Peoples Temple

Jim Jones' first church in Indianapolis, Indiana

Before forming a church, Jim Jones had become enamored of communism and was frustrated by the harassment communists received in the U.S. during the Red Scare.[2] This, among other things, provided a clerical inspiration for Jones; as he himself described in a biographical recording:[2][3]

I decided, how can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church. So I consciously made a decision to look into that prospect.

Although Jones feared a backlash for being a communist, he was surprised when a Methodist superintendent (whom he had not met through the American Communist Party) helped him into the church, despite his knowledge that Jones was a communist.[4] In 1952, Jones became a student pastor in Sommerset Southside Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, but left that church because it barred him from integrating African-Americans into his congregation.[3] In 1954, Jones began his own church in a rented space in Indianapolis, at first naming it the Community Unity Church.[3]

Jones had previously observed a faith healing service at the Seventh Day Baptist Church, and concluded that such healings could attract people, and generate income, helping to accomplish his social goals.[3] Jones and Temple's members knowingly faked healings because they found that the increased faith generated financial resources to help the poor and finance the church.[3] These "healings" involved chicken livers and other animal tissue, claimed by Jones (and confederate Temple members) to be cancerous tissues removed from the body.[5]

In 1956, Jones bought his first church building, located in a racially mixed Indianapolis neighborhood. He first named this church Wings of Deliverance,[6] and later that year renamed it the Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church, the first time he used the phrase "Peoples Temple."[3] Jones' healings and purported clairvoyant revelations attracted spiritualists.[6]

In order to increase publicity, the Peoples Temple organized large religious "conventions" with other Pentecostal pastors, with Jones continuing to disguise the fact that he was using religion to further his political ideology.[6] Those conventions drew as many as 11,000 attendees,[6] as Jones and the other preachers conducted "healings" and impressed attendees by revealing private information—usually addresses, phone numbers, or Social Security numbers, which private detectives could easily discover beforehand.[6] Jones and Temple members also drove through various cities in Indiana and Ohio on recruiting and fundraising efforts.[7]

The Temple stressed egalitarian ideals, asking members to attend in casual clothes so poor members would not feel out of place, and providing shelter for the needy.[8] While the Temple had increased its African-American membership from 15% to nearly 50%, in order to attempt further gains the Temple hired African-American preacher Archie Ijames (who had earlier given up organized religion).[6] Pastor Ijames was one of the first to commit to Jones' socialist collective program.[8] In 1959, the church joined the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and was renamed the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel.[3] This affiliation was a successful attempt to both raise the dwindling membership and restore the reputation of the organization.

In February 1960, the Temple opened a soup kitchen for the poor, and expanded their social services to include rent assistance, job placement services, free canned goods, clothing, and coal for winter heating.[8] Jones and his wife Marceline helped to increase the Temple's soup kitchen service to an average of about 2,800 meals per month.[8] The Temple's public profile was further elevated when Jones was appointed to the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission. He engaged in public attempts to integrate businesses and was the subject of much local media coverage.[9]

Jones had read extensively about Father Divine, the founder of the International Peace Mission movement.[10] Jones and members of the Temple visited Divine several times, while Jones studied his writings and tape recordings of his sermons.[11] The Temple printed Divine's texts for its members and began to preach that members should abstain from sex and only adopt children.[11]

In 1959, Jones tested the new fiery rhetorical style that Divine had used in a sermon.[12] His speech captivated members with lulls and crescendos, as Jones challenged individual members in front of the group.[12] The speech also marked the beginning of the Temple's underlying "us versus them" message.[12] Jones carefully wove in that the Temple's home for senior citizens was established on the basis "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", quoting Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program.[13] He did so knowing that his Christian audience would recognize the similarities with text from the Acts of the Apostles (4:34–35) which stated: "distribution was made to each as any had need."[13] Jones would repeatedly cite that passage to paint Jesus as a communist, while at the same time attacking much of the text of the Bible.[13]

