"You all complied with my wishes and didn't bring guns..."
--Rev. Jim Jones, addressing his ushers at S.F. church service
(from Les Kinsolving's second Examiner expose)
In the really competitive professions, such as journalism, humanity's most revealing foibles frequently emerge in ruthlessly large doses. In the high stakes pay-off of exclusively owning the "Big Story", some reporters will do almost anything, even steal and manufacture information--as we've seen in recent scandals.
Mr. Tim Reiterman, famed author of the seminal People's Temple book "Raven", was an Examiner reporter who nearly lost his life down at Jonestown--and no doubt scores kudos for his courage there.
There's just one little problem with our intrepid Mister R: Like Field Marshall Kilduff (who STILL has visions of grandeur concerning the "first expose" of Jones)--he got a permanent case of Glory Hunger. And with this unfortunate disorder, Reiterman created his own very, very dishonest versions about the actual first exposes that would have obliterated Jones, had his own gutless excuse for a newspaper just stood up to the plate and STAYED THERE.
Reiterman's "Raven" is definitely a good read. Most of it actually sticks to the facts, too--except, however, when you arrive at around page 211. That's when the manure hits the turbo jets. Reiterman makes an incredible claim about my father, alleging that his "investigation" (Reiterman's quotes) was partially based on a personal grievance against the by-now clearly fraudulent and dangerous cult leader, Jim Jones.
Keep holding your nose. He's got a few shovel loads more.
Reiterman further maintains the exposes, that featured eyewitness and sworn testimony, "were not well substantiated."
Yes, some reporters will do anything to own the Big Story, it seems. But he is not alone, as we'll see.
Presented here is part two of more of the "unsubstantiated" story that would have brought down Jim Jones six years before the slaughter, had it only not been for journalistic cowardice.
And journalistic dishonesty.
'HEALING' PROPHET HAILED AS GOD AT S.F. REVIVAL
By Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer
[Monday, Sept. 18, 1972]
"I know that Pastor Jim Jones is God Almighty himself!" cried one of the more than 1000 people who overflowed the auditorium of Benjamin Franklin Junior High School on Geary Boulevard yesterday morning and Saturday night.
"You say I am God Almighty?" asked the Rev. Mr. Jones, the charismatic pastor-prophet of the People's Temple Christian (Disciples) Church near Ukiah, who was holding special services in San Francisco this weekend.
"Yes, you are!" shrieked the unidentified but obviously ecstatic woman, as the audience clapped or waved their arms and shouted approval at Sunday services.
Busing
The Rev. Mr. Jones has been consistently attracting congregations of more than 1000 people - who travel by the fleet of ex-Greyhound buses from as far away as Los Angeles and Seattle to his home in Redwood Valley, seven miles north of Ukiah, and to services such as those this weekend in San Francisco.
Among those attracted is the assistant district attorney of Mendocino County, Timothy O. Stoen, who has affirmed in writing that the Rev. Mr. Jones has raised 40 people from the dead.
Jones arrived in California in 1965, accompanied by 165 of his parishioners from the People's Temple of Indianapolis, where he served as pastor.
He is a darkly handsome, 41 year old, part-Cherokee who is an ordained minister of 1.9 million member the Disciples of Christ (Christian) Church.
Yesterday as he conducted services, he was clad in a white turtleneck sweater, a pulpit gown, and dark glasses. He was seated on a cushion-covered stool behind the podium - which is an apparent necessity given the five and six-hour length of his services.
Reply
He reflected only momentarily upon the lady's enthusiastic affirmation of his divinity before replying:
"What do you mean by that? If you believe I am a son of God in that I am filled with love, I can accept that. I won't knock what works for you - but I don't want to be interpreted as the creator of the universe."
Then he added, gently:
"If you say 'He is God,' some people will think you are nuts. They can't relate. I'm glad you were healed, but I'm really only a messenger of God....I have a paranormal ability in healing."
The Rev. Mr. Jones had just completed what were said to be two resuscitations of parishioners who had either fainted or gone into catatonic stiffenings in the general excitement.
In each case, he stopped in the middle of a sentence, raced from the stage to the audience and laid hands upon the stiffened congregant.
