the Peoples Temple, and then we’ll spread it out from there, that kind of thing. So, to me that sounded like, OK, that’s like an ideal plan, because not only are they getting a career, an education, they’re able to come back and assist others who were still struggling trying to get up there. So, that looked like a good thing to me. And he always made it seem like the other churches would just take the money of the people, living lavishly, and mind you, he was quick to name names of leaders, spiritual leaders that had the fine cars, the fine suits, and all that other kind of stuff; homes, mega-churches, we didn’t call them mega-churches, we just called them big churches back in those days. So he made mention of that, then he always made hisself look like the humble one. “Well, I don’t even have a car, I don’t own a car, I borrow somebody else’s car in the Temple, or I ride with the people on my bus, in the back of the Greyhound bus, and I wear used clothes, and my wedding ring, I don’t even wear a wedding ring anymore, I told them to take it an sell it and use the money to help feed hungry people.” And, oh my, God, I was like “Oh my, God this guy is just, he’s just too good.” But, you know, when you are young and dumb it sounds good and looks good and like, you don’t think, about the other parameters around what’s being said to you. You take it as gold.

 Do you remember when Jim Jones started calling himself God?

Hue Fortson, Sr.: He quoted a part of scripture, and I do believe it’s Psalms [82:6] that states something like this that “we are gods.”  [Jones Q1035: You are gods] But it said god with a small g not a capital g. So, in his interpretation, well if it says, “we are gods” then, aha, then it says in Genesis 1:7, or 1:3 we are made in the image and likeness, let us make man in our image and likeness, so we’re made in the image of God, so we are god, and I am God. And then he began to share stories on when he was in Indiana, and I guess he came to the realization that he was supposed to been God. And in his interpretation “I’m one that loves everybody.” But yet he contradicts himself because if someone really pissed him off, he’d tell them I hate so and so because of what they do to people, and that kind of thing. He had to make himself available as the right now, on time, and in person God that you can talk and touch too.. And I will do you no harm and I’ll help you. In Corinthians Paul was saying I have to become all things to all people, but he said that I may save a few, in other words bring them to a place of salvation. Jones said I have to become all things to all people. And that was a period there. So that meant also, and once again this is hindsight, that meant if there was a man that came into the group that was interesting and he had certain gifts, calling, and talent, and even some kind of place in society, then I figure I can be  that to him as well as this group. And then, if he was of the homosexual persuasion, then I would be willing to sacrifice my time to make sure he knows that he’s in the clique, same with a woman, same thing. And so that was his “I become all things to all people.” So he figured, and the thing he would say jokingly was “if you see me as your brother, I’ll be your brother, if you see me as your father, I’ll be your father, if you see me as your god, I’ll be your God. I will be there with you and I’ll help you when you need help.” He kind of proved himself, that if you need a place to stay, you can come with us, jump in the bus today and we’ll find you a place to stay, and we’ll get you set up, and he was absolutely right, they would. But, in most cases, that would mean if you were married you would go off and leave that spouse, so that spouse was left here in Los Angeles trying to figure our what the hell is going on. But he did it a many..., he went around the country, I went with him but a couple of times on so-called vacations, which was actually like evangelistic trips for him to speak and talk about the ills of America, and how we poor Black and white people need to come together and pool our resources and what we can do. The people united will never be defeated. Maybe around `72, somewhere around there he began to throw that out that he was God. But it wasn’t constant, it was every now and then he’d throw it out, it’s like there’s stuff, he would throw it out, but it would be out there. You know, anybody knows, you hear something long enough, you may begin to believe it unless you have a real strong conviction in your Spirit.

Q1035 Jones: So, I’ll tell you. I’ll give you a better place. I will look after my own. You say, what are you trying to do? I’m trying to narrow down, so I figure out who on my own are, ’cause when I get through, some of you folk are never gonna come back and see me again, I won’t have to worry about you.

Congregation: Applause

 Jones: (Voice rises to ministerial shout) ‘Cause if you can’t take the truth, you’re not worth much anyhow, you see. The truth sets you free. That’s all Jesus came to earth to say. He said, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. That’s what I’ve come back to tell you. You’re gonna know the truth, and the truth will liberate you, the truth will free you, the truth will set you free. (Moderates, still intense) Won’t make any homages to the unknown God anymore, won’t have to make any offerings to the unknown God, you won’t have to walk down the street with your head down, afraid somebody gonna knock you over with a bolt of lightning, (Cries out) ’cause I’m gonna FREE you from superstitions, I’m gonna FREE you from all those fears. I’m gonna cause you to know that you are what Jesus was. (Pause) (Moderates) [He] Said, what good work do you stone me, Jesus said. We don’t stone you because of good works, Jesus, it’s because you, being a man, make yourself God. He said, well, isn’t it written to those whom the word of God came, Scripture can’t be broken. (Voice rises) He said, it’s written that ye are gods. (Pause) [He] Said, I am just doing what you have had written. It’s in the book. Don’t look at me funny. Jesus said that every human being was a god. I’ll give you the verse and scripture if you want me to give you the verse and scripture. I can give you the verse and scripture to the line, that you are god. I’m a god and you’re a god. And I’m a god, and I’m gonna stay a god, until you recognize that you’re a god, and when you recognize you’re a god, I shall go back into Principle, and will not appear as a personality. But until I see all of you knowing who you are, I’m going to be very much what I am. [Shouts] God, Almighty God!

 Congregation: Cheers and applause

 Jones: (Calms) You see now, that upsets you, that upsets you. (Pause) ‘Cause you been brainwashed. 

 Do you think Jim Jones believed in God?

Hue Fortson, Sr.: You know, I don’t think he did. I think he felt like God was made up by the white people that wanted to control of the poor and the Black. The example he used was slavery. The slaves used to have, they’d make them go to church, but they would be underneath the church, in like a basement type thing, and they would only get to hear the portions of the Word from the Bible that they wanted them to hear, like slaves obey your masters, obey your rulers, those kind of things that kept people down. And so I think with his mindset of all the people that he just ran into and worked with during his short lifetime, I think he felt like well, there can't be a God because there is too much pain, too much misery in this world, and I’m gonna change that because I’ll become God.

Q597 Jones: I got a bloc— I gotta bloc of folk over here that kinda upset about making fun of Jesus. Will you come over here, make fun of Jesus!? (Pause) (Fake ministerial voice) Get back there, make fun of Jesus. (Pause) (Laughs) You gotta get blessed. You gotta bless, you gotta get— speak in tongues, you gotta go— Shout— (Laughs) You gotta shout up and down the aisle. You want to get off of Learning Crew?