The Temple began tightening control over its organization,[8] asking more of its members than did other churches.[8] It required that members spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with its Temple "family" rather than with blood relatives,[8] the beginning of a process to wean members from outside contact and redirect their lives toward a total commitment to the Temple and its goals.[8] Jones began to offer a deal towards a socialist collective, which he referred to as "religious communalism", in which members would donate their material possessions to the Temple in exchange for the Temple meeting all those members' needs.[8] Pastor Ijames was one of the first to commit.[8]

The Temple had little luck converting most Midwesterners to communist ideals, even when disguised as religion.[14] Admiring the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Jones traveled to the island nation in 1960 in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade poor black Cubans to move to his congregation in Indiana.[14] The Temple's religious message transitioned during this period, to one treading between atheism and the subtle notion that Jones was a Christ-like figure.[15] While Temple aides complained privately, Jones said that the new message was needed to foster members' dedication to the Temple's larger goals.[15] He maintained such implications until the mid-to-late 1970s.[15]

In 1961, Jones claimed he had had a vision in which Indianapolis and Chicago were destroyed in a nuclear attack,[16][16] convincing aides that the Temple needed to look for a new location. A 1962 Esquire magazine article listed the nine safest places to be in a nuclear war, with Belo Horizonte, Brazil, topping the list because of its location and atmospheric conditions.[17] Jones traveled through Brazil from 1962 through early 1963.[18] He requested money from the Temple while in Rio de Janeiro, but the Temple lacked adequate funds for such a request because of shrinking finances in Jones' absence.[18] Jones sent a preacher that had become a follower in Brazil back to Indiana to help stabilize the Temple.[19] Jones returned to Indiana in 1963.[3]

While he had always spoken of the social gospel's virtues, Jones did not reveal that his gospel was actually communism until the late 1960s.[3] By then, he was openly revealing in Temple sermons his "Apostolic Socialism" concept.[3][20] The concept often loosely mixed tenets of socialism.[note 1] During this period, Jones preached to new members that the Holy Spirit was within them, but that Jones's healing power demonstrated that he was a special manifestation of "Christ the Revolution."[3] He also preached that the U.S. was the Antichrist and capitalism "the Antichrist system."[3]

Jones preached of an imminent nuclear holocaust, after which the surviving elect would create a new socialist Eden on earth.[3] In 1965, he predicted this would occur on July 15, 1967.[3] Accordingly, Jones preached that the Temple must move to Redwood Valley, California.[3] In July 1965, he led approximately 140 members, half of whom were black, to Redwood Valley, and officially re-established his church there.[7][21] The addition of deputy district attorney Timothy Stoen greatly increased the Temple's credibility in the area, quickly increasing membership.[21]

Jones began deriding traditional Christianity as "fly away religion," and rejected the Bible as white men's justification to dominate women and enslave people of color.[3] He authored a booklet he would distribute in the Temple, "The Letter Killeth",[22] pointing out what he felt were the contradictions, absurdities, and atrocities in the Bible, but also stating that the Bible contained great truths. Jones preached that the "Divine Principle" equated with love, and love equated with socialism.[3] He said the Bible contained beliefs about only a "Sky God" or "Buzzard God," who was no God at all.[3]

Peoples Temple members attend an anti-eviction rally at the International Hotel, San Francisco, January 1977.

Because of limited expansion in the Redwood Valley-Ukiah area, it eventually seemed necessary to move the church's seat of power to an urban area.[23] In 1970, the Temple began holding services in San Francisco and Los Angeles.[24] It established permanent facilities in those cities in 1971 and 1972, respectively.[23] In San Francisco, the Temple occupied a former Scottish Rite temple at 1859 Geary Boulevard; in Los Angeles, the Temple occupied the former building of the First Church of Christ, Scientist at 1366 S. Alvarado Street.

