Ronnie, having toughed out one of the worst nights of his life, was put aboard a plane for Richmond the next morning. A short time later, the mere sight of Jim at a Baldwin family reunion sent Ronnie jumping fences to avoid him. In fact Jim did not give up until two further attempts to convince the boy to return proved fruitless.
This incredible persistence would become characteristic; the pattern of constant testing, repetition and dividing those around him from their loved ones would mark virtually all of his attempts to keep his foundlings and followers. If young Jones fought so tirelessly to keep Ronnie, it is not hard to imagine the emotional appeals to Marceline whenever she threatened—even if not openly—to leave him. Nothing could wound Jim Jones as much as abandonment, and at this stage of his life he needed no one more than Marceline.
During the first two years of their marriage, she had seriously considered divorcing him. The accumulation of incidents, the oppression of domination and control, the possessiveness became too much for her. Although she did not confide her unhappiness to her family at the time, the marriage had not shaped up as she had hoped. She wanted a full partnership, not a subordinate’s position. She wanted children, and she did not necessarily want to work. The problems in the marriage left her terribly torn. She loved Jim but cherished her individuality. She respected his gentleness and compassion but already feared his temper, his verbal explosions and his fierce teeth-gritting expressions. She shared and admired his good intentions but disliked some of his methods. Apparently she, like many who came later, focused her attention on Jim’s good qualities and hoped tomorrow would be better.
The thought of divorce must have caused Marceline tremendous pain. Divorce would have stigmatized her; she had been brought up to believe that marriage was a lifetime proposition. It probably was easier to suffer a little longer, especially with such a hopeful development as his calling to God’s work.
FOUR
The Calling
From the little shacks in hamlets with names like Martinsville, to the storefront churches and splendid cathedrals of Indianapolis, the promise of Christianity drew the people. On the radio, religion was debated and discussed like politics. Legions of clerics served all strata of people, in backwater towns, in baronial houses of worship with fancy parsonages or on the “revival meeting” circuit. A few spread the word over the airwaves, for the price of radio time. Yet among the patchwork of Protestant churches in the Hoosier state, perhaps the most critical distinction turned not on dogma, nor on historical tradition, but upon color. With few exceptions, blacks and whites did not share church pews.
More than a few remnants of racism plagued the automotive city where the Ku Klux Klan had paraded openly in the 1920s, and in the state where they once played political kingmaker. Occasionally a cross burned or blacks were harassed for stepping out of place. Black people did not wander casually into certain outlying towns or even some Indianapolis neighborhoods. In 1950, the Indianapolis schools were segregated, some businesses allowed whites only, neighborhoods were divided along racial lines and blacks were barred de facto from holding certain jobs.
Though working in a white area of the city, Jim Jones did what he could to knock down racial and religious barriers. The Methodist student preacher launched a campaign to build a $20,000 recreation center for children of all faiths, to be run by an interdenominational board.
His efforts earned him a feature article in the Richmond Palladium Item in March 1953. The story—relating how Jim as a child brought home a tramp—probably was the first of hundreds of stories about the do-gooder preacher.
Another newspaper piece pictured him with several young supporters of his recreation project, all of them white. “Our boys and girls here are in desperate need of a recreation center setup,” Jones said. “The parents realize the need, but funds in this neck of the woods are scarce....” What Jim Jones described was a little ecumenical movement created around the need for supervised recreation. “Our congregation numbers over 100, with 35 active members. Non-members began coming here for convenience sake....”
Jones wanted to increase his numbers and take inclusiveness even further, by racially integrating his congregation. In visiting black churches, he concluded that Pentecostalism would help him on both scores. Unlike the old-guard Methodists, white Pentecostalists, with their healings and emotional services, were somewhat inclined to accept blacks of similar persuasion, and vice versa. Furthermore, Pentecostal churches and evangelists drew far and away the biggest crowds.