 Voice: Get in the Spirit, Wayne [McCall].

 Jones: Get in the Spirit. (Draws out word) Shout, you know. Woo! Thank you Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! [Laughs]

 Jones: Make fun of this shit. I want to get this shit out of here, because religion was back there. It was at the dinner table tonight. Some of you— All of you, get up. Come on. Make fun of it. (fake minister voice) Jesus, Jesus. Woo!

 General hubbub

 Jones: (Laughs)

 Q203- Q597 party plays underneath Jones: Some of you gettin’ back into that religious shit, by the way. Want to make just a brief announcement on the subject. The Bible is still a book of lies and fairy tales. Oh, you people believe any kind of bullshit that comes your way. And that Bible– remember, was a– the author of it sent the first slave ship to Africa, the Good Ship Jesus, to bring our people back in chains. And let’s not forget that. We talk about socialism that Jesus taught, even though he wasn’t– h– his parents weren’t uh, married. That’s fine and dandy, so we can relate to people that socialism’s right in the New Testament. But also in the New Testament is, Slave, obey your master. Women are to keep silent. That’s why we have chauvinism. Racism. That’s why we had slavery. Said, slave, whatever state you find yourself therein, be content. If you got a good master, be thankful, that means a slave master. And if you got a bad master, just endure him. Don’t question, don’t resist. That’s why the white man justified his racism and filled our ears after killing off our best, the rest of the brilliant minds that were left, they kept programming from infant time on that this was the will of the Lord. Their history was cut off from them, and they could know no better. But we know better, I thought. I thought we did. But I’ve heard some chitter-chatter round here. You drop your Jesus shit, or we’ll drop you in the shit.

 Q597 Jones: [organ music] All right, now. Look at that movement. Look at that movement. All right— Bup, bup— (Sings) Look at him doing it. Got the Spirit. He got the Spirit. Look at that boy. 

 A pamphlet entitled The Letter Killeth survives as one of the only remaining texts thought to have been written by Jim Jones illustrating his doctrines and beliefs. The Letter Killeth was intended to denigrate the Bible’s legitimacy by highlighting errors and inconsistencies in what Jones referred to as the little black book.

Mike Wood: But it was kind of famous in Temple history. It was a little pamphlet called The Letter Killeth. I co-wrote that. So Linda Amos comes to me and says “hey, we’ve got a project here,” this is like in early `68, and I said, OK, what is it? She said we’ve gotta write this, “the 500 errors of the Bible,” you know, Jim wants some substantiation, he wants us to put it down in a pamphlet form so he can hand it out, you know? And, what do we do? Let’s get started, you know. Linda and I were the primaries, but Carolyn Layton came in there later on, she added her bit. We did, man we did the hard work [laughs], we did a lot of it, I got such a kick out of bringing up some of those funny verses, but they wouldn’t let me put those in, they just wanted to show the contradictions. Carolyn Layton, she was on her rapid rise to power, and so she sort of came in and had to bless it all. I think she made a few changes, but it was basically Linda and me. We took a bunch of, you know Jim would kinda give us these, not these lectures, but he would say here's these two verses, here’s these other two verses, here’s this, and here’s what that means, here’s what this really means. And we would just kind of take notes and we’d go out and we’d do our own research, and you know I’d read a lot of the Bible, particularly as a kid, that’s how I learned to read, I’d read the King James Version, and so you know, I knew a lot of it. So, you know we’d just keep putting things together and we came up with a bunch of stuff, you know, we had a couple of charts going, and then writing, typing all this stuff up late into the night, yeah we worked on that for quite a little while. Jim was always saying how the Bible was full of shit and that you can’t trust it, and that we can’t, you know, you have to follow me, not the Bible, you have to follow the Living Word, not the written word. Why not? Everybody thinks the Bible is the perfect word of God, blah, blah, blah. If I can show you that there are errors then you can not say it’s the inerrant work of God. Of course, the way people get around that now, is anything that they don’t like the Bible says, guess what? That’s a metaphor, but anything that they like, any bias that they have that the Bible confirms that’s cold, hard fact that has to be acted on, period. So, you know, that’s how you can tell people’s biases, because there are so many funny verses in the Bible that we’d get a kick out of quoting, and the people would say “oh, that’s a terrible thing,” Well, fuck, that’s in the Bible and the Bible’s perfect right? Well, there it is.

The pamphlet begins with a word from our apostle in which Jim Jones states “I have come to make God real in the lives of people.” He goes on to say that God is love and that no minister should attempt to use the scriptures unless his life manifests the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit.

David Wise: The Letter Killeth was a document that did not take a position. It presented errors, or over exaggerations out of the Bible. You know, it looks like Jim groomed the crowd for this, what may have been an operation that explains a lot why Dwyer walked out of Jonestown untouchable. But anyway, The Letter Killeth was something that I explored much later as I went through all of the things that I could find from every source on changes that needed to be made from mistranslated, mistransliterations and on and on. And I was able to come up with quite a collection that  actually promoted good manifestation of the Christian ideal, which is what Jim had started with in Ukiah. That revolutionary approach was something that I agreed with to take the stench of modern religion and actually show scriptures that completely headed in a different direction. As he embraced the Father Divine in himself or in his social experiment motivated by whatever, drugs or alcohol, or just power, that was a small transition there over to Chairman Mao. And you know, don’t think for a moment that contemporary churches across America and around the world don’t do something quite the same. [Full throated] I’m a god, you’re a god, we are all gods! Until you can be a god, I will be God, Almighty God! It’s setting the stage for what’s next- Telly Johnson walked out of this Church and fell dead right on the sidewalk dead as a door nail! Now, you give all of your money and you’re under the protection of the movement, you’re under the protection of God. So basically, all the religions are threatening you. So, let’s lie and collect money, that’s sort of the premise of the modern church. 

Using his divine powers of interpretation, Jim Jones exposes the Bible to his congregation as a tool used by the “hidden rulers” to oppress and enslave nations. Jim Jones preached that King James of England, who authored the King James Version of the Bible in 1611 A.D., was an alcoholic slave trader who sent the Good Ship Jesus to bring back Africans in chains.

The Letter Killeth goes on to itemize mistakes and inconsistencies written in the Bible with category names like:

CHRIST ASCENDED FROM FOUR DIFFERENT PLACES and

TO BE JESUS’S DISCIPLE YOU MUST HATE YOUR FAMILY; THIS MAKES YOU A MURDERER

Other categories highlight what Jones perceived as racism and elitism in the Bible such as:

FAITH IS ENOUGH; FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS NOTHING.