Peoples Temple headquarters, 1959 Geary Blvd., San Francisco, 1978

By 1972, the Temple called Redwood Valley the "mother church" of a "statewide political movement".[23] From the start, the Los Angeles facility's primary purposes were to recruit members and to serve as a waystation for the Temple's weekly bus trips across California.[23] The Temple set up permanent staff in Los Angeles and arranged bus trips to Los Angeles every other week.[23] The substantial attendance and collections in Los Angeles helped support the Temple's inflated membership claims.[23] The Los Angeles facility was larger than San Francisco's.[23] Its central location at the corner of Alvarado and Hoover Streets permitted easy geographic access for a large Black membership from Watts and Compton.[23]

Recruiting drives in Los Angeles and San Francisco helped increase membership in the Temple from a few hundred to nearly 3,000 by the mid-70s.[25] Later, when the Temple's headquarters shifted from Redwood Valley to San Francisco, the Temple convinced many Los Angeles members to move north to its new headquarters.[23]

Although some descriptions of the Peoples Temple emphasize Jones's autocratic control over its operations, in reality, the Temple possessed a complex leadership structure with decision-making power unevenly dispersed among its members. Within that structure, Temple members were unwittingly and gradually subjected to sophisticated mind control and behavior modification techniques borrowed from post-revolutionary China and North Korea.[26] The Temple tightly defined psychological boundaries that "enemies", such as "traitors" to the Temple, crossed at their own peril.[26] While the secrecy and caution Jones demanded in recruiting led to decreased overall membership, they also helped him foster hero-worship of himself as the "ultimate socialist".[26]

In the 1970s, the Temple established a more formal hierarchy for its socialistic model.[27] At the top were the Temple's staff, a select group of predominantly college-educated white women that undertook the Temple's most sensitive missions.[27] They necessarily acclimated themselves to an "ends justify the means" philosophy.[27] The earliest member was Sandy Bradshaw, a socialist from Syracuse, New York.[27] Others included Carolyn Layton, a communist since the age of 15 who had a child with Jones; Sharon Amos, who worked for the social services department; Patty Cartmell, Jones's secretary; and Teri Buford, a Navy brat turned pacifist.[27] The group was often scorned as elitist within the egalitarian Temple organization and viewed as secret police.[27]

The Temple's Planning Commission was its governing board.[28][29] Membership quickly ballooned from 50 to over 100.[28][29] During the week, members convened for meetings in various Redwood Valley locations, sometimes until dawn.[28] The Planning Commission was responsible for the Temple's day-to-day operations, including key decision-making, financial and legal planning, and oversight.[30] The Commission sat over various other committees, such as the Diversions Committee, which carried out tasks such as writing huge numbers of letters to politicians from fictional people mailed from various locations around the U.S.,[31] and the Mertles Committee, which undertook activities against defectors Al and Jeannie Mills.[32]

A group of rank-and-file members, whom outsiders called the "troops", consisted of working-class members who were 70–80% black. They set up chairs for meetings, filled offering boxes, and did other tasks.[27] Many of them were attracted to the Temple's quasi-socialist approach both because of the Temple's political education offers and because the Temple's highly passionate congregations still maintained the familiar forms of evangelical prayers and black gospels.[27] Jones also surrounded himself with several dozen mostly white, privileged members in their twenties and thirties who had skills in law, accounting, nursing, teaching, music, and administration.[27] This latter group carried out public relations, financial duties, and more mundane chores while bringing in good salaries from well-paying outside jobs.[27]

The Temple used ten to fifteen Greyhound-type bus cruisers to transport members up and down California freeways each week for recruitment and fundraising.[33] Jones always rode in bus number seven, which contained armed guards and a special section lined with protective metal plates.[33] He told members that the Temple would not bother scheduling a trip unless it could net $100,000, and the Temple's goal for annual net income from bus trips was $1 million.[33]

Beginning in the 1970s, the bus caravan also traveled across the U.S. quarterly, including to Washington, D.C.[33] In June 1973, Representative George Brown, Jr. entered a lengthy and laudatory description of the Temple into the Congressional Record.[33] The Washington Post ran an August 18, 1973, editorial-page item stating that the 660 Temple visitors were the "hands down winners of anybody's tourists of the year award" after spending an hour cleaning up the Capitol grounds.[33]

