Jim Jones
James Warren "Jim" Jones (
May 13,
1931 –
November 18,
1978) was the founder of the
Peoples Temple church that developed into a group with
cult-like beliefs, power structures and practices. On
November 18,
1978, most Peoples Temple members followed Jones' advice to commit
mass suicide by drinking poison in their isolated agricultural
intentional community called
Jonestown, located in the jungle of
Guyana. Jones was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head among the 914 corpses there.
Travis Jones was born in
Crete, Indiana, near
Lynn, Indiana and was the son of James and Lynetta Thurman Jones. His father was a member of the
Ku Klux Klan. Jones graduated from high school in
Richmond, Indiana. He became a preacher in the
1950s. He sold pet monkeys door-to-door to raise the money to found his own church
[Lattin, Don How spiritual journey ended in destruction: Jim Jones led his flock to death in jungle (18 November 2003) San Francisco Chronicle ]
"Jones was selling pet monkeys to raise money to start a church. He had placed an ad in the Indianapolis Star. "So she went over and she bought 'em -- a boy monkey and a girl monkey. . . . Jimmy started telling her about his church. She comes back, and she tells me I'm going with her on Easter morning," said June Cordell." [1](Retrieved Feb. 2006) that would be named "Wings of Deliverance". He renamed it later in "Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church", located in
Indianapolis. He gained respectability when he became an ordained minister in
1964 in the mainstream
Christian denomination Disciples of Christ. The church was exceptional for its equal treatment of
African Americans and many of them became members of the church. He started a struggle for racial equality and social justice, which he dubbed
apostolic socialism. Jones authored a booklet, called "The Letter Killeth" pointing out what he felt were the contradictions, absurdities, and atrocities in the
Bible, but the booklet also stated that the Bible contained great truths. [
2] He claimed to be an incarnation of
Jesus,
Akhenaten,
Buddha,
Lenin, and
Father Divine and performed supposed
miracle healings to attract new members. Members of Jones' church called Jones "Father" and believed that their movement was the solution to the problems of society and many did not distinguish Jones from the movement. The group gradually moved away from mainstream
Christianity.
George Moscone, the mayor of
San Francisco, appointed Reverend Jim Jones to the city's Housing Commission.
|
Brochure of the Peoples Temple, portraying cult leader Jim Jones as the loving father of the "Rainbow Family". |
Main article: Jonestown
In the summer of
1977, Jones and most of the 1,000 members of the Peoples Temple moved to Guyana from San Francisco after an investigation into the church for
tax evasion was begun. Jones named the closed settlement
Jonestown after himself. His intention was to create an agricultural
utopia in the jungle, free from racism and based on quasi-communist principles. Jones told his followers to think of him as the incarnation of
Christ and
God.
People who had left the organization prior to its move to Guyana told the authorities of brutal beatings, murders and of a
mass suicide plan, but were not believed. In spite of the tax evasion allegations, Jones was still widely respected for setting up a racially mixed church which helped the disadvantaged. Around 70% of the inhabitants of Jonestown were black and impoverished.
The religious scholar Mary McCormick Maaga argued that Jones' authority waned after he moved to the isolated commune, because there he was not needed anymore for recruitment and he could not hide his drug addiction from rank and file members.
[, McCormick Maaga, Mary Hearing the voices of Jonestown, 1998 Syracuse University press, ISBN 0815605153] Consequently, he lost some of his power to inner-circle members, according to McCormick Maaga.
In November
1978,
U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a fact-finding mission to the Jonestown settlement in Guyana after allegations by relatives in the U.S. of human rights abuses. Ryan's delegation arrived in Jonestown on
November 14 and spent three days interviewing residents. They left hurriedly on the morning of Saturday
November 18 after an attempt was made on Ryan's life. They took with them roughly twenty Peoples Temple members who wished to leave. Delegation members later told police that, as they were boarding planes at the airstrip, a truckload of Jones' armed guards arrived and began to shoot at them. When the gunmen left five people were dead: Representative Ryan, a reporter from
NBC, a cameraman from NBC, a newspaper photographer and one defector from the Peoples Temple. The present-day California State Senator
Jackie Speier, a staff member for Rep. Ryan in 1978, CIA officer Richard Dwyer and a producer for
NBC News,
Bob Flick, survived the attack.
Later that same day, the remaining 914 inhabitants of Jonestown, 276 of them children, committed mass suicide that Jones referred to as "revolutionary suicide" on Jones's instructions by drinking
cyanide-laced
Flavor Aid, by forced cyanide injection, or by shooting. Jones was found dead with a shot in the head, sitting in a deck chair. The
autopsy on his body showed levels of the
barbiturate pentobarbital that could have been lethal to humans who have not developed
physiological tolerance. His drug abuse (including various
LSD and
marijuana experimentations) was confirmed by his son, Stephan, and Jones' doctor in San Francisco.
Jones was married to Marceline Jones. They had one biological son, Stephan Gandhi Jones, who did not take part in the mass suicide because he was away, playing in the Peoples Temple basketball team. Jones claimed to be the biological father of John Victor Stoen, who was the legal son of Grace Stoen and her husband Timothy Stoen. The custody dispute over Stoen had great symbolic value for the Peoples Temple and intensified the conflict with its opponents who consisted of, among others, a group called the
"Concerned Relatives".
In
MacArthur Park,
Los Angeles on
December 13,
1973, Jones was arrested and charged with
soliciting a man for sex in a movie theater bathroom known for
homosexual activity. The man, as it turns out, was an
undercover LAPD vice officer. Jones is on record as later telling his followers that he was "the only true heterosexual", but at least one account exists of his sexually abusing a member of his congregation in front of the followers, ostensibly to prove the man's own
gay tendencies.
One of his sources of inspiration was the controversial cult leader
Father Divine. Jones had borrowed the term "revolutionary suicide" from
Black Panther leader
Huey Newton who had argued the slow suicide of life in the ghetto ought to be replaced by revolutionary struggle that would end only in victory (socialism and self determination) or revolutionary suicide (death).
*
Charismatic authority *
Cult suicide *
True-believer syndrome* crimelibrary.com,
"The Official Story", 27 June 2006.
*
Transcript of Jones' final speech, just before the mass suicide *, McCormick Maaga, Mary
Hearing the voices of Jonestown, 1998
Syracuse University press, ISBN 0815605153
*
Jim Jones Revisited Pt.1: Loops and manipulations of Jim Jones' final speech, by Luke Tan
