There were no religious services conducted in Jonestown that we have been able to identify.<\/p>\n
There were scores of meetings in Jonestown, but they revolved around concerns of the community itself. Some meetings dealt with the progress of the various agricultural, industrial and maintenance programs; some discussed the problems and the progress in the behavior of individual people; some were celebrations \u2013 especially when visitors came to the project \u2013 and featured music and entertainment; some considered the problems raised by political enemies back in the United States; and some pondered the possibility of death. But there were no church services, and no religious sermons or extended addresses with religious overtones such as those in the States.<\/p>\n
The people who were emigrating to Jonestown believed that they were migrating to Promised Land, a heaven on earth that they themselves had created, and the fulfillment of everything Jones had been talking about for several years. That perception was undoubtedly reinforced by the proscription on Bibles coming into Jonestown, although there are reports that a few made it in. Similarly, Jones asked people to refer to him as \u201cJim\u201d or \u201cComrade\u201d rather than \u201cFather\u201d \u2013 this was especially true when visitors were scheduled to arrive \u2013 and even the name \u201cDad\u201d was used more to describe Jones as the leader of the community than as a religious figure.<\/p>\n
Some tapes describe miracles that Jones performed in Jonestown \u2013 the accidents that didn\u2019t happen, the injuries that could have been worse, the illnesses that he cured \u2013 but they were ascribed to his own power, not one that emanated from a Christian God.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the greatest indication of how far \u00a0the residents of Jonestown had moved away from Christianity was in Larry Schacht\u2019s description of a man \u2013 either Emmett Alexander Griffith or Plickards Norris \u2013 who died there. \u201cHe called on Jesus, he didn\u2019t call on the power that\u2019s in Dad,\u201d Schacht said in a tape dated October 9, 1978<\/a>. \u201cAnd owning that power, the power that\u2019s in Dad, could\u2019ve saved him. But he kept calling on the wrong power, he kept calling on Jesus, \u2026 and when Dad heard him calling on Jesus, he said, that\u2019s it. There\u2019s no hope. You have to call on Dad, you have to call on the power and the light that\u2019s in him<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There were no religious services conducted in Jonestown that we have been able to identify. There were scores of meetings in Jonestown, but they revolved around concerns of the community itself. Some meetings dealt with the progress of the various agricultural, industrial and maintenance programs; some discussed the problems and the progress in the behavior […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":35361,"menu_order":27,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-35386","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35386","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=35386"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62518,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35386\/revisions\/62518"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}