Reverend Jim's Traveling Salvation Show

The final rite in Guyana -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I must confess to a certain prejudice. When I think of cults or collective insanity, I usually think of right-wing ideologues or crazed Christians-- Nazis, KKK and Heaven’s Gate. I must pause to reflect and mention that sometimes the craziness has a leftward tilt as it did in November 1978. That’s when Reverend Jim Jones, of the Peoples’ Temple bade his 900 member commune to drink cyanide laced grape punch in an act of “revolutionary suicide”. What weird life trajectory would've brought Jones and his followers to this terrible point?

Looking back, the young Jim Warren Jones had an unremarkable middle class childhood in Indiana. He is said to have been an odd child, musing about death and holding funerals for animals. After his parents divorced, he moved with his mother to Richmond, Indiana. He attended Indiana and Butler Universities where he earned a degree in secondary education; his desire was to be a student pastor. Jones chose the Methodist ministry as his first career move, since they were accepting of people with socialist leanings (like Jones) in the McCarthy era. Alas, his dalliance with Methodism was short-lived because at the time they weren’t racially integrated and Jones was pro-integration.

In what was evidence of a dynamic presence, Jones founded his very own church, the People’s Temple Christian Church Full Gospel at the tender age of 22 in the early 1950‘s. Jones was also made director of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission and presented a strong voice for the NAACP as well as the up-and-coming civil rights movement. His outspokenness brought harassment and vandalism to his Indiana church. In the mid 1960’s, Jones had a “vision” that nuclear holocaust was coming to America in 1967 and the only safe haven would be Redwood, California. He decided to move his church to California where, coincidentally, the liberal California culture would be more accepting of his socialist, mixed-race church.

Jones' church moved briefly to Redwood and then to San Francisco. Upon the move to San Francisco, Jones became a local political celebrity. He continued to raise funds for NAACP and was appointed the head of the San Francisco Housing Authority by Mayor Moscone. During the mid-70’s, Jones hobnobbed with the crème de la crème of liberal society -- Walter Mondale, Rosalynn Carter, Harvey Milk, Willie Brown and even Governor Jerry Brown. Dinners were hosted in Jones’ honor and he was a special guest speaker at a DNC Headquarters grand opening.

After several years of good California vibes, a cloud moved across Jones’ sunny sky -- a cloud that even his dynamic, jovial personality couldn’t disperse. Marshall Kilduff, an “alternative” journalist caught wind of bad things happening in Jones’ church -- physical, emotional and sexual abuse. He was about to publish a large exposé when Jones abruptly decided to move his church to Jonestown, Guyana. There, Jones believed he could at last establish his socialist, multiracial utopia away from the establishment’s prying eyes.

Unfortunately for Jones, the establishment couldn’t be shaken off so easily. A “Concerned Relatives” group wanted to resolve issues of kidnapping and abuse even if it was thousands of miles away in Guyana. A fact-finding mission was dispatched, led by Congressman Leo Ryan in November of 1978. Ryan’s entourage came down for a 3-day junket, which was cut short when they encountered overt hostility. They decided to return and @ 15 Temple refugees came with them. Jones’ “Red Brigade” opened fire on the group has they boarded their planes, killing 5 people including Congressman Ryan.

In quick succession following the air strip shootings, 909 people in the People’s Temple were bade to drink grape Flavor Aid laced with potassium cyanide. Jones exhorted them to participate in family units, as an act of “revolution”. Jones himself was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. There was no film recording, but an audiotape of the proceedings (over loudspeaker). The mass suicide is the greatest loss of American civilian life outside of natural disasters or 9/11.

What compelled this paranoid, egomaniacal madman to destroy his whole world? The worst possible outcome of Ryan’s investigation would have paled next to the horrific poisonings that happened in his humid, isolated dystopia. What do you believe and why do you believe it? Are we so fragile of mind that we’ll follow any pied piper that promises a happier reality -- a reality based on thin strands of psychobabble and religious distortions? There are no ready answers -- and there are myriad religions and groups now that exist on the mere edge of sanity. All that recommends them is that as yet, they haven't asked you to drink the Kool-Aid.

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