David Wise: I invented a slogan which I felt might lend itself to draconian interpretation the more I saw Jim Losing it. But my idealism was very high and I was not deterred from introducing there on the cafeteria wall, written with massive, huge letters: “God is love, and love is work.” So it sounded a bit 1984, or Brave New World or something like that, in retrospect, but back then when we were defining love has to be made real, not just kept in the sky or in between the sheets, but you have to perform it. In other words, love required deed and action.

It’s possible that Jim Jones viewed the Bible as nothing more than a tool to recruit members into his flock so that he could introduce them to apostolic socialism. Former associate pastor David Wise often discussed socialism and how it relates to the Bible with Jim Jones. David argues that the foundation of Marxism came from the Bible itself.

David Wise: The simple definition of apostolic socialism is just to note that the quote from Marx is identical, was obviously taken from the Bible. From a new government, that was saying we’re going to make religion, basically, against the law, yet they stole the definition of their politics from the Bible: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Q932 Jones: Well, that’s a very honest opinion. How can you, know what’s truth in the Bible. It’s not that simple, uh, unless your judgment is based upon (Pause) a very high evolutionary understanding. If you have a deep refinement in your super-ego, then you could trust your judgment of the Bible. (Pause) First it would have to be– this would be required: you would have to be socialistic to be able to trust the Bible. (Long pause) Well, I’ll explain that. The only ethic by which we can lift mankind today is some form of socialism. There’s a smattering of it in the– in the New Testament. It’s very evidently clear on the day of Pentecost that they– they that believed were together and had all things common. They bought their possessions to the apostles’ feet, and the apostles parted every man as he had need. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Now we’ve been told that this was a Marxian, uh, Marxist, concoction, but it isn’t. It’s– it’s older than the Bible by far, it’s a couple thousand years and then even more than that in– in its age. You can trust no judgment that is not based upon the highest ethic of socialism. 

Methods of thought reform and re-education were strategically used by communists during wars and revolutions of the 20th century to transform society and establish new norms. By taking control of a person’s environment, isolating them, and bombarding them with propaganda you can reshape someone’s worldview and augment their reactions and behaviors. By destroying a person’s ego, you can replace their beliefs and practices, and reprogram their personalities. These methods of conversion, conditioning or brainwashing are universally used to socially engineer society. The proselytization of society either by religion or government defines what a community considers to be lawful, acceptable behavior and governs our collective moral compass. Jim Jones' own methods of conditioning his Temple members, experimental and varied as they were, radically changed people’s perceptions of how much you can change a person’s behavior. Racists who joined the Temple became integrationists and fostered Black Children. Die hard Catholics and protestants converted to atheism. New Agers and Hari Krishna’s became Christian pastors and church leaders. To understand the Temple's spiritual beliefs, one must view it through the same kaleidoscopic lens we use to define religion in America. Yet one idealistic concept unified the Temple's collective understanding of their purpose: apostolic socialism.    

Q992 Mike Prokes: How did Jesus Christ teach socialism?

Jones: He demonstrated it. Jesus was teacher, but he was also the master practitioner. He went about doing good. He was always exemplifying the spirit of cooperation, the cooperative republic spirit. He showed by his example how to live socialism, by the m– uh, the– the miracle – whatever level you see it – of the loaves and the fishes. Constantly Jesus emphasized this kind of cooperation, which gives productivity and self-respect, because it shows that you are not left alone to rot by yourself in your own selfishness, after your last friend or your cat dies. And then to be found ten days after you die only because your welfare check is inadequate or was unclaimed, and until then, no one has missed you. Pentecostalism, communalism, socialism, is much more than a fair distribution of goods and services. It is a system of human relationships where domination is replaced by cooperation, where the masses of people shape the country they live in, or the community, and exercise collective control over their destiny. It is power, really, to the people in a non-violent sense.

 David Wise: Well, to my knowledge Jim was the only one that had offered the intellectual concept of apostolic socialism. And, what this meant was, is that on the day of Pentecost they went door-to-door on the principle that people would give according to their ability, to each according to their need. So, Jim was in an interesting space when he imagined using the church to launch a revolution or any kind of evo-revo-solution, using the structure of as he put it, going through religion to get rid of religion, you know he was basically, he was trying to use the structure of religion to make revolution, and he was all mixed up, because he was still wearing the shoes of old-time socialists, communist idealogues such as Chairman Mao, and Lenin, and Stalin. And what made Jim fail at this, what caused him to fail at this was his ego and his desire to be worshiped, basically, because he began to close his membership which defines a cult not a culture. And it undermines the definition of a movement. You know, you don’t have much a movement if the members all kill themselves either.

Q134 Jones: Why I became my own brand of Marxist. I decided, how can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church. So I consciously made a decision to look into that pro— that prospect. I’d had my religious heritage in Pentecostalism — deep-rooted emotions in the Christian tradition (Pause) and a deep love which I share to this day for the practical teachings of Jesus Christ. It had always been a sort of dual concept: a doubter, and yet a believer. Certainly I had great questions about anthropomorphic beings and a loving order to the universe, but Jesus Christ, to use a kid’s phrase, greatly turned me on. And I tried very hard through my years in the church — whatever uh, someone else might look upon my role uh, however they would look upon it, they could see a great deal of sensitivity to the Christian teachings. Not only my brand of Marxism, but in Pentecostal tradition, I saw that when the early believers came together, they sold their possessions and had all things common. So I tried very hard to live up to that concept throughout my years.

Acts 4:32 “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.” Mike Wood was selected to be Jim Jones' successor. His unique perspective and close relationship with Jim Jones allowed Mike to explore Jone’s belief systems and have deep conversations about spirituality. Mike shared his interpretation of apostolic socialism and how those ideas paved the way to Jim Jones becoming the dictator of the proletariat.