To prepare himself, Jones spent countless hours in healing services, tent meetings and revivals, studying the methods of the best evangelical preachers. His attitude was: “If they can do it, I can too.” Although his first healing attempts were a waste of energy, he kept working on his technique. If only he too could attract the tremendous crowds that flocked to healers, he would put them and their money to good use. Helping the disadvantaged was foremost in his mind, but under that was a personal need to be admired, loved and lauded by the crowds.
There is a certain magic in faith healing, more so than in discernment. A preacher can “discern” something about the past or present of a subject, using trickery, intuition or a quick eye. Success is a direct result of his ability. But with healing, success hinges heavily upon the faith of the sufferer.
Jim had not struck upon the proper formula until he and Marceline attended a Columbus, Indiana, church convention. There, a fellow minister, a little old white-haired lady in a print dress and white socks, introduced Rev. Jones to the congregation with this prophecy: “I perceive that you are a Prophet that shall go around the world.... And tonight you will begin your ministry.” Marceline, the skeptical nurse and a Methodist, became uncomfortable, thinking that Jim would surely fall flat on his face.
Jones did not know what to do. Fitful and about to break out in hives, he mounted the pulpit. When he went to address the group, his mouth would not open. He closed his eyes, probably wishing he could drop dead. Then it began. All manner of thoughts flew through his mind; he called out people as fast as his tongue would allow. Soon the people streamed toward him, to be touched in the name of the Lord. To Marceline’s utter amazement, her husband’s touch made these people fall down, praising Jesus. The gathering broke out in screaming and hollering; the noise, the energy of the crowd seemed to shake the building. Marceline stood there in awe, proud that the man she loved had been blessed with such a gift.
Word traveled fast among the faithful. So many people arrived for the second night’s meeting in Columbus that the audience overflowed. Jim called out names and clamped his eyelids shut, belting out words, laying his hands on heads and bodies. The emotional level rose to a near-frenzy as Jim poured out his seemingly endless incantation. Later, he would confess to mixed emotions during the sessions: he was happy that the juices finally had flowed, but the intensity of healing drained him. He thought he could not stand to do it again, yet he could not stop. The feeling of power and control—the adulation—must have overwhelmed him, regardless of whether he actually believed that the Holy Spirit was working miracles through him.
The Columbus, Indiana, performance was only a beginning. His truly public debut came in 1953 in Detroit. Hundreds of Protestant ministers had assembled at Bethesda Missionary Temple for an interdenominational missionary seminar. In that conventioneers’ atmosphere, amid some of the Midwest’s most adept and inspirational preachers, Jim Jones hoped to formally establish the reputation and record of his gift ministry. It was such a distinguished gathering, however, that he had not been scheduled as a speaker.
The event proceeded as expected with sermons and prayers, singing and lecturing. As Jim watched a Los Angeles evangelist “discern” the aches and pains of various people in the crowd, he became confident that he could do better. The tension and pent-up frustration built until he broke out in hives, his eyes puffy, his lips swollen. A woman organizer who noticed him told him he should go ahead and express his ministry; so Jim took the pu
lpit unscheduled.
“I’m a Methodist,” Jones opened. “And I’ve come into the realization of the Holy Spirit.” He was handsome, if slightly overweight, with baby fat padding his prominent cheekbones. His lips were taut; he clearly was frightened. Standing behind the pulpit, he seemed to focus every muscle, every nerve, every bit of energy into his thought. He started calling out to those in the audience. He called out names of people. He called out their phone numbers. He called out items in their purses or elsewhere on their persons. He spoke about their past illnesses and present ailments, and he prayed fervently, demonstratively, for them.
By the time he was through, Jones had upstaged the featured evangelist, and the organizers were seriously upset.