Acclaim
After some 30 seconds, the audible tension of the multitude broke as the Prophet lifted up each prostrate figure - to thunderous applause.
Another unidentified woman began leaping wildly and screeching hallelujahs - while an even more elderly woman commenced a frenzied hopping in a corner down stage right.
Utilizing the full force of the microphone to project his generally soothing voice above this ecstatic din, the Rev. Mr. Jones smilingly explained:
43rd Time
"You'll have to understand - she was given up to die; they said she'd never be able to move again....Such experiences are not at all uncommon to us. That's the 43rd time this has happened. I just said: 'I love you, God loves you, come back to us.' The registered nurses around her said it was so."
These R.N.s were neither introduced nor even identified, however. They were hardly even apparent, given the number of large men who surrounded the reported resurrection.
None of these security guards ("ushers") was spotted carrying firearms, however - in contrast to last Sunday's service in Redwood Valley, where an Examiner photographer spotted three holstered pistols (one a .357 magnum) and a shotgun.
"You all complied with my wishes and didn't bring guns, even though you are afraid for me," congratulated the Rev. Mr. Jones.
Yesterday morning's services opened with two hymns, followed by glowing testimonials from 3 men who recalled how The Prophet had either healed them or in one case saved them from air crash and false arrest for transporting narcotics.
Healing
Then Mrs. Jones, a trim blonde, sang a song entitled "My Black Baby," with the Jones' adopted black son, a handsome boy of 14, standing at his mother's feet at stage edge while the audience loudly applauded. (The boy had been extensively featured in last week's sermon by his father in Redwood Valley, as well.)
Then The Prophet made everyone hold hands (after an initial embrace). With the organ providing a tremolo background, he began a series of trance-like revelations about various people's names, relatives, addresses, and maladies. These assorted ills were all pronounced cured by both healed and healer - to further applause.
Among a vast number of subjects discussed by the Rev. Mr. Jones in his two-hour extemporaneous sermon was the desirability of cooperation and fellowship with other denominations.
He did note in this connection that this is sometimes difficult, however.
"We tried to fellowship with one pastor in this area - who actually propositioned two of our young choirgirls! And when I confronted him about this, he replied: "Wasn't David a man after God's heart?"
(King David, in the second Book of Samuel, seduced Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, whom David ordered killed after Bathsheba became pregnant.)
Vagueness
But this San Francisco pastor was not identified by the Rev. Mr. Jones. Nor were several assistants and parishioners able to identify the man.
The prophet's offertory calls are (comparatively) low key. He told the mammoth congregation that the elders had informed him that Saturday evening's collection was "light."
Later in yesterday's service he applied this very same (unspecific) description to the Sunday's collection - while one week ago, the Rev. Mr. Jones described the current financial condition of the People's temple as "bleak."
(Receipts for the fiscal year ending this June 30 are listed by attorney Stoen at $396,000.)
END--PEOPLE'S TEMPLE EXPOSE #2
[Our next expose, which will return to the subject of another familiar "Tim"--Stoen, the Cult enforcer who carried out illegal marriages and oversaw Jones's welfare fraud operations. More than enough to put that cult out of business--NEVER MENTIONED IN STANLEY NELSON'S APOLOGIST FILM. Stay tuned.]
Postscript: To Reiterman's credit, the "truth" section of his book was refreshing, citing the fact that after my father's exposes, "....the Examiner quit the story. A nobody named Jim Jones had worn down a big San Francisco daily......Meanwhile, the Temple set sights on Kinsolving as a declared enemy. At one strategy session, an overzealous church leader suggested that he be kidnapped, stuffed in a bag, then beaten or 'eliminated'."
Though never eliminated, his house--my house--was burglarized by Temple members.
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing. Reading up on Jonestown. People are responsible for "playing into" the megalomania that drives people over the edge. I cannot agree that followers were merely victims rather than participants in the madness of Jim Jones. A rocket needs fuel. Without the fuel of their adoration -- he would have been forced to be a different man. It's sad. But it was group insanity which took over, and Jim Jones was made a cult leader by these "worshippers" as much as they were made cult followers by him. We are all responsible for feeding into the spirit of evil. I personally have been duly alarmed by the madness and folly within the hearts of man in followers and leaders of man. Thanks again for the article.
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