The Temple distributed pamphlets in cities along the route of these fundraising trips bragging of Jones's prowess at "spiritual healing" without mentioning the Temple's Marxist goals.[33] Stops included large cities such as Houston, Detroit, and Cleveland.[33] Temple members pretended to be locals and acted as shills in the various faked healings and "revelations".[33] Local viewers did not realize they were in the minority in the audience.[33] The weekly take from offerings and healing services was $15,000 to $25,000 in Los Angeles and $8,000 to $12,000 in San Francisco.[34] There were smaller collections from trips around the "mother church" in Redwood Valley.[34]

The Temple also set up Truth Enterprises, a direct mailing branch that sent out 30,000 to 50,000 mailers monthly to people who had attended Temple services or written to the Temple after listening to Temple radio programs.[34] Donations were mailed in from all over the continental U.S., Hawaii, South America, and Europe.[34] In addition to receiving donations, the Temple sold trinkets, such as pieces of Jones's robes, healing oil, Temple rings, key chains, and lockets.[34] In peak periods, mailer revenue grossed $300 to $400 daily.[34] This figure even surprised Jones.[34]

Although Jones had earlier asked Temple members to destroy photos of him because he did not want members worshiping him as Catholics "worshiped plaster statues", Jeannie and Al Mills (who would later defect) convinced Jones to sell anointed and blessed photos to raise money.[34] Jones worried that "they're gonna get me for mail fraud someday."[34] In 1973, the Temple also formed Brotherhood Records, a subsidiary record label that produced music from the Temple's "large interracial youth choir and orchestra".[35]

Despite exaggerated claims by the Temple of 20,000 or more members, one source claims its greatest actual registered membership was around 3,000.[36] However, 5,000 individual membership card photos were located in Temple records after its dissolution.[37] Regardless of its official membership, the Temple also regularly drew 3,000 people to its San Francisco services alone.[38] Of particular interest to politicians was the Temple's ability to produce 2,000 people for campaign work or attendance in San Francisco on only six hours' notice.[21]

By the mid-1970s, in addition to its locations in Redwood Valley, Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Temple had established satellite congregations in almost a dozen other California cities.[26] Jones mentioned locations in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Ukiah, Bakersfield, Fresno, and Sacramento.[39] The Temple also maintained a branch, college tuition program, and dormitory at Santa Rosa Junior College.[40][41]

At the same time, Jones and his church earned a reputation for aiding the cities' poorest citizens, especially racial minorities, drug addicts, and the homeless. The Temple made strong connections to the California state welfare system.[42] During the 1970s, the church owned and ran at least nine residential care homes for the elderly, six homes for foster children, and a state-licensed 40-acre (160,000 m²) ranch for developmentally disabled persons.[43] The Temple elite handled members' insurance claims and legal problems, effectively acting as a client-advocacy group. For these reasons, sociologist John Hall described the Temple as a "charismatic bureaucracy",[44] oriented toward Jones as a charismatic leader, but functioning as a bureaucratic social service organization.

In 1972, the San Francisco Examiner and Indianapolis Star ran the first four parts of a seven-part story on the Temple by Lester Kinsolving, its first public exposé.[45] Kinsolving reported on several aspects of church dealings, its claims of healings, and Jones's ritual of throwing Bibles down in church, yelling, "This black book has held down you people for 2,000 years. It has no power."[46] Temple members picketed the Examiner, harassed the paper's editor, and threatened both the Examiner and the Star with libel suits.[45] Both papers canceled the series after the fourth installment.[45] Shortly thereafter, Jones made grants to newspapers in California with the stated goal of supporting the First Amendment.[47]