Mike Wood: I guess as a capitalist, I would say all things for some people, or some things for all people [laughs]. OK, there is a scripture, and I believe it’s in Acts, which says something to the effect that they sold all their possessions and had all things in common. Now, why is it apostolic?  It’s apostolic because I believe it’s referring to the apostles who organized the church, as least as a Jewish sect before Paul came along after Jesus’s death. So it's apostolic in the sense that the apostles themselves are involved and the very, very earliest of the preaching Chrstians was involved and it’s socialism because they had all things in common. So, that’s apostolic socialism. So, why did Jim use that term? Here’s what you have to remember, Jim’s message was a mix of evangelical Christianity, that is to say evangelical Christian style and biblical references combined with Marxian socialism. Now that’s a tough one to pull off [laughs], most people, most people would scratch their head when you say it. You know, how can you combine the two? Well, here’s how it was combined in the Temple. First of all, apostolic socialism [piano version of United Forever plays under] you know, I told you the reference, having all things in common, alright, now how does Leninism fix, there’s three Marxism and Leninism rather than just Marxist socialism. Because if you’ll recall, the Leninist adjustment of Marxism was this: Marxism contemplated a gradual transition based upon historic application, if you will, of the Hegelian dialectic, and over time, through the dialectical process the working class would take charge of all the means of production and workers would indeed own the economy, if you will, and people would be paid according to their need. And, so that’s kind of the Marxian, that’s Marxian socialism very, very briefly. The Leninist addition was this, why wait? I’m giving you this in just my own phraseology. Why wait for the historical process, or, Lenin wouldn’t have said why wait, he would have said that under the circumstances we’re in today, there’s no need to wait for some lengthy period of time in order to accomplish Marxian socialist goals. We can do it much more quickly taking advantage of historic conditions, provided that the revolution is guided by a vanguard, if you will, which ultimately came to be known as the dictatorship of the proletariat. If you’ve listened to any of Jim’s tapes at any length, you will hear him refer to something called “d of p, we’re the d of p,” that’s simply short-- Temple shorthand for the dictatorship of the proletariat.  Now the falsehood, there’s many, many falsehoods underlying Marxian socialism, and particularly the Leninstic alteration, and one of which is that somehow, the workers or the vanguard of the workers will organize the revolution, vanguard being the Bolshevik Party, now as [Karl] Kautsky pointed out years before the 1917 coup, the problem of that analysis is that first of all, OK, the vanguard basically takes all the power from the workers, if you will, and then the leadership committee of the vanguard takes control of the vanguard, and then a single individual takes charge of all of it. In this he was really predicting Stalin’s ascension to totalitarian power. That was actually the case in the Temple, I mean, who exercised the power? It was Jim. And, all this bullshit about Leninism, all this was simply just another justification for his being the big guy, his being the guy that made all the decisions.

Q598 Jones: Oh Jesus Christ, this organization is built upon the dictatorship of the proletariat, and I am, goddammit, very much in control. The one way I could ease my tension is to raise my voice and my level of anger. I’ll raise that level of anger, invoke martial law, and see, goddammit, that we get some consistency in this sonofabitchin’ place. Do you read me? [Crowd: cheers]

Mike Wood: OK, we were communists. Why are we communists? Well first of all, you know you have the old apostolic socialist doctrines plus that developed into Leninsm, and the reason why is because the whole point of Leninism is the creation of a dictatorship of a single individual, that was what was so appealing to Jim, and he led us down that path, and as loyal members we followed, until we didn’t follow. And did people do things that they regret, yes, absolutely, but we did it, it’s called, what I call the liar’s adage, you know the end justifies the means, you know, that was an integral part of our belief system. But I’ve come to see that as the liar’s motto. You don’t need to say that unless you’re doing something that you know is wrong. And everybody justifies the bullshit they do by having some grand cause. So, that’s they way all these cult leaders and bullshit artists work, and it’s just the liar’s motto. When you hear somebody say that, you’re hearing two things: first of all, that the person is a liar, and will do anything to accomplish whatever his or her goals are, and you are the next means to whatever end they have. Those are the two things you’re hearing. You know, get up and walk away.

Rebecca Moore communicated with her sisters Carolyn and Annie after they joined the Temple. They would often discuss Marxism and what Peoples Temple stood for during their visits and in letters. Although Rebecca was curious about Marxism and extremely passionate about social activism, she never became a member of Peoples Temple. 

Rebecca Moore: We have to look at what Jim Jones says about himself and his own autobiography and like, what is likely. I mean his autobiography, he says you know, he was a communist practically from birth, and that when Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed you know, he wept that day and he says that he was always a communist. But really, his communism or Marxism was pretty, I was going to say, pathetic. It was not, it was not thoughtful, it was not in my opinion, actually a revolutionary kind of Marxism, and I say that out of my own experience of having gone to a very doctrinaire college where all of the teachers were old leftists, they weren't Stalinists, but you know they favored the USSR over China, they rejected Maoism, and so we read a lot of books from international publishers, which people in the know would know that's the communist book publisher. And so I was, I don't wanna say indoctrinated, but let's say I learned Marxism from the pros, and the one thing that they teach is that you have to have a mass movement, you have to have a proletarian consciousness, and you have to work with labor unions. And that is like one thing that Jones never did really, was work with labor unions. And I even wrote, I think I wrote Annie, one of my sisters, a letter saying you know, I don't see your involvement in the trade union movement. They're the revolutionary vanguard, why aren't you there? And so Jim Jones, at any rate not working with others kind of made me think that his communism was more out of a book than out of actual, you know lived experience. Now with that said, the people in the Temple in San Francisco were very active in a variety of social activist movements. I mean if you look at the notes of meetings and reports in California Historical Society, these are documents that they generated. They were part of like every activist social movement in like the 60s and 70s: the Bakke case; the Wilmington Ten; Pan-Africanist anti-colonial movements; pro Chilean democracy; they were attending all of these meetings throughout San Francisco that were very progressive, so. And, and my older sister Carolyn actually you know, wrote my parents and said you know, “you know, I've always been a Marxist and I'm not afraid to say it,” and so she definitely saw Peoples Temple as a, certainly a shaping political and economic policy in a kind of a more revolutionary way than say Jim Jones did.

Later in Jonestown, Jim Jones had the opportunity to be a dictator. In the small South American country of Guyana, the Peoples Temple built a socialist paradise where the people gave everything and had all things in common. Living communally and working towards sustainability, the people of Jonestown built a world free from racism and capitalist greed. Together they prepared a place for Jim Jones to finally be free. Mike Wood never went to Guyana, but he remembers Jonestown’s inception.

