The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  In the late spring of 1971, having achieved new heights in Temple business expansion and gratifying personal success as a traveling evangelist, Jones contacted Mother Divine and asked to visit her at Woodmont. She was amenable; in her new role as head of the Peace Mission, Mother Divine regularly received visitors.

  Jones chose about two hundred of his most dedicated, energetic followers to accompany him, and prepped them rigorously before departure. He explained that Father Divine had failed—he’d died before completing his life’s work. Jones had come to understand that it was now his responsibility to lead Divine’s people down the same socialist path followed by Peoples Temple. The goals of both movements were the same—achievement of economic and social equality. Father Divine hadn’t persisted until this was achieved, but Jim Jones would. Meanwhile, it was critical to make the right impression on Mother Divine and the Peace Mission members, who lagged behind Peoples Temple in socialist achievement. Unlike Jones, Mother Divine lived extravagantly. This shouldn’t be criticized to her followers. The Temple women must wear dresses and skirts on this visit—Mission women never wore pants. Say “thank you” for even the smallest courtesy. These people still observed such bourgeois amenities. The purpose of the trip was to persuade them to join the Temple. Once they did, they would learn to adopt more appropriate socialist attitudes.

  Temple buses took almost three days to make the trip. Stops were made only for gas and bathroom breaks. For a change, there was lots of room on the individual vehicles, empty seats to hold all the Peace Mission members who’d want to return with them to California. When they arrived in Philadelphia, Temple members were housed in Peace Mission apartments, which they found to be clean and comfortable. They liked their hosts, who seemed genuinely pleased to meet them. The Temple members asked for everyone’s name and the best addresses at which to contact them—this was standard Temple procedure. Jones himself stayed at Woodmont, and all the guests were taken on a tour of the property, which included a lengthy stop at a bronze-doored chamber enclosing the body of Father Divine. Afterward there was an elaborate banquet, with much fancier place settings and food than the Temple members were used to back in California. Dessert was ice cream shaped like flower petals. Mother Divine invited Jones to make some postprandial remarks; he praised the ministry of Father Divine and pointed out the similar good works he and the members of Peoples Temple were accomplishing in Mendocino County. It was a pleasant, positive evening.

  The Temple visitors stayed a second day, during which Jones spent time talking with Mother Divine and apparently was dissatisfied. That night there was another gathering for dinner, a barbecue this time, and Jones spoke again. This time his tone was critical. There were things about the Peace Mission that were wrong, all its luxurious trappings in particular. Father Divine had “conferred his mantle” on Jim Jones. “His spirit has come to rest in my body,” and now all Peace Mission members must follow him. Mother Divine took offense and ordered Jones and his people to leave at once. They did, stopping first at the Peace Mission apartments to collect their personal belongings. Perhaps a dozen Peace Mission members who’d spent time talking with the visitors from Peoples Temple left with them. A Temple event in Washington, D.C., was already on the schedule, so they stopped there and Jones put on his usual performance.

  The drive back to Mendocino County was tense. When they arrived, Jones gathered the followers who’d made the trip and explained that what had happened at Woodmont was not his fault. Mother Divine had been enthusiastic about merging their ministries under Jones’s leadership, so much so that, after maneuvering so they were alone, she tore open her blouse and insisted that they have sex. Jones refused—“She flaunted her sagging breasts in my face but I wasn’t tempted.” This was why she had ordered him and his followers to leave Woodmont. Everyone was urged to help the defecting Peace Mission members, who were mostly old women, to assimilate to the Temple. Jones asked for contact information provided by others back at the Peace Mission apartments, and for a while nothing more was said about Mother Divine and the Peace Mission ministry.

  But Jones hadn’t given up. The Temple letters office began sending messages to Peace Mission members back in Pennsylvania, describing the latest miracles worked by Jim Jones, who had absorbed the blessed spirit of Father Divine. Simon Peter, one of the former Peace Mission members, sent a scathing missive directly to Mother Divine, testifying that “Pastor Jones” in every way was “manifesting the works of Christ,” which was only possible because he was, indeed, Father Divine’s spiritual heir. Simon Peter cited physical ailments that he suffered while a Peace Mission member. He hadn’t been healed then, but Pastor Jones was in the process of healing him now. Why did Mother Divine deny Pastor Jones his proper due?