But not all were skeptical of the young upstart. Among those in the church that day were Rev. Edwin Wilson and his wife Audrey, from Elmwood Temple in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Wilsons viewed Jones’s gift ministry as one of the most dynamic they had witnessed. The accuracy and precision of his clairvoyance impressed them, and they were certain that the Holy Spirit was acting through him. Outside the church, the couple approached Jim Jones and soon found a common ground in their youth, openness to new ideas and Methodist background. Both, Wilson felt, were attuned to the Holy Spirit and believed that God worked wonders on earth. They exchanged phone numbers and would soon begin a friendship that included guest preaching at each other’s church in Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
Positive feedback came from other conference participants who lived closer to home. Several Pentecostalists from Indianapolis’s Laurel Street Tabernacle told Jim that he could easily break into the special fraternity of popular healers.
Unbeknownst even to Marceline, Jones had assured continuation of his “gift”—as he would admit later—by taking little notes and gathering bits of intelligence about the people he planned to call out. He had not yet openly avowed the philosophy “the ends justify the means,” but he practiced it.
Jones wanted to integrate the Methodist church with his newfound friends, the Pentecostalists and the blacks. But he doubted that the Methodists, especially the older ones, would accept the changes, and he soon realized he was unlikely to draw very many blacks to the relatively unhospitable environment of Beech Grove. On his drives around town with Ronnie and Marceline and on his visits to various churches, Jim had sized up the suitability of various neighborhoods for a racially mixed church of his own. And he must have realized his best bet lay in the middle-class neighborhoods just north of downtown that were then being integrated.
He would need money first, however. Jones always needed money, not only because of his grand plans, but also because he had dreaded poverty and insolvency since his childhood. On his self-made treadmill, he preached at least two days a week and worked various jobs. He even imported little monkeys from South America and sold them door to door for $29 each. Riding his bicycle around southside Indianapolis with a cage of monkeys, he was such a comical sight that kids threw rocks at him. But with his glib solicitations and cute merchandise, he often got his foot in the door. Some of those who listened to his monkey business pitch started attending his services. Jim already had learned to economize on his actions.
The monkeys brought unexpected and probably unwelcomed publicity. On April 10, 1954, the Indianapolis Star ran a front-page story about the bureaucratic flap precipitated by young Jones’s refusal to claim an air shipment of monkeys because many were sick or had died en route.
Although the monkeys enterprise was beginning to stink up the little Jones house on Villa Street, other problems weighed more heavily on Marceline. Jim had become so preoccupied with his work, ambitions and successes that she was relegated to secondary status. It was not that she did not share her husband’s social goals. But she often wished to spend more time at home, to deepen her relationship with Jim, to have children. However, when she argued, Jim’s assertiveness usually wore her down, and his will prevailed. Each month their home life strayed further from the sort of conventional family for which Marceline longed.
First, Jim insisted that she work to maximize their income. The domestic duties were turned over to a middle-aged woman named Ozzie, a live-in cook and housekeeper who did her best to keep Jim on the straight and narrow scripturewise, to no avail. In the next year, the Jones household ballooned into Jim’s first extended family with the addition of Goldie, a big-boned eighteen-year-old blond woman whom the Joneses helped point toward a career in nursing, and of Esther Mueller, a lonely and very religious middle-aged white woman who would remain with the family until the end.
In about 1954, a child came into their lives, as Ronnie had—partially through chance, partially through their initiative. One day, after Jim had preached a sermon at Somerset, an unkempt girl of about nine in ragged clothes wandered up to the church door with a handful of violets. Handing them to the young minister, she said with a terrible stutter, “I love you.” The poor little girl immediately stole the heart of Jim Jones, who no doubt recalled how he, half-naked, had presented flowers to a preacher in Lynn. The girl’s neglectful mother was willing to let the Joneses adopt her. So Agnes Jones joined the household and, with speech therapy, lost her stutter.
Although Agnes brightened Marceline’s life, her marriage depressed her. She would often break into tears in front of others but refused to confide her troubles. Once she hinted at the problem when she advised her sister Sharon, then about fifteen, “If you get married, don’t marry a man who’s domineering.”