Mike Wood:  Jim had been exploring ideas for leaving the country as early as 1966, 1967. We were thinking we could get out to Russia or some other country, some other socialist country because of you know. our radical message and his concern that we would be imprisoned or placed in concentration camps as an institution because of our radical message, you know how to protect ourselves. So we were considering moving out of the country even at that time. In terms of his own psychology, what I noticed and what I reflected on over the years is that he kept moving to places where his control would be enhanced. The desire to move was a longstanding one, and in terms of moving out of the United States, I can fix that back to a committee in fact, that Jim formed in 1967, to explore where we might move, not just moving anyplace but to, you know, a socialist country that would understand our message. Now, nothing ever came of that but I think that he started focusing on Guyana probably 1971, 1972. I think I began hearing about it about that point and Jim once told me, he said “you know, we have to find a place where these constitutional protections don't exist. It's just you know, it really makes our, it’s much, it's more challenging than it needs to be in order to, you know, do what we need to do in the group.” So he was looking around for a country that didn't offer, you know, individual liberty or didn't guarantee individual liberties the way we do, and obviously was doing that 'cause he wanted to gain greater control, to be able to discipline people more harshly then than he had even here. So why Guyana? First, you know, when he was on his tour with the family back in starting `60 and going on to `63, he was, went to Hawaii, they went to other places. One place says he went to is Guyana. Why did he go to Guyana? I don't know at all, but this is one of the places he went to. It could be because you know, that English was spoken, there's a lot of Black people there, those could be the reasons. I don't know, maybe he was thinking about maybe living there, and I know that he spent some time in a leper colony with particularly, with one of the, and one of the lepers there was very impressed that Jim came and spent so much time with them. But, I don't know what else Jim did when he was there before he went onto to Brazil. And the second reason was it was an English speaking country, you know, he's spent some time in Brazil and I don't think that went very well, and part of the reason that probably didn't go very well is that then he didn't speak Portuguese. And the third reason, is that well it was a socialist country, and that was appealing to Jim. And, I think a fourth reason, though he would never admit it, is that he quickly realized I mean, he-- that he knew that it was a very corrupt country, and I don't know if he knew that because you know since the leaders were Black I mean I, I think in his heart of hearts Jim, Jim was something of a bigot. I don't know if he said “OK, this guy's a Black guy, you know, I know I can, you know, throw some money or cigarettes or liquor or women in his way and I'll get what I want,” 'cause I think he had that kind of view of Black people. I think one of the reasons he was so concerned about Black people, and why he was focused on them is that he figured he could more easily manipulate them, which is, which is so inherently racist I don't think I have to say anymore about that. And one of the reasons I'm saying that has to do something that Jimmy, that Jim Jones, Jr. you know, Jim never referred to Jimmy as “my son,” or “my black son,” but always as “my adopted black son.” It's interesting that he would make that distinction, and he always did in any situation. Race was always on his mind and not in a positive way. I mean he knew he was fooling people with his bullshit, you know, psychic ministry and his bullshit paranormal capabilities, his bullshit healing ability. He knew that was bullshit and who was he practicing all this tomfoolery on? Mostly Black people. But I don't think he knew until he got over there that one of the reasons they put him out in the northwest quadrant of the country was because it was disputed with Venezuela, and they figured if they had a bunch of crazy Americans there the Venezuelans would leave them alone. I think that pissed him off and he realized he’s been out foxed. I don't think he realized what isolation would do to him because he was always used to making sure that his reputation in the surrounding community was esteemed and there was no surrounding community in Jonestown, there was just the government 130 miles away, and he really had to rely on other people to maintain his reputation, so I don't think he realized that would happen. in terms of what he hoped for Jonestown. I, I really don't know except to say it was kind of a way for him to gain further control. he was not a country guy, he must have been incredibly bored, you know he was somebody who liked to hang out, I mean he liked the cities, you know liked going to movies, going to hotels with his girlfriend, he liked that kind of entertainment. I think he would have been really bored down there, but there were no new people to bullshit, there was just this same old stuff to do and it probably is one of the things why he, you know, his drug addiction got even worse.

In Jonestown, Jim Jones held his captive audience’s attention with constant crisis and rarely sermonized or discussed the Bible. Even so, when the Temple first arrived in Guyana, Jim Jones attempted to gain a following. In Guyana’s capital city, Jim Jones preached a sermon at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church. 

 Q705 Jones: The next service we’ll plan a bigger facility if that is the– in the plan that will be the best for Guyana, we will– ‘cause we deeply want to help the churches in this great country. One person, I don’t know whether I should mention his name, I don’t think I will, but someone in your government, I saw such love and character, such concern for human beings. And he picked up passerbys in his car. And that touched me so, but that’s why I came back to Guyana. I had a whole hour with people that– you couldn’t even get s– 15 minutes with some people, if you’d wait a year, in just a moment’s (tape edit), they welcomed us in to talk about what we could do to help with the feeding and clothing and housing of this great country. So we’re deeply moved by Guyana, and we’re permanently settled now, there’re many up in Kaituma, we had a great feast there. The whole city, uh, the entire area came out, and we served a free banquet. And we’ll be doing a lot of things in Guyana. We hope that you will invite us into your lives and to share with us any ideas how we can better serve. If you want to write us in the States, it’s Peoples Temple, Post Office Box 214, Redwood Valley…

 Singer: Oh, my God’s done just what he said–

 Jones: (joins singer) –yes he did, yes he did/ He healed the sick and he raised the dead./ Yes he did, yes he did./

 Singer: He brought joy, joy, joy to my soul.

 Rebecca Moore: In December of 1974, really when Jonestown is barely getting started, Jim Jones and some others make a trip to Georgetown, Guyana. Jones goes to the Catholic church and attempts to perform some faith healings there. Well Catholics are not really into faith healing in general, or at least not the kind that Jim Jones practiced, and so they were rather upset, and I think he was ejected from the church, and told that he didn't have to come back. It's kind of a misreading, I think of that church and its culture. The whole faith healing thing was kind of marginalized back in the 1970s, right? That might be something that Pentecostals or charismatic[religious charismatics] people who are poor or living on the margins might be involved in. But that kind of faith healing has really become more mainstream in the 21st century, like with the spread of Pentecostalism worldwide in that healing and spiritual healing is like totally big in South America, in Africa, in the southern hemisphere throughout. So Pentecostalism is overtaking Catholicism in a number of traditionally Catholic countries or countries that were, had tribal religions. So that just occurred to me, so you know, today faith healing in the Catholic church might not be as aberrant as it was back in `74, because there’s Pentecostal missionaries everywhere, and Pentecostals made strong inroads because of the emphasis on speaking in tongues but also spiritual healing.

Jim Jones likely assumed too much about Guyanese culture and clearly misread his audience. The rotten chicken livers used during the fake healing portion of the service appalled the Guyanese in the audience and when it was discovered that those healed during the service were Peoples Temple, he was not invited back. The Temple swiftly put out this statement:

“The Peoples Temple in Guyana intends to be an agricultural mission. Our only interest is to produce food to help feed our hungry world in whatever way best suits the people of Guyana. If you don’t feel we can serve well, just write to us and let us know or write to the government. We have no desire to leave this wonderful country or to impose on your people.”

