by Jeff Guinn
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On the afternoon of June 12, 1949, James Warren Jones married Marceline Mae Baldwin at Trinity Methodist Church in Richmond. It was a double wedding—Marceline’s sister Eloise married Dale Klingman. The ceremony was strictly traditional, with the brides wearing matching gowns of “dusty rose organza over dusty rose taffeta.” Richmond’s daily newspaper reported the event in a lengthy article, noting that Mr. and Mrs. Jones would reside in Bloomington. But they couldn’t afford that right away. Jim returned to school for the summer, taking classes in Economic History and Advanced Public Speaking. Marceline lived with her parents, working at Reid and saving money to move to Bloomington in the fall. Jim lived with her at the Baldwins’ on weekends, and problems soon arose.
Charlotte Baldwin believed she had the right to say what she pleased in her own home. One weekend soon after the wedding, she commented that, in her opinion, it was not Christian for people of different races to intermarry. Twenty-seven years later, participating separately in a series of interviews for a proposed history to be published by Peoples Temple, Jim and Marceline both dictated their memory of what followed. As he recalled it, Charlotte compared black people—whom she called “niggers”—to communists, then berated her new son-in-law for his socialist beliefs. He replied, “I’ve had enough of your religious hypocrisy, and I’m sick of you. . . . Don’t worry, I’ll never sit at your table as long as I live and you’ll never see me again as long as I live.” Then, Jones said, “I whipped out of that goddamn house. I told Marcie, ‘You’re gonna have to choose between me and that bitch.’ ”
Marceline’s version was less vulgar. “My mother made some remark about it not being Christian to intermarry. Well, Jim started throwing our stuff in bags and suitcases, and we got in the car and . . . [my parents] didn’t know where we were for a long time. And when we went back to Richmond, we’d go to [Jim’s] mother’s place. If my parents walked in [her] front door, [Jim] walked out the back door. And this went on . . . until finally [my parents] had to bend. There was no compromise in him.”
That fall in Bloomington, Marceline discovered that Jim didn’t believe in marital compromise, either. She’d married him with the understanding that he, like her, believed in the God of the Bible and trusted in His Wisdom. But the newlyweds were barely settled in their tiny off-campus apartment when Jim told Marceline that he didn’t believe in her God at all, since a just and loving Lord would never permit so much human misery. He would later say in Jonestown that “I started devastating [God], I tore that motherfucker to shreds and laid him out to rest. . . . [Marceline and I would] fight, and she’d cry. We were washing dishes one time and [Marceline] said, ‘I love you, but [don’t you] say anything about the Lord anymore’. I said, ‘Fuck the Lord’ . . . we ended up in some goddamn scrap and she threw a glass at me.”
Another time, Jim and Marceline argued about God’s goodness or lack of it as they drove along a country road; Marceline was behind the wheel. Jim claimed later that she blamed his socialist beliefs for such unwarranted disdain of the Lord: “She said, ‘I can’t take this anymore. You either change your ideology or get out of this car.’ We were in the middle of nowhere. I said, ‘Stop the car.’ . . . When I stepped out of the car, I said to myself, ‘This marriage is broken. I’m not giving up my ideology for [her] or anyone else.’ ” Jim “walked and walked” for several hours until “she finally came back. She was the one to bend. Because I was determined that I wouldn’t.”
Afterward, Marceline was less inclined to argue with Jim about matters of faith. She admitted, “He took an awful lot of the starch out of me.” Privately, in conversations with her mother, sisters, and cousin Avelyn, she admitted considering divorce. For the first but far from the last time, Charlotte Baldwin advised patience. Marceline was always welcome back home, but her mother suggested that Jim wasn’t really that bad. Avelyn thought Charlotte’s advice was selfish: “Baldwin women simply did not divorce. It was unthinkable. Charlotte would have been embarrassed.” Years later when Marceline’s youngest sister, Sharon, divorced, Walter and Charlotte Baldwin gladly took her and her children in, helping Sharon in every way to move on with her life. But now Marceline listened to her mother. Perhaps Jim was just unsettled because he still hadn’t decided on a specific career. Things between them would surely get better after he did.
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Jim’s second year in college was less successful academically. He withdrew from several classes and made indifferent grades in those he completed. Jim still expected to achieve great things, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. He started talking about studying law. Marceline, shaken by Jim’s statements about God, still coaxed him into attending Methodist services with her on Sundays. Jim’s antipathy toward the Lord might yet be replaced with the comfort of unquestioning faith. She also brought Jim back into the Baldwin family circle. Walter and Charlotte tried hard to make him feel welcome. Jim seemed willing. He especially doted on Marceline’s grandmother, always making a fuss over the old lady. Everyone agreed it was nice to see such a young man taking an interest in the elderly.
