Growing up in Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple

Last week Sarah and I watched MSNBC’s Witness to Jonestown.  Absolutely horrific.  I knew about Jim Jones, knew that he had led a mass suicide by the having his followers drink the infamous Kool-Aid laced with cyanide (it was actually Fla-Vor-Aid, Kool-Aid has gotten a bad rap!).  I assumed that his followers were unknowingly poisoned but that is not the case.  His followers knew exactly what they were doing.  He told them to “get the medicine.”  He had practiced suicide drills with them prior to this event.  They knew that they would die by ingesting the cyanide and they did so anyway.  Over 900 men, women, and children would die that day.  The children died first.  They took syringes, filled them with the cyanide laced Kool-Aid and had their infants and children ingest the poison.  Then they drank the poison themselves.  One survivor recalls observing his wife poison their baby and then drink the poison herself all the while with a look of helplessness on her face.  He then held both of them in his arms as they died.  I cannot imagine having to live through that experience.

I have an odd connection to Jim Jones.  His San Francisco Peoples Temple, his headquarters prior to moving to Jonestown, was a second home to me growing up.  My father pastored Korean Central Presbyterian Church in SF for 17 years beginning in 1979.  That same year the church acquired Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple, an old Scottish Rites building, as their church building in an auction.  After the massacre in Jonestown the government seized the property and auctioned it off.  I believe we purchased it for $100K.  As a pastor’s kid I would spend every Sunday, an occassional Saturday, and an occasional Wed night at church.  The building had a large worship area, a spacious fellowship hall, numerous classrooms, a number of bedrooms – the place was huge.  You couldn’t ask for a better place to play hide-n-seek.  There were trap doors.  The place was fun.  The place was also scary.  Next to the men’s bathroom was a door with a iron grate that led to the basement.  We called it the devil’s door because it led to hell.  I avoided that door for years.  It was not until I was 14 did I finally do down one day.  Plus at the time the church was in one of the roughest neighborhoods in SF (one Sunday after church my whole family got mugged) – it was a scary place.

The Peoples Temple is a place where incredible evil took place.  Although to the public eye Jones was an agent of social and spiritual transformation, he achieved his loyal following through emotional and physical intimidation and abuse.  Oddly I possess a fondness to the building.  The building collapsed in the 1989 earthquake.  The loss of the building brought heartache to my father, our church, and me.  The months following the destruction of the building were probably the most difficult days of my father’s ministry at KCPC.  Just months prior to the earthquake we had spent weeks and tens of thousands of $$ renovating the sanctuary.

So all to say it’s hard for me to process the horror of Jonestown with the building I knew as church.  It’s hard to fathom that this is the same building.  In this building I attended Sunday school, participated in Christmas services, and recited the apostles creed in both English and Korean.  In this building our youth group met for Friday night bible studies, numerous couples got married, and our church fed the homeless on Thanksgiving.  I still remember the smell of my father’s office – Jim Jones’ former office – where I would spend countless hours waiting for my dad to finish up with work so that we could go home.  I miss that building.