Rebecca Moore: With the move to Guyana, the outward direction changed and I feel like that the Temple in itself focused inward on the survival of Jonestown, of the agricultural project. You know before then it had really been evangelistic trying to bring in members being very engaged in the community. Once they moved to Guyana, that stopped in California to a great extent and the focus became on survival. One former member said you know, he was trying to create this utopian community for his children and I think that, that is really the only way that at least in the beginning, people could justify the hard work and hard labor it took to create such a community

 Q1059 1 Jones: No one that’s rich has ever gone to a gas chamber. (Tape distortion) had $50,000 has ever gone for life imprisonment. Why is it that a Black and brown and the hippie and the poor are the ones that get arrested, and the ones that die without hospital care are the poor, the ones that live in the rat traps. (Voice climbs) Where is your God up there? Where is He? Where did he ever come? Did he ever come? You’ve never asked me for anything, as long as you ask me, I have done everything in my power to get to your need, I’ve never turned away anybody (tape distortion) from my home, I’ve never turned anyone away from food, I’ve never turned away one that wanted education, or (tape distortion) turned one away that wanted a healing. No, I’m real. If you want to call me God, then I’m God. But I’m Jim Jones. Nobody helped me. I haven’t prayed a prayer since I was five. Do something about the misery around you. Take care of the animals. I don’t care whether you like me, call me Jim Jones, call me asshole, I don’t care what you call me. Call me Father, call me mother, call me morphodite, call me queer, call me whatever you want, (Calls out) ’cause I don’t care what you call me. Just do what’s right. What kinda God they got? What kinda God? Get down on your knees, and up on your knees. Poor Catholics– I used to wear – my mother was a Catholic – down and up. And I saw the priest. I saw what he did when she was hungry. No, he didn’t come. My father was a Pentecostal, and they– they didn’t come, when the stomach was growling, growling, eating up its very lining, they didn’t come. I got back– oh, I’ve been a rascal in my day. (Pause) And one night I come in that Catholic Church, there wasn’t nobody around, and I got myself up on the box, and I did (struggles for words, then pauses for breath during non-verbal gesture)

 Congregation: Laughs.

 Jones: I did it. Stood right up there, and I did it. I filled that holy water with some real water. (Pause) And the next day– next day I went to the– I went to Mass at St. Mary’s to see what was going on, and they said, never been a better service, and they didn’t know they were anointing themselves with my pee. Hey hey hey hey! And I got back–Say, who do you pray to? (Full throat) Nobody. It’s me. If you’ve got that, then you’d be like me. You’d be free. That’s why I can do these things. I don’t look to anybody outside of me. It’s all in me. By God, I’m telling you, it’s too hard to get truth across. It’s too hard. I– I– I– I don’t like this job, it’s heavy to put my voice through this, but I’m trying to get about a hundred people to think. I’ve been working. I had 10,000– 10,000. I used to pack– I couldn’t even see my people ’cause people like to see someone raise the dead, they like to see me– cancers come off, cataracts come out, deaf ears open. The 10,000 filled Cato Tabernacle, until I threw the Bible down. (Pause) Till I took a black child, they run like beetles under a rock. Those good saints filled Cato Tabernacle, until I started to be human. (Pause) I got no use to religion. You get it? 

 Rebecca Moore: I do want to say I feel like there's a bit of revisionist history being created, and that is that Jim Jones was a charlatan and there was nothing ever genuine or authentic about Peoples Temple. That's simply not true. The members who were part of Peoples Temple believed in what they were doing, you know regardless of whether we think they were fooled by Jim Jones or not. In a way that is irrelevant because they themselves were doing the work and doing the labor to create a new type of society, an interracial society, an egalitarian society, one in which no one had you know a lot more than their neighbor. Now we can say well they didn't succeed right, that they failed, but just because they failed doesn't mean that they did not make a good faith attempt to try to implement their ideals

Q992 Mike Prokes: And how do you see Jonestown as fulfilling what you’ve just described?

 Jones: Well, in essence, it is the church in action. We don’t require this lifestyle for others, but indeed it is a takeoff from the early church. On the day of Pentecost they settled a community. People came together, a hundred and twenty came together, and immediately there was a sense of community. Apostolic relationships. Egalitarianism was basic to the Christian concept, and so Jonestown is an egalitarian community. It is a communal community, it’s a socialistic community, and that’s a long discussion of what Jonestown really is, there’s uh, not enough space, but if the antichrist, the fascistic, the selfish nature, it’s people against people, people separated from people, then Pentecostalism or socialism is people for people, people with people.

 When Jim Jones moved to Jonestown permanently in 1977, he no longer preached for or against the Bible, nor did he perform faith healings. The evangelical fury and theatrics he had incorporated into his sermons was utilized in a different way.

Jones (Q636 underneath the “Let the Night Roar” tape): (singing) Ever since I’ve been born, Never heard a man— (Calls out) Can’t you sing a little louder and clap your hands? Your enemies are out there. (Sings) — speak like this man before. All the days of my life, ever since I been born. (Sings) I never heard a man speak like this man before. I never heard a man speak like this man before. All the days of my life, ever since I been born, I never— (Cries out) Louder, louder. Clap your hands. 

 Don’t ever say hate is the enemy. Love’s practically caused me to get you destroyed. If I’d have hated a little more, just a little more, we would have had less troubles. I looked at my faults analytically. Sure you got love, principle, but don’t say hate is my enemy, what does that say, what is that verse? “Hate is my enemy, I’ve got to fight it day and night.” What is the rest of that line? “Love is the only weapon." Shit! Bullshit! Martin Luther King died with love! Kennedy died talking about something he couldn't even understand, some kind of generalized love, and he never even backed it up. He’s shot down. [Full throated] Bullshit! "Love is the only weapon with which I've got to fight." I've got a hell of a lot of weapons to fight! I've got my claws. I've got cutlasses. I've got guns. I've got dynamite. I've got a hell of a lot to fight! I'll fight! I'll fight! I’LL FIGHT! [War whooping] I WILL FIGHT, I WILL FIGHT, I WILL FIGHT, I WILL FIGHT! Let them hear it in the night! [SCREAMING-war whooping] Let the night roar with it! They’re out there, they’re out there. They’re listening. Let the night roar with it! [war whoop] Let the night roar. They can hear us! They know we mean it! WE’LL KILL THEM IF THEY COME! …. 

[underneath]: (Sings) I never heard a man speak like this man before. All the days of this life, ever since I been born, I never heard a man speak like this man before. (Singsong) Now make your sound (High cry) woo woo woo woo— (war whoop).