Some defections occurred,[48] most especially in 1973, when eight young members – known as the "Gang of Eight" – defected together.[49] Because the Gang of Eight were aware of threats to potential defectors, they suspected Jones would send a search party to look for them.[49] Their fears proved correct: Jones employed multiple search parties, including one which scanned highways from a rented airplane.[50] The Gang of Eight drove three trucks loaded with firearms toward Canada, avoiding U.S. Highway 101.[49] Because they feared taking firearms over the U.S.-Canada border, the group traveled instead to the hills of Montana, where they wrote a long letter documenting their complaints.[50]

Former Temple member Jeannie Mills later wrote that Jones called thirty members to his home and forebodingly declared that, in light of the mass defection, "in order to keep our apostolic socialism, we should all kill ourselves and leave a note saying that because of harassment, a socialist group cannot exist at this time."[51] Jones became furious, waving a pistol at the Planning Commission and referring to the Gang of Eight as "Trotskyite defectors" and "Coca-Cola revolutionaries".[52] While the Temple did not execute the suicide plan Jones described, it did conduct fake suicide rituals in the years that followed.[51]

Temple building at 1366 S. Alvarado St., Los Angeles

In all, 918 people died, including 276 children.[94] It was the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act until the events of September 11, 2001.[95][96][97] This includes four that died at the Temple headquarters that night in the Guyanese capital of Georgetown.[98]

The Temple's San Francisco headquarters came under siege by national media and relatives of Jonestown victims.[99] The mass killing became one of the best-known events in U.S. history as measured by the Gallup poll and appeared on the cover of several newspapers and magazines, including Time, for months afterward.[100]

In addition, according to various press reports,[101][102] after the Jonestown suicides, surviving Temple members in the U.S. announced their fears of being targeted by a "hit squad" of Jonestown survivors. Similarly, in 1979, the Associated Press reported a U.S. Congressional aide's claim that there were "120 white, brainwashed assassins out from Jonestown awaiting the trigger word to pick up their hit."[103]

Temple insider Michael Prokes, who had been ordered to deliver a suitcase containing Temple funds to be transferred to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,[104][105] committed suicide in March 1979, four months after the Jonestown incident. In the days leading up to his death, Prokes sent notes to several people, together with a thirty-page statement he had written about the Temple. Caen reprinted one copy in his Chronicle column.[106] Prokes then arranged for a press conference in a Modesto, California motel room, during which he read a statement to the eight reporters who attended. He then excused himself, entered a restroom, and fatally shot himself in the head.[106]

Before the tragedy, Temple member Paula Adams engaged in a romantic relationship with Guyana's Ambassador to the United States, Laurence "Bonny" Mann.[107] Adams later married Mann.[108] On October 24, 1983, Mann fatally shot both Adams and the couple's child, and then fatally shot himself.[108] Defecting member Harold Cordell lost twenty family members the evening of the poisonings.[109] The Bogues family, which had also defected, lost their daughter Marilee (age 18), while defector Vernon Gosney lost his son Mark (age 5).[110]

The mass suicide of the Peoples Temple has helped embed in the public mind the idea that all new religious movements are destructive. Bryan R. Wilson argues against that view by pointing out that only four other such events have occurred in similar religious groups: the Branch Davidians, the Solar Temple, Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven's Gate.[111]

At the end of 1978, the Temple declared bankruptcy, and its assets went into receivership.[112] In light of lawsuits, on December 4, 1978, Charles Garry, the corporation's attorney, petitioned to dissolve the Temple. The petition was granted in San Francisco Superior Court in January 1979.[113] A few Temple members remained in Guyana through May 1979 to wrap up the movement's affairs, then returned to the U.S.[112]

The Temple's buildings in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and Redwood Valley are intact, and some are used by church congregations.[112] The Temple's facility in Los Angeles is presently occupied by a Spanish-speaking Seventh-day Adventist congregation.[114] The Temple's former San Francisco headquarters at 1859 Geary Boulevard was destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake; the site is now occupied by a Post Office branch.

Freedom of Information requests from multiple persons over the past three decades aimed at the release of this information have been unsuccessful.[115][116][117]