While Marceline felt trapped, frustrated and unappreciated, Rev. Jones spread his wings, reveling in his youthful attractiveness, his budding career and his ability to make things happen. At his most optimistic, energetic and grandiose, he felt—and claimed—that he could walk through walls, that his mind could conquer matter. Miracles aside, his fortunes were on the rise, and he sensed success. Already, he had enjoyed the taste of the matinee idol syndrome common among handsome and talented young preachers. He would come home and pointedly tell Marceline that women were flirting with him on the streets.
At about this time, Jim Jones left Somerset and rented a small building at Hoyt and Randolph streets in a racially mixed area. “Community Unity,” he christened it. Brotherhood was the theme, “Holy Rolling” the style.
Rev. Russell Winberg from the Laurel Street Tabernacle decided to take a look at the young preacher whose reputation was spreading. Winberg, a printer by trade and rather sluggish when off the pulpit, could thunder with the best of them when he was booming the Word and shouting down the devil. He came to Jones’s church one afternoon, in the spirit of fellowship and perhaps out of a little curiosity about the new competition. A respectable-size crowd of about 150 filled the church that day. After some preliminary hymns, prayers and offerings, the people came forward to be blessed and, Christ willing, to be healed. Jones downplayed his healing gift to some elderly women who wanted physical remedies but not the social message; being a glorified doctor was not his ambition.
Nevertheless, Edith Cordell, another visitor from Laurel Street Tabernacle, came to Jones with her arthritis. Rev. Jones directed her to draw some water at a small sink near the pulpit platform, then drink it. She tasted it: “Oh, my, it’s sweet. It’s wine!” The demon of pain fled her body. A miracle. “Hallelujah! Praise God!” Instantly, Rev. Winberg believed ; he had never witnessed anything to compare to this facile duplication of Jesus’ miracle at the marriage feast, with a healing for good measure.
On the wings of such wondrous events, the crowds burgeoned beyond the limits of the little church. Officials at Laurel Street invited Jones to come to the larger Pentecostal church, where Rev. Winberg was associate minister. Jones brought his own people along, as he always would do. Like the little boy who hauled his pets everywhere, he kept his religious flock together; their familiar faces and the strength of their numbers helped dispel his own insecurity and create the proper atmosphere for his miraculous sleight of hand.
It was common practice for guest mi
nisters to conduct revival meetings by invitation at other churches. But this temporary visit almost turned into a permanent post—in fact, the Laurel Street congregation responded so enthusiastically to Jones’s magic that he won over some of them in 1954. Among these was Loretta Stewart, a sixteen-year-old girl who had become disenchanted with Christianity. This particular Sunday night, she was torn between going to the revival or rounding up her girl friends for a dance in a nearby park. Because she loved the spirit of revivals and never had missed one, she decided to see the first of a series being offered by Jim Jones. As usual, she took a front pew where her fine singing voice could be heard clearly. This night was different somehow: she sensed that something extraordinary was going to happen, and she wanted to witness it.
When time came for demonstrations of divine love, she leaned forward in her seat as Jim prophetically called out a first-time visitor from an old-fashioned Methodist church. He informed the man, named Gilbert, that he had cancer and ordered him to the restroom. Gilbert emerged to testify that he had passed a bloody cancerous growth from his bowels. In all her revivals, Loretta never had witnessed such a miracle.
While other healers called out phone or social security numbers, or pinpointed long-standing illnesses in their congregations, even sometimes relieving psychosomatic ailments, Jones’s bloody cancer extractions were a real advancement of the art. It took more than dramatic choreography and his nearly photographic memory to palm off animal innards as malignant tumors; it required a quick hand, a knack for concealment, a calculating mind and, most of all, a willingness to deceive. Jones shared the truth about this “benevolent” deception—his means to a worthwhile end—with no one at first, not even with Marceline, although she sometimes collected the passed cancers in a paper bag.
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