context of Jones’s interactions with Christian
theology in the late 1960s and 1970s, these two
themes find their origins in Jones’s earlier
teachings concerning social outreach and
harmony, and his later expositions on the
superiority of socialism and the dangers of
capitalism.
James (Jim) Warren Jones founded Peoples
Temple in the mid-1950s in Indianapolis,
Indiana (Reiterman &Jacobs, 2008 [1982], p.
47). The Temple emphasized racial equality and
social outreach as practical outcomes of the
Christian New Testament and, along with
Revivalist-style healings, these practices
attracted both black and white Christians, along
with those on the peripherals of society
(Reiterman &Jacobs, 2008 [1982], pp. 54–55).
In 1965, the congregation moved across the
country to Redwood Valley, California and in
the early 1970s moved its headquarters to San
Francisco and held regular services in Los
Angeles, as well (Moore, 2009, pp. 23, 26, 28).
With each move, the Temple grew in size,
expanding its rhetoric to include a socialist
mindset. Cathartic practices and anti-American
sentiments led the Temple to shrink back from
the public eye. In 1977, pressure by former
members and the media to investigate the
increasingly unorthodox habits of the Temple
forced Jones and a contingent of his followers to
relocate to Guyana, where the Temple had
begun an agricultural commune named
Jonestown several years earlier.9 Despite the
relocation, the Temple remained fearful that
certain Americans were working to destroy the
movement.
In November 1978 Congressman Leo Ryan,
along with members of the media and some
individuals who were worried about family
members living in Guyana, visited Jonestown to
assess living conditions and assist any
9 The article “Inside Peoples Temple” by Marshall Kilduff and
Phil Tracy appeared in the August 1, 1977, issue of New West
magazine. The article ended with a list of reasons explaining “why
Jim Jones should be investigated” and highlighting the sending of
youths to Guyana, tithing requirements in the Temple, and the use
of physical punishment as causes of concern (Kilduff and Tracy,
1977, p. 38). For an explanation of Guyana’s suitable linguistic
and political climate for the Temple’s communal project, see
Nugent (1979, pp. 71–82).
individuals who wished to leave (Moore, 2009,
pp. 88–94).10 As this delegation and a handful of
defectors were leaving, Temple gunmen
attacked them. Five individuals were killed,
including the congressman.11 Back at the
commune, Jones informed the community that
American authorities would retaliate by invading
the compound and harshly penalizing its
inhabitants (Q 042). Rather than submit to such
an attack, the residents instead participated in
what Jones termed revolutionary suicide: dying
in order to “protes[t] the conditions of an
inhumane world” (Q 042). Although Temple
congregants in Guyana requested by shortwave
radio that their counterparts in the United States
do the same, no Peoples Temple members in the
United States committed suicide that day.12
Peoples Temple, however, quickly ceased to
exist, liquidating its assets to pay the huge legal
fees incurred by the murder-suicides (Nugent,
1979, pp. 232, 256).
Jones’s leadership and teachings throughout the
Temple’s history linked intrinsically to his
understanding of Jesus. In this article, I divide
Jones’s interpretation of Jesus into two
sections—a more literal reading of Jesus’s life,
message, and death in relation to socialism, and
a more abstract reading of Jesus as a signifier of
the power of socialism. Each section comprises
three interrelated sets of observations: a
description of Jones’s most frequent
observations on Jesus, an analysis of Jones’s
evaluation of Jesus as a messiah figure, and
some comments on the effect of this unique
interpretation of Jesus on Jones’s own self-
identity in his preaching and the nature of
Peoples Temple. Although this article focuses on
Jones’s unique understanding of Jesus as an
10 For a longer personal account of Congressman Ryan’s trip to
Jonestown, see Reiterman and Jacobs (2008 [1982], pp. 457–466,
476–521).
11 For a firsthand account of the shootings at the Port Kaituma
airstrip and its immediate aftermath, see Reiterman and Jacobs
(2008 [1982], pp. 526–538).
12 The relay of news of the murder-suicide event to the Temple’s
Georgetown, Guyana house and on to the United States is
mentioned in Reiterman and Jacobs (2008 [1982], p. 542).
