Today in History: In Jonestown, Guyana, the Reverend Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
This made me wonder what kind of "Reverend" Jim Jones was. In a 1976 phone conversation with John Maher, Jones alternately said he was an agnostic and an atheist. Marceline Jones admitted in a 1977 New York Times interview that Jones was trying to promote Marxism in the U.S. by mobilizing people through religion, citing Mao as his inspiration: "Jim used religion to try to get some people out of the opiate of religion." He had slammed the Bible on the table yelling "I've got to destroy this paper idol!" In one sermon, Jones said:
"You're gonna help yourself, or you'll get no help! There's only one hope of glory; that's within you! Nobody's gonna come out of the sky! There's no heaven up there! We'll have to make heaven down here!"*
A Former Temple member quoted him as saying:
"What you need to believe in is what you can see.… If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend. As you see me as your father, I'll be your father, for those of you that don't have a father.… If you see me as your savior, I'll be your savior. If you see me as your God, I'll be your God."
Jones also began preached that he was the reincarnation of Gandhi, Father Divine, Jesus, Gautama Buddha, and Vladimir Lenin, and stated, "If you're born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you're born in sin. But if you're born in socialism, you're not born in sin."
Over 40 years this could be dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic. I can actually see many repeat that last statement today and fervently believe it.
*[The Serpent in the Garden of Eden said, in effect, "You don’t have to wait; you can have it now! Be your own god, and write your own rules."]
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