In the early 1970s only a few outsiders had acquired reliable information on the profane activities of Jim Jones. Brenda Ganatos in Ukiah and I in the Bay Area each tried vainly to convince authorities. Ultimately it became clear that politicians, theologians of the New Age, and weak-minded media, became\u2014in almost every case\u2014the set of Jones\u2019 liberal protectors. They basked in adoration of his social activist goals, specious as they were. And the public followed like sheep when those radical leftists planted Jones deep in the San Francisco hierarchy.<\/p>\n
Then came the Guyana holocaust, followed by an immediate spate of excuses from the aforementioned liberals. Insidiously leftist San Francisco politicians along with New Age church leaders dodged questions or lied outright about their ties to Jones.\u00a0 The Disciples of Christ, in particular, got away with a phenomenal cover-up, thus exacerbating their radically heretical aberrations\u2014even outdoing the dangerously perverted theological propensities of the United Church of Christ. (The Disciples of Christ dare not challenge me, because they are aware that I know how spiritually sick they have become. So they would never allow an interview with any of their leaders that I might choose.)<\/p>\n
Let me be specific about the Disciples of Christ. They welcomed Jim Jones into their denomination with open arms. Then, eight years prior to the Guyana mass murder, they\u00a0 received detailed evidence of his fake healings. I personally warned their bishop in 1970 (directly and by letter). Later, upon getting an earful of Jones\u2019 atrocities (beatings, the abuse of children in \u201csurvival outings\u201d where they were forced to eat raw bugs, lizards, and their own vomit), the Disciples leaders continued to defend a monster in their midst. They could not even admit the truth that one of their own, a radically leftist theologian, encouraged at least eight or ten people to join the cult. But, when one of their theologians (probably the one among them who was truly honest) confronted them in one high-level secret meeting just days after the Guyana tragedy, they sent him home with orders to burn \u201cthe stencils\u201d of his proposition. They further warned that he should \u201cnot mention this to our communications office.\u201d Intellectual cowards<\/i> is a phrase that comes not remotely close to describing their fierce rejection of honor and decency.\u00a0 Had they but a twit of courage and integrity, Jones would have gone nowhere in California. Children and adults, hundreds of them, would therefore not have died in agony. What more can be said?\u00a0 A journalist, the most courageous and honest of the many I worked with, summed it up most succinctly: The Disciples of Christ \u201cstink on dry ice.\u201d<\/p>\n
(David Conn<\/strong> described himself as an \u201cinvestigator of the Jim Jones Peoples Temple cult for nine years prior to the Guyana mass murder.\u201d He died on December 31, 2021, of Parkinson\u2019s disease. His complete collection of articles for this site is <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the early 1970s only a few outsiders had acquired reliable information on the profane activities of Jim Jones. Brenda Ganatos in Ukiah and I in the Bay Area each tried vainly to convince authorities. Ultimately it became clear that politicians, theologians of the New Age, and weak-minded media, became\u2014in almost every case\u2014the set of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":31470,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-31355","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31355"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113505,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31355\/revisions\/113505"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}