Jim Jones was born in Lynn, Indiana on May 13, 1931. His early childhood was somewhat isolated, since his father was a partial invalid, and his mother had to go out to work. He described himself as always being alone, and he became a fanatical reader. A neighbour, Mrs. Kennedy, acted as a mother substitute and inculcated the boy with religious ideas from an early age. At high school he did well, and was rated as having an IQ of 115–118. He developed an extraordinary verbal fluency. When he was still quite young he abandoned Methodism and joined the Pentecostal Church. This may have been because of some crisis of faith of the kind characteristic of gurus, but it seems equally likely that Jones believed that the Pentecostal Church would offer him more opportunity to display his talents as a preacher and ‘spiritual healer’. He was allowed to address the congregation of the Pentecostal church when he was still quite young. As he was handsome as well as persuasive, he soon discovered that he could hold an audience. He was reported as appearing entirely certain of himself, with an air of authority and complete conviction. Even as a schoolboy of ten, Jones claimed special powers. In Indianapolis, he became known as a charismatic preacher who championed the rights of the underprivileged. In 1953, he said: ‘I’ve come into the realization of the Holy Spirit’; but his beliefs were anything but orthodox.1 Although Jones claimed divine inspiration and was a persuasive preacher, his actual message was more political than religious, being principally concerned with racial integration and what he called socialism. He did promise a new way of life to his followers; but this was based upon a primitive Marxist vision rather than upon religious revelation. In fact he attacked the Bible as an aggressive text supporting capitalism, slavery, and racial discrimination. He also poured scorn upon the ‘sky God’ of conventional Christianity, claiming that his followers had no need of such a God when he came as ‘your socialist worker God’. ‘The only thing that brings perfect freedom, justice and equality, perfect love in all its beauty and holiness, is socialism.’2 He prided himself on having delivered the goods to his followers which the ‘sky God’ had failed to deliver.
No doubt his powers of oratory went some way to compensate him for his isolation, but Jones remained pathologically anxious about being deserted by such friends as he had, and later by his disciples. As a youth, he invited an acquaintance for dinner. When the lad said that he must leave before Jones wished him to do so, Jones fired a gun at him, narrowly missing him.
Jones, who was always a neat dresser, was obsessionally preoccupied with cleanliness, and avoided anything which might make him sweat. Like many people of obsessional personality, he had a strong wish to bring everything under his own control, including those around him. His wife Marceline, whom he married in June 1949, soon regretted her choice because she found him so dominant and overbearing.
In 1956, he set up his People’s Temple in Indianapolis. The emphasis was on racial equality. Jones and his wife were the first white couple in Indianapolis to adopt a black child. At the time, mixed congregations were a rarity, and many of his black congregation felt that their status had been enhanced by Jones’s refusal to discriminate. Much of his early preaching was concerned with calling up individuals from the congregation and ‘touching them in the name of the Lord’, at which point some entered a trance-like state. In the early days of the People’s Temple, Jones undoubtedly did some good. He established soup kitchens for the poor, and also provided coal and clothes for them. When he moved the Temple to Redwood Valley in California in 1965, Jones operated a ranch for mentally handicapped boys, nursing homes for the elderly, homes for foster children, and a day-care centre. These enterprises apparently provided excellent services. Jones was skilful at cultivating important people, and succeeded in impressing Jane Fonda, Angela Davis, Daniel Ellsberg, and Rosalynn Carter, with whom he once shared a platform.
Jones claimed divinely inspired clairvoyance, which he invoked as explaining his knowledge of the personal histories and secrets of those whom he called up. In reality, he employed spies who discovered these secrets by passing on information gleaned from personal enquiries, unauthorized entries to homes, and even from combing through dustbins.
Jones specialized in services of healing, for which he claimed he had a divine gift. Many of his so-called cures were faked. People brought in in wheelchairs would be told they were healed and could walk. In fact, these were disguised members of the People’s Temple who had been trained for the role. Jones had no hesitation in claiming to cure cancer. An individual would be told that he had cancer of the bowel and instructed to go to the lavatory. Then, a bloody mass of animal intestine would be produced as evidence that the cancer had been miraculously evacuated. Complicity in his deceptions as a healer was one way in which Jones gained control over the members of his cult. Sexual confessions were another. Some were compelled to sign confessions to crimes which they had not committed. Members of the Temple had to abrogate anything which ministered to their sense of individuality: possessions, children, spouses, and ownership of their own bodies. Everything was to be held in common. Jones, like many other gurus, was good at raising money. By 1975 the Temple’s assets were rated at $10 million.
Jones was more obviously a confidence trickster than many gurus, but this did not prevent Eugene Chaikin, a Californian attorney who became a member of the Temple, from describing him as the most loving, Christ-like human being he had ever met. Another law graduate, Tim Stoen, called Jones ‘the most compassionate, honest and courageous human being the world contains’. In 1972, Stoen signed a paper requesting that Jones sire a child by his wife, since he himself was unable to do so. As lawyers are not generally noted for being particularly gullible, these opinions are impressive testimony to Jones’s powers of persuasion. Jones acceded to Stoen’s request, and a later legal conflict about the custody of the ensuing child was one factor leading to the exposure and downfall of Jonestown. Because Jim Jones would not give up John Victor Stoen, as a San Francisco judge ordered, the little boy perished in Jonestown along with the others.
In 1972, Jones again moved the Temple, this time to San Francisco; but disquieting rumours about his claims to heal the sick and raise the dead, combined with accusations of misappropriating funds, soon made him think it advisable to leave California. By 1974, an advance team was clearing an area of jungle in Guyana which Jones had bought from the government for what he called an agricultural project. In May 1977 a massive exodus of Temple members from San Francisco and Los Angeles resulted in the establishment of Jonestown, a settlement so remote from the coastal capital, Georgetown, that it took thirty-six hours to reach it by steamer and river boat. Guyana was chosen because it had a history of offering sanctuary to a variety of fugitives, including a number of criminals and the black leader, Michael X.* Jones himself became permanently resident there from July 1977. About seventy per cent of those who followed Jones to Guyana were black; about two-thirds were female. As Eileen Barker has pointed out, the membership of the People’s Temple was unlike the typical membership of most contemporary cults. Jonestown was originally called an agricultural commune, and the People’s Temple was not classified as a new religious movement until after the mass death of its members.3
The settlement which Jones established was publicized as utopian; a place from which disease had all but vanished because of Jones’s efforts as a divinely-gifted healer: a paradise of racial equality, economic equality and communal bliss. In fact, as some reported it, it was more like a concentration camp presided over by a cruel and ruthless commandant. Jones’s need to bring everything and everyone under his own control came near to fulfilment in this remote place.
According to Deborah Blakey, a former financial secretary of the Temple, who managed to get out in April 1978, the commune lived under a reign of terror. She told Shiva Naipaul that most people were required to work in the fields for eleven hours a day on grossly inadequate rations.4 As a result, extreme loss of weight, chronic diarrhoea, and recurrent fever affected half the inhabitants. Medical treatment was practically non-existent. One middle-aged ex-merchant seaman was forced to work until his shoulder was raw from humping lumber and he broke down sobbing. He was beaten up and forced to crawl in front of Jones to beg forgiveness. The settlement was constantly patrolled by armed guards. Jones threatened that anyone who tried