  Mother Divine sent back a lengthy letter. Simon Peter’s sufferings at the Peace Mission were his own fault: “you could have made a change under [our] jurisdiction . . . if you had the mind and desire to do so.” As for his new spiritual leader, “If Pastor Jones is manifesting the works of Christ as you say he is, I say, GLORY TO GOD! If he is, he is doing no more than each one who is born of God should do.” But Simon Peter shouldn’t believe any claims that Father Divine had returned in the person of Jim Jones, “one born in sin and shaped up in iniquity.” She concluded, “I am completely satisfied with FATHER DIVINE and . . . I stand steadfast on My Conviction that HE alone is GOD.”

  In the summer of 1972, when he felt that enough Peace Mission members might be wavering, Jones sent them a new, lengthy letter, with the headline “THIS MAY BE YOUR LAST CHANCE FOR LIFE!” Ostensibly written by Temple members rather than their leader, the letter announced that the “spirit that was operative in the body called Father Divine is now calling his Children . . . to come share with Him the abundance of what His great love has provided for all the Children here in Redwood Valley. . . . Father has returned in the hundred-fold degree. His work and his mission [are] being continued in the ministry of Jim Jones.” Peoples Temple’s “modern, air-conditioned Greyhound-type buses” would be ready to make pickups at Franklin High in Philadelphia at 6 p.m. on July 16. Everyone wishing to move to Redwood Valley should contact the Temple at one of two numbers provided to make reservations. Those who lacked personal transportation to the high school could be picked up at their homes.

  The rest of the letter reiterated Jones’s great gifts, and enumerated the latest miracles he’d performed: he’d caused a storm to stop in Canada, raised thirty people from the dead, and “as in the days of Jesus . . . walked on the waters of the Pacific.”

  On the appointed day and time, the Temple buses were at Franklin High in Philadelphia. Only a few Peace Mission defectors showed up. Most were old, and, despite the immortality they had been promised, passed away in California at a rapid rate. About a half dozen long-term members were all Jones had to show for his attempt to usurp Father Divine’s ministry. The Peace Mission continued; Mother Divine, at least, defied death. Decades later she was still leading a much reduced ministry from Woodmont, and in 2014 sent a message through a spokesman that Jim Jones “used charisma to hide his human weakness, violating the laws of God and misleading . . . innocent people. Without the mind of God it is destructive and misleading to follow spiritual illusions.”

  Jones occasionally mentioned Father Divine, mostly citing the absolute faith Peace Mission followers had in their leader, and grumbling that not enough Temple members felt the same way about him. “It was like he was jealous,” Temple survivor Juanell Smart remembers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  DRUGS

  Jim Jones always had to worry that the next stumble might be the one that he couldn’t explain sufficiently. He understood that once any significant erosion of belief in him occurred, it would only escalate. The obvious way to avoid failure was to stop trying to do more. Peoples Temple was already an unqualified success. Its membership was impressive, its mission admirable, its outreach programs effective. A substantial number of needy people had been and
were being helped to have better lives. Though members were taught that personal pride was wrong, they could still feel justly proud of their church and its accomplishments, and grateful enough to the man who made it possible that they could overlook an occasional, infrequent stumble on his part. All Jones needed to do was settle for what he and the Temple already had.

  But Jones never accepted limits. It stemmed from his mother, Lynetta, who, in her sporadic attempts at parenting, regaled him with tales of visions and reincarnation and how it was preordained that her son should do great things. Even when Jones was an adult, Lynetta hammered home that he was special from birth. If her son was “Father,” then she gloried in her self-assumed role as Temple “Grandmother.” To any who were willing to listen and, often, to those who weren’t, Lynetta repeated the tale of her initial vision that she would give birth to a godlike son, and related wildly fanciful stories about how everyone back in Lynn, Indiana, came to little Jimba for comfort and counseling. To hear Lynetta tell it, her child’s emergence as a unique spiritual leader was only possible through the careful nurturing of his mother. She took to writing and reciting poems about it. A favorite was “The Molder”:

  I took a bit of plastic clay

  And idly fashioned it one day.