Another of Marceline’s relations also appealed to Jim. Her nine-year-old cousin, Ronnie, had a tough life. His father died when the boy was four, his unstable mother moved from one unsuitable man to another, and she frequently sent Ronnie and his two older brothers away to live with relatives or in foster homes. The boys were always separated. Ronnie felt lonely and unloved.
In June 1950, Ronnie was being housed by a foster family when he suffered abdominal pain and had trouble standing straight. The foster family believed Ronnie was faking illness as an excuse to miss school. That weekend there was a Baldwin family gathering at Walter and Charlotte’s. Ronnie wasn’t there, but his brother Charles was, and he told Marceline about Ronnie’s discomfort. Marceline guessed the boy had a ruptured appendix. She and Jim rushed to the foster family’s house and took Ronnie to the hospital. His appendix was indeed ruptured. If Marceline hadn’t intervened, the boy almost surely would have died.
When he recovered, Ronnie was farmed out to another foster family. But Marceline and Jim stayed in touch, and a year later surprised Ronnie and the rest of the Baldwins by inviting the boy to come live with them. It was a considerable sacrifice on their part. They’d recently moved to Indianapolis so Jim could take pre-law classes at the University of Indiana’s campus there. Jim worked part-time to pay for tuition and books. Marceline worked nights as a nurse at a children’s hospital. They lived in a small two-bedroom apartment. But they welcomed Ronnie. The now ten-year-old had his own room, and soon a new bicycle.
Burdened as they were with work and studies, Jim and Marceline still took Ronnie to the movies, which Jim in particular loved, and on short weekend trips to Niagara Falls and Canada. They suggested that he call them “Mom” and “Dad,” but Ronnie wasn’t comfortable with it.
Some nights, Jim would summon Ronnie and launch into long, graphic conversations about sex. He was determined that the boy should know every possible detail. In a 2014 interview, Ronnie joked that, had Marceline been willing, Jim might very well have offered a practical demonstration. The ten-year-old dazzled his pals with his newfound knowledge. They agreed that Ronnie now knew more about sex than any other kid in their elementary school.
Other times, Jim talked about Ronnie’s mother. He told the boy that she was a whore because she lived with a man out of wedlock. Jim demanded that Ronnie accept him and Marceline as his new parents. Ronnie wouldn’t go along. He hoped that somehow his mother would get her life under control and bring him and his brothers back to live with her. But he didn’t tell that to Jim. Ronnie decided Jim was two-faced, all friendly and nice when he was out in public, and much different at home.
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In Indianapolis, Jim took two University of Indiana courses during 1952, making Bs in both. But completing his college education was no longer a primary concern. He finally knew what he wanted to do in life. It began with a renewed commitment to socia
lism, even in its more extreme, communist form.
Though the vast majority of Americans viewed communism as a threat, in Indianapolis there were still occasional public gatherings of avowed communists and sympathizers. Jim began attending these meetings, often bringing Marceline and Ronnie along. Much of what Marceline heard was revelatory to her—was it possible that America’s system of government was responsible for the problems of the poor? No one she’d known growing up in Richmond had ever said so. It was disturbing.
Jim was in his element. He listened carefully to every speech, studying the speaking cadences and physical mannerisms of the most effective speakers. He made no effort to disguise his enthusiasm, even to the ubiquitous government agents who always stood outside the meeting venues, ostentatiously observing and jotting notes about everyone going in and out. They made many attendees nervous, but Jim would often go right up to these men, formally introduce himself, and walk away grinning. They didn’t intimidate him. If anything, he savored their attention.