 Jim Jones no longer used his knowledge and powers to create a magical space of healing and fellowship. Messages went over the radio in Jonestown asking for more Bibles to be sent. In the end a secret radio codebook was discovered in Jonestown. The word Bible was code for gun. Only 13 Bibles were found in Jonestown in a population of nearly one thousand people.

Mike Wood: I cannot speak to what people believed in Jonestown, but I can tell you what we believed, many people believed in the US, particularly early on. So I, most of us believed in reincarnation and Jim would tell some of us what our previous incarnations were, and as I'm sure you know, when it comes to discussions about reincarnation everybody wants to know what Prime Minister or Princess or Queen or King or famous person they had been in the past. But nobody wants to know about the maid or the house painter or the toilet cleaner you know, they don't wanna know that shit. They want so, so anyway so, you know, Jim told me three of my guys and that was nice. But and so, I think we all believed in reincarnation but, that's early on. As you know, Temple membership changed as time went on. You would see different subcultures arise within the Church, because, just because of people, where people would come from in their own, either spiritual traditions, or political experiences, or whatnot. There came to be a difference of opinion so as I became more, I can’t say grew up, as I got older you know, say 23, 24, I realized that the you know, reincarnation talk was bullshit. He didn't know and I became quickly an atheist, but that was consistent with my Marxian or social disabuse at the time. But other people really believed in an afterlife. I remember we had a Planning Commission in which Jim asked who believes in an afterlife and who doesn't. I want to hear some of these raised their hands for not and some people raises their hands for an afterlife. Jim was kind of suspicious about the people who raised their hands about an afterlife because he was afraid that we're looking to move on to a happier place where he wouldn't be in control, that's my suspicion. And so he asked what we believed in and what we think is gonna actually happen in your afterlife? And so one lady, she was pretty smart, she said “well, I believe that the world is so shitty that you know, we're never going to get out of the shittiness and that the afterlife is going to be even more shitty,” and I think Jim liked that answer, so it was a mix. I, I had no idea. My mother had been, you know, an evangelical Christian, so I, I frankly don't know what she believed. She believed that she had been reincarnated and Jim had given her the name of some famous person way back in the day that she had been, and as far as what's happening in the future, I think, you know, we believed at least when I, while I believed in reincarnation, would be reincarnated again and again, and that those who were closer to Jim had the best shot at moving on permanently. But then, as I, because he was you know God of the universe in his mind, I believed that once I got a little older, I think probably when I was in law school, I, I stopped believing that bullshit. But, I will tell you this; even to this day, even to this day, I still have a kind of a warm spot in my heart for the Red Army.

David Wise: He just was looking forward basically, to the oblivion of death because he was tired on the earth. He, he was an atheist and I remember when I first came into the Temple one of the girls, that Touchette girl, you know she said, “well, I just wanna, I you know, what-- what comes after life?” And so, he said you know, “well, I remember this vision of a beautiful lake, and, and.” So he came up with a story that sounded heavenly like in his memory of some heavenly place where we were all going to go on another planet, and she said “well, I just wanna hurry and go there as soon as possible, it's such a messed up world here,” and I sat there thinking that's not the attitude to take. But, he was somewhat dismal, and somewhat jaded, and somewhat hopeless, yet he was in the field of teaching and preaching; hope was his field as a preacher, but he basically was tired of living. Even probably at a young age, had some fascination with death, I think.

Denise: It's a shame that's something where the people started out, and the leader started out with a vision that was meant for the betterment of mankind got so screwed up, and just so twisted that it became the total, the total opposite. I mean, I remember him saying in his meetings he would talk about dictatorship and he would say you know, he was quoted as saying power reaps corruption, and total power reaps total corruption, and yet he became total power didn't he? And he was totally corrupted. So, this is what I think, you know? It's kind of sad, because he had this one mission that he started out with that probably would have been, if he continued, almost like the soup kitchens, and the clothing drives, and things that were like helping the day-to-day man, probably and remained in that realm of helping people, probably would have been, he would have been remembered as a saint, practically. But he chose this other avenue and he thought he was going to become a revolutionary socialist and he became, he became more and more determined that he was you know, he was following communism, became more avant garde, he became more militant in his viewpoint, and I think that the view of the world is that you know, this was an organization of crazies. Who the heck drinks kool-aid? 900 people out in the middle of nowhere, what you know, what is, what was the purpose? Whatever message he was trying to give, I don't think that the world has received it the way that he wanted it received. I think the world has received exactly the way it's been given.

 Q383 Jones: Would that I would have to die before we were vindicated. But you’d have to carry the burden, but you’d have to carry the burden of being portrayed as a bunch of hoodlums. So you can’t know what that means to me tonight. That we’d cracked into these murderous sonsofbitches, if that is revealed. It’s revealed what was really behind it. That’s all I ever wanted. I was so sick and tired of those liars. All going back when we were trying to straighten our children out by spanking them. Talking about chicken guts for cancer when all of these people here, many of them been healed by cancer, every damn lie, they put every other second something across. Be interesting how the worm turns now.

 Denise: I mean when I hear the stories about how they put people in like a hole in the ground, and left them there for days. How they turned people up, you know, hung them upside down. Some of the punishments that they gave people, I just, it boggles the mind, totally boggles the mind. I mean, I understand like you're in, you're in the middle of nowhere and you're trying to create a life and so therefore everybody has to work. I get the work part, and I get the thing that everybody had to work in the fields, everyone. I get all of that, but I don't understand how the horrible treatment that you did to your people and I don't understand these white night things. Like really and truly what was that all, that was just total brainwashing. Although to be honest with you, he started something similar while we were in California he didn't call it, he didn't call it white nights, didn’t call it black night, or anything like that, but he did have this thing that the end of the world was going to happen on the 16th of some elusive month, and so every 16th of the month you know, we gathered together and we were like terrified, could this be the end? And for years for myself, I worried about that. Was it going to be the end, you know?

 Q938 Jones: You watch it...

Woman: He told Penny [Kerns?] and I that he’d like to go back to get his job back. Well, the job he had was working for a multi-million dollar corporation as a security guard so that he could protect them from any poor person that would try to break in there.

Crowd: Stirs. Oohs, ahhhs, and gotcha noises. 

Woman: And today I said don’t you care about the people, can’t you care about someone else? If you attempt to suicide, you’re gonna hurt this Cause and you’re gonna hurt Jim. I said, don’t you care? He said, “evidently not.”

Jones: Speak sir. Give us a sp-- give us a lecture.

Peter [Wotherspoon?]: Uh, what [unintelligible-Penny says, is true, I...] 