  And as my finger pressed it still,

  It molded, yielding to my will.

  I came again when days were past,

  The bit of clay was firm at last.

  The form I gave it, still it wore,

  And I could change that form no more.

  A far more precious thing than clay,

  I gently shaped from day to day,

  And molded with my fumbling art,

  A young child’s soft and yielding heart.

  I came again when years were gone,

  And it was a man I looked upon,

  Who such godlike nature bore

  That men could change it—NEVERMORE.

  It’s impossible to be certain whether Jim Jones truly believed that he was God, or that he was the spirit of Jesus that reappeared once in every generation. What’s inarguable is that he felt himself to be something beyond an ordinary man, that there was a special divinity in him. Much of his healing stagecraft was manufactured, but sometimes he would muse that perhaps occasional cripples did walk or cancers were cured because the afflicted believed in Jim Jones, and so he did wield a form of healing power after all. When Jones alternated descriptions of his godliness from sermon to sermon—sometimes in the same sermon—it was at least in part because even he felt hard-pressed to define something so powerful and vast. And God, or someone who believed himself to be at least partially God, did not settle. Every day, the ambition of Jim Jones ratcheted up, and so, inevitably, did the pressure he felt.

  Because of Jones’s leadership style, he could not share this burden with others. From his first days of storefront preaching in Indianapolis, Jones was determined to control every aspect of his ministry. He sometimes appointed committees and advisory boards, always giving the impression of wanting congregational input, but these invariably went along with whatever Jones wanted. As Peoples Temple grew, a few members gradually formed a small, ever-evolving inner circle, but Jones didn’t confide completely in anyone. Survivors agree he led on a “need to know” basis, and Jones was determined to be the only one who knew everything. For a while, Marceline came close, and she alone had any sense of Jones prior to his ministry, some familiarity with his quirks and the most effective ways to counter his very human failings. But Jones never considered Marceline a coequal in the Temple, and once he began his relationship with Carolyn Layton, his wife was relegated to the same compartmentalized role as Jack Beam or Archie Ijames, someone to do Jones’s bidding rather than share in any significant decision making. Even Carolyn didn’t share Jones’s most innermost thoughts. Besides sex, her value to him lay in supervisory skills to see Jones’s edicts carried out. There wasn’t anyone associated with Jones in Peoples Temple to tell him no and make it stick.

  Because only Jones understood and oversaw everything, he had to be involved in every detail of each Temple activity. Nothing was insignificant enough to completely delegate. Someone else might script the responses of Temple phone operators, but Jones had to read and approve each line before it was put into effect. Another member might attend a public meeting to represent the Temple, but Jones required a full report afterward—which key officials had been there? What attitudes did they seem to have toward the Temple and its programs? If a member wanted to get married or divorced or even bring an outsider to a Temple meeting, Jones had to be consulted first. Not a penny could be spent without his permission. Members sometimes chafed at the length of meetings, but he was there for every minute, too, even to the point of discreetly relieving himself in a basin behind the pulpit rather than take a bathroom break.