About the same time, an unexpected source provided Jim with the impetus to pursue his own socialist agenda. Marceline still occasionally dragged Jim to Methodist church services on Sundays. He remained contemptuous of Methodists, and of Christianity in general, all the nonsense about paradise after death, and meanwhile not doing a damned thing to help the needy. But sometime early in 1952, Jim was staggered by a new emphasis in Methodism. The faith’s governing body adopted a new, formal social creed, supporting “the alleviation of poverty, the right of collective bargaining, free speech, prison reform, full employment, and racial integration.” Jim didn’t know, and would not have cared, that this new Methodist platform had been many years in the making. As was true for several other Protestant denominations, Methodist leaders had always encouraged social activism as an expression of faith, particularly during the Depression. Now, in the early 1950s, the plight of black Americans was cause for particular concern. The Bible commanded that all people be loved equally, with those in need clothed and fed. The Methodist church reemphasized its commitment to this stricture. Jim heard sermons urging worshippers to actually practice these beliefs. He informed Marceline and his in-laws that he would become a Methodist minister, since the church now wanted to put real socialism into practice. Marceline was ecstatic. This was what she’d hoped for. Jim set about finding a Methodist church that would accept him as a student pastor. What Marceline missed or ignored, as did the other Baldwins, was that this wasn’t a matter of Jim admitting he might have been wrong in his previous disdain for traditional Christianity. Jim wasn’t returning as a repentant prodigal son to Methodism; from his perspective, the Methodist Church had come to him.
As Jim searched for a church, he also explored another approach to expressing faith. On some Sundays and weeknights in Indianapolis, he took Marceline and Ronnie to black churches. Often they were the only white family there. Ronnie was particularly stunned by the participatory nature of these services, so unlike the much more staid behavior of white worship. Here, people jumped up and sang and danced and called out responses to their preachers’ sermonizing. Black churches didn’t seem to stick to any rigid agenda, or to observe time limits. Their services went on for hours, and nobody minded. People seemed to be having fun, not acting like they were fulfilling an obligation. They liked being in church. Marceline enjoyed the music, and Ronnie tried clumsily to join in the clapping and hollering, but Jim loved it all. He whooped and stomped and hugged everybody. He seemed at home at these services in a way that he never did anywhere else. Much of that resulted from the openness of the congregations. Everyone was welcome, whites included. Nobody asked why you were there; they only seemed pleased that you were. Every time they attended a black church, Jim made new friends. The Joneses always liked having company, and now they had as many or more black guests as white ones. Jim was an inquisitive host. He wanted to know everything about his new friends’ lives, including their treatment by utility companies and white city officials and shop owners. How did prejudice affect even the most mundane aspects of their lives? Jim stopped lecturing Ronnie so much about sex; now he used every available minute explaining to the boy how blacks were as good as whites.
In the summer of 1952, Jim was hired as student pastor for Somerset Methodist Church, which drew its membership from lower-income white families in Indianapolis. It wasn’t a large or distinguished congregation, but that made no difference to Jim. His first sermon extolled “living Christianity” and the virtues of acting on belief. At age twenty-one, he’d apparently found his life’s work.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BEGINNINGS
On March 15, 1953, the Palladium-Item, Richmond’s daily newspaper, included a lengthy feature story concerning a local boy made good. Reporter William B. Treml gushed about the accomplishments of “a 21-year-old student pastor at Somerset Methodist Church in Indiana.” The young minister, respectfully identified as “the Rev. Mr. Jones,” had recently launched a campaign to build a recreation center for poor children on Indianapolis’s south side. The proposed center was dazzling, “a building costing $20,000, [and] which will include a basketball court, table tennis facilities, volleyball and kitchen equipment.” But even more amazing was that the center “will be run by a board of directors composed of all interested neighborhood denominations. . . . The Rev. Mr. Jones has established a church program at Somerset almost unheard of under the strict rules of doctrine [followed] by most religious sects. In [this] program, Jones preaches no doctrine but simply points out moral lessons taken from the Bible.”
The article noted that the Reverend Mr. Jones, an honors graduate of Richmond High, currently attended Indiana University and was also taking a correspondence course “to obtain a standing in the Methodist conference.” After graduation, “wherever he accepts a parish . . . he hopes to continue his programs of help exclusive of his church to those who need it.”
But at the same time the Palladium-Item lauded Jim and his promising Methodist future, it was falling apart. Within a year, he’d abandon Methodism altogether.
To Jim Jones, his new position at Somerset Methodist was an opportunity to lead the congregation aggressively forward, with the new attitude of setting aside sectarian divisions and joining forces with anyone equally devoted to helping the unfortunate. To Somerset members, Jones was a student pastor there to assist full-time ministers; boat-rocking was not permitted. Jones could talk all he liked about new ecumenical community centers for neighborhood children, but there is no record beyond the Palladium-Item’s mention that such a project existed beyond Jones’s own imagination. Jones was volunteer help, not a part of Somerset’s official church staff. He had no authority beyond whatever responsibilities someone else allowed him, and these were limited to helping out as required with day-to-day church business and delivering the occasional sermon