Jones: Answer some of these questions, sir.

Peter: I guess, I just don’t like the structure, and... 

Jones: [Seething and talking through his teeth] I don’t give a fuck what you don’t like! I’m tired of hearing what you don’t like. I want to hear what you’re gonna do about changing your miserable, Goddamn self. I don’t give a fuck! You want to leave tonight? Would you like to go now? How would you like to leave tonight? Just say you’d like to. We gotta path we can send you through. Any path you want to take. [Shouting] DO YOU WANNA LEAVE TONIGHT!! 

Peter: [meekly] No.

Jones [Irate]: Miserable Goddamn person. Look at these people that you’re draining dry, if you don’t have any compassion on me. I’ve lost my mother. Goddamn you [Jones and guards rough him up-crowd cheering and jeering the man]! You miserable self-centered son of a bitch. [crowd cheers]

[Peter groans]

Jones: Yes, we’ll give you more and more. You’re gonna walk, you’re gonna stay awake for 24 hours, you’re gonna be crazy, Goddamn you [crowd cheering and jeering]!

In Jonestown Jim Jones used every tactic he’d learned preaching the Pentecostal circuit to create an atmosphere of terror. Church services were replaced by white nights, all night rallies that kept the settlement awake, fearful and ready to fight. Never ending discussions about suicide and the beauty of death replaced once radical speeches about racial equality. Violent rants about revenge replaced Planning Commission meetings. The chicken livers, a prop used during fake faith healings in the States, were too precious to waste. Staff members who once disguised themselves as the disabled to be healed now put drugs in people’s food. Supposed mercenaries waiting in the jungle to attack Jonestown filled the ecosphere, where the voices of the choir once lifted people’s spirits. Gunshots, just a prop used to terrify the people and keep them battle ready, rang out into the night. Father’s voice, once a source of comfort and inspiration to his People, now burrowed its way into their psyche as he rambled over the loudspeaker day and night with warnings of danger, complaints, and propaganda. A constant barrage of noise that destroyed the last shred of comfort one could find after 16-hour workdays: silence.

Q994 Jones: I will not be taken by surprise again. Never. I’m so completely aware. Not minding living, enduring it for the sake of some mother who said uh, may you live long, Father. What she was saying was, may my protection live long. But some of you are so absolutely stupid, your elitism is stupid, you make– you– you’re stupid, you haven’t changed. And I see you haven’t changed. And because I don’t tell you you haven’t changed doesn’t mean I don’t know you haven’t changed.

 Crowd: Right.

 Jones: And I observe you so caustically, that before I see any more hell for this place, I’ll take you with me. I– Now don’t underestimate– don’t underestimate me. Please don’t. 

 In Jonestown, Jim Jones created a waking nightmare using all of his theatrical gifts to destroy people’s spirits and his powers of persuasion to eliminate the self, and replace any shred of compassion or hope, with guilt and fear. After so many years searching for the Promised Land, Jim Jones created a haunted house designed to scare anyone who doubted him or challenged his divinity. The games Jim Jones played as a child in his mock church had little consequences. But in Jonestown he held the lives of one thousand people in his hands. Why was he still playing games? 

Q994 Jones: I don’t love myself. That makes me what– That’s why I’m so critical of myself. I don’t love the manifestations of selfishness I see. And that’s why I’m so critical of you. Now I know Western civilization says you’re supposed to come to terms with yourself and love yourself, otherwise you’ll disintegrate. That’s pablum. Pablum for weak people, who say they have to have uh, a self-image, they’ve got to love themselves. They got to believe in themselves. I don’t believe in nothing except communism, and none of us come up to the standard of communism. I’m the closest to it. Not a one of you come up to it. You sing a song, “I’m a Socialist Today,” I want to puke. You’re not a socialist today. There’s not a handful of socialists in here today. One thing you ought to be singing, you don’t ever want to sing, ”I Need You, Father, I Need You.” ‘Cause you don’t know how, you don’t know how to make it. You don’t know a fuck about socialism. One young woman got up and said socialism in Russia and China it’s just s superior. She was so right. The air of the place where you’re not is always brighter to so many of you. In Russia, it’d be wonderful. In Cuba, it’s ideal. Back in America, you couldn’t make it. You can’t make it. You gonna cause trouble for everybody. You’re gonna cause trouble and get trouble, in the end, won’t be able to endure it. If I let you do your thing, you’d hurt your own– your own children, you’d kill ‘em. You’d destroy your own companions, and then finally when you were about to be destroyed, you couldn’t stand it, you’d fall apart, because you’d be so self-indulged. So you need me, fucker. And I don’t care whether you recognize it or not. We’re on this little mountain now, and uh, what principle has brought together, let no man tear asunder. 

 Did Jim Jones believe he was God’s messenger or godlike himself? Did Jim Jones ever truly believe in anything… other than himself? Moments before his death the voice of Jim Jones betrays a pained almost vulnerable tone, as if abandoned and forsaken.

Q042 Jones: [anguished] Oh God!

History will remember Jim Jones as a notorious cult leader who betrayed his followers' trust and orchestrated their deaths. Examining the fabric of his ideals and beliefs stained by the blood of his flock may never reveal his true motives. 

Fortunately for us, if we are compassionate and listen with an open mind, we might be able to understand what Peoples Temple believed and what motivated them to move to Guyana, to dedicate their lives to Jim Jones and the movement, and in many cases what made them decide to leave the group behind and start new lives. After all, Jim Jones' power and influence came from the people who believed in him. Join us on the next episode of Transmissions From Jonestown where our focus shifts from behind the pulpit to the perspective of those in the audience.

The Attention Span Recovery Project would like to thank our special guests for this episode: Mike Wood, Thomas Beikman, Rebecca Moore, Vern Gosney, Hue Fortson, David Wise, Denise, Yolanda Williams, and Laura Johnston Kohl. We would also like to thank the Jonestown Institute, otherwise known as the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Their Website can be found at www.jonestown.sdsu.edu. The Institute houses a massive collection of Peoples Temple research lovingly organized and curated by fielding McGehee, Rebecca Moore, and countless others who have donated their time and energy to ensure these materials will live on forever. You now have completed the prologue, for the second season of Transmissions from Jonestown, together we have so much to discover and so much further to go. The Attention Span Recovery Project would like to thank our followers: your devotion is everything. The next new episode will premiere on March 5 at midnight. We appreciate your patience and continued loyalty. During this time apart, we encourage all of you to be good to yourselves. You are important to us. And as always, remember we are like the sun, you don’t have to see us to know that we’re there.

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