  On surviving tapes, his sermons sound interminable and frequently incoherent, but careful examination suggests they were less stream-of-consciousness than they seemed. Jones realized his appeal differed among followers. Some, usually the newest, thought he was God, and other recent members wanted affirmation of their belief that some spark of divinity was possible in anyone. Those who’d followed him from Indiana remembered when Jones had never claimed divinity, only dedication to social causes, and loved him for that. Many more followed him because of his apparent powers—most meetings had to include at least a healing or two. Older members, the pensioners whose Social Security and disability checks formed the bedrock of Temple finances, frequently retained at least some attachment to the Bible. There were agnostics and atheists in the Temple, attracted by its socialist goals and Jones’s frequent dismissal of the Bible as racist propaganda. He had to please them all. And so, his sermons deliberately rambled. Like a great composer crafting a multi-movement symphony, Jones varied his rhythm and tone. He ran the gamut from fire-and-brimstone preacher to acerbic social commentator. At one point Jones might throw down a Bible, even stomp on it, and yet a little later cite scripture to reinforce some socialist point. He’d refer to himself as God, the reincarnation of Christ, or Lenin in a single turn at the pulpit. No one listening, even those who were the most devoted to him, could take it all in. But at some point each follower heard something that reaffirmed his or her personal reason for belonging to Peoples Temple, and for believing in Jim Jones. As Jonestown historian Fielding McGehee observes, “What you thought Jim said depended on who you were.”

  It was exhausting to sit through a single three- or four-hour Saturday service, and on Sundays in Redwood Valley there were two, plus additional meetings during the week that frequently lasted far into the night. But it was even more exhausting to conduct the marathons. Hearing a Jones sermon on tape doesn’t sufficiently convey the energy he expended in delivering them. Jones was constantly in motion, gesturing broadly from behind the pulpit, marching dramatically around the stage, jumping down onto the main floor to roam the aisles, patting heads, squeezing hands, offering embraces. Before, between, and after services he mingled and tried to make as many as possible feel individually noticed by Father. While everyone else enjoyed Sunday’s group potluck meals, Jones usually talked some more on a portable sound system, reminding them to revel in the fellowship, and afterward prepare for another week of “feeding the hungry, clothing the naked.” Aside from the Temple services, when Jones wasn’t on constant call in Redwood Valley, he was often in Bus Number Seven on his way to or from a program where he’d put on a dazzling show for thousands of outsiders. During each drive he would deal with dozens or even hundreds of separate issues, ranging from which city the advance crews should visit next to how many hand towels should be purchased for the Redwood Valley church bathrooms.

  There was an additional strain, one never acknowledged by those who think Jones’s only motivation was acquiring and wielding power. Even as a child, Jones was genuinely moved by poverty and by race-related suffering. At every stage in its existence, Peoples Temple outreach programs really did prac
tice what Jones preached. Needy people were served. Outcasts from every corner of the community were warmly welcomed. Yet no matter how many people were fed, clothed, helped to find jobs, or rescued from drug addiction by Temple programs, Jim Jones ached for all those who still were not. He identified with individuals as well as multitudes. Once, just before the Temple’s Greyhound convoy left the Redwood Valley parking lot for an out-of-town trip, Jones convened a meeting of a few divisional supervisors in Bus Seven. Outside, several hundred members stowed luggage and climbed aboard other buses. Jones’s meeting was important—he was giving instructions for some program to be implemented while he was away. The trip ahead was a long one, and they needed to get on the road as soon as possible. But as Jones talked, he frequently glanced out the window, and all at once pointed to an elderly woman struggling with a bulky suitcase. Jones barked, “Some of you get out there—that sister needs help!” He refused to continue the meeting until the old lady’s bag was securely stowed and she had been escorted to a seat on her bus.

  Because he genuinely did want to lift up the oppressed, Jones’s pace couldn’t slacken. Wherever he went, he saw human suffering. Sometimes his twin motivations—power and ministry—coexisted comfortably. What served one, served the other. More often, as Peoples Temple expanded, the admirable motive was sublimated in favor of Jones’s baser objective. Ultimately, personal ambition completely won out. But in 1971, he still struggled to satisfy both. In doing so, Jones drove his followers relentlessly and drove himself harder.

  This took its inevitable toll. Jones was as physically exhausted as his members, and the emotional strain on him was much greater. God or not, he became more worn down with each passing day. By his own design, Jones had made the Temple’s well-being entirely dependent on his own. This justified his evolving belief that anything he did for himself benefited those who believed in and followed him, as well as all those in desperate need of Temple assistance. No matter how apparently selfish some of his personal actions might appear, nothing was ever really for him, but for them.