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The real, or more largely accurate, story about the Peoples Temple’s long history and goals is coming out with the wider release of their tapes and documents.

They were rather radical communists and atheists that had used the old Pentecostal recruiting methods Jim had observed in his rural Indiana childhood to recruit newbies to the cause. They also employed organized weekly bus trips to places where they conducted fake faith healings for the locals and sold “blessed” prayer cloths to try to raise money. While this was overtly dishonest, especially given their atheist beliefs, they pretty brazenly employed an ends-justify-the-means decision-making process. If selling fake hopes or even beating members to enforce discipline would make their utopian vision for humanity more likely in 100 years, then it was worth doing. People being out a little money or hurting a bit was a small price to pay, so the reasoning goes.

Regarding the newsbusters article above, I should add that it the video I posted also contains a little snippet of a rarely seen color video of Jones and Rosalynn Carter standing on stage together shaking hands at a political rally.

I also have the copy of the Jones and Rosalynn Carter correspondence and the audio of Rosalynn calling Jim on the phone (which the Peoples Temple recorded), but it’s not in this video.

Also note regarding the above that Jones didn’t just bring those accolades to Guyana with them, but showed them to several people to impress them. Including the USSR embassy in Georgetown. They showed them pictures of Jim with Mondale and Fidel Castro, and Rosalynn’s handwritten note to Jim (along with other items) to impress the Soviets. It worked. As you can hear some of the audio of the Soviets’ subsequent delegation to Jonestown in the video I just linked.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Marshall Kilduff tried to publish his expose on the Temple in 1976.

One problem: The Paper’s City Editor (Steve Gavin) that had been blocking his publication actually turned out to be a People’s Temple member!

The entire affair is almost too bizarre to fathom.

Jim Jones was not only an atheist, but a hard core atheist. “Liberation Theology” is out of the question. Jones also separately believed that the Bible was false and used to stomp on it during meetings.

He repeatedly stated over and over to his followers that he used religion to convert them (”religion is an opiate of the masses”) to follow the one true religion, “socialism.” In fact, they got tired of stating it.

Interestingly, despite the Peoples Temple yelling this at the top of their lungs and taking the name church eventually out of their name, people kept asking them about it.

Jim Jones was not only an atheist, but a hard core atheist. “Liberation Theology” is out of the question. Jones also separately believed that the Bible was false and used to stomp on it during meetings.

He repeatedly stated over and over to his followers that he used religion to convert them (”religion is an opiate of the masses”) to follow the one true religion, “socialism.” In fact, they got tired of stating it.

Interestingly, despite the Peoples Temple yelling this at the top of their lungs and taking the name church eventually out of their name, people kept asking them about it.