Although one adult in Georgetown killed herself—along with three
children—no coinciding murder-suicides at the Temple’s San
Francisco headquarters are mentioned.
36 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015

example of a messiah, a more standard and
succinct definition of the term messiah may be
helpful for comparison. In popular thought, a
messiah is a savior figure who claims divine
sanction, brings restoration or salvation, and has
followers who accept the figure’s claim about
having divine inspiration and/or powers.
Worth noting at the outset is that Jones’s
thoughts concerning Jesus were not synonymous
with his thoughts regarding the other members
of the Christian Trinity, particularly God.13
Jones’s view of the Christian God, or Skygod, as
Jones termed it, as a creating and omniscient
deity was quite low.14 The God that Christians
prayed to as an all-powerful being, Jones
maintained, was in fact incapable of being felt or
seen in the world, and perhaps did not care at all
about the plight of human beings. In a 1972 San
Francisco sermon, for example, Jones used the
language of 1 Kings 18 to challenge Christians
to prove that their God could help them:
Let the God that’s God answer…. If the
Skygod is indeed your God, let him feed
you… Let him house you. When you get
in trouble in the courts, let him go to
court for you…. I’ve been trying to get
him recruited, [but] I haven’t been able
to find him. (Q 1035)
This distanced God was something that Jones
could not abide —“don’t you compare me to no
unknown god” (Q 1035). By way of contrast,
Jones talked about his congregation: “let’s look
at my house [church] tonight. Nobody hungry in
my house…. I look after my own. Not one of
mine that’s hungry tonight…. Not one of mine
that doesn’t have a place to rest tonight” (Q
1035). The implications of this contrast—that
Jones took physical, tangible, and immediate
care of his followers while the unknown Skygod
13 The Christian doctrine of the Trinity claims that, although there
is only one God, there are “three distinct personal expressions” of
that one God present in the world—traditionally God the Father,
Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. See Migliore (2004 [1991], 68–
70) for a standard Christian explanation of Trinitarian belief.
14 The term Skygod was a derisive synonym for God that Jones
used. The name highlighted the distance or irrelevance of such a
deity. Many sermon recordings contain the term.
hindered or ignored its creation—highlight
Jones’s prime complaint against the Skygod: a
lack of action or concern for the marginalized (Q
1035 also Q 953, Q 1019). This lack of action
or concern was evidenced by the intangibility of
the Skygod and was mirrored in institutional
Christianity.
Jones’s preaching often contained incensed
remarks against the Skygod’s inscrutable
behavior. In the same 1972 San Francisco
sermon, Jones asked the audience why—if the
Skygod was so loving—the Skygod would
create them and place them “in the messes that
[they]’ve been in” (Q 1035). In another instance,
Jones spoke out against those in his audience
who still clung to their old Skygod rather than
Jones’s new divine principle of socialism,
saying, “let them go out [of Peoples Temple]
and believe in a Skygod that’ll never come….
But don’t let them be in here holding us back by
looking back to other gods” (Q 1057, part 4).
Jones went on to warn that this Skygod was one
and the same with the God who allowed the
Jews—supposedly God’s chosen people—to be
killed in gas chambers by Nazis (Q 1057, part
4). Jones’s derision of the Skygod helped to
isolate the Temple from other Christian
denominations and created a need—which Jones
promptly filled—to interpret Christian texts in a
new way.
Despite his Trinitarian affiliations, Jesus did not
suffer such harsh criticism in Jones’s preaching.
As mentioned, Jones’s understanding of Jesus as
a messiah figure divided into two categories: a
more literal understanding based on Gospel
accounts of Jesus’s life, and a more abstract
understanding wherein Jesus functioned as a
signifier of the power of divine socialism. I
begin with the more literal interpretation.
In terms of origins, Jones aligned Jesus with the
lower class. Jesus was “born without a father, as
far as the world knew anything about it” (Q
1035). Without an earthly father to provide
prestige or a noble genealogy, Jesus “was born
on the wrong side of the tracks” (Q 1035). In
terms of socioeconomic status, Jones—and the
Gospel writers before him—presented Jesus
unattractively as a servant or a slave (Q 1057,
part 5). Often Jones lauded both this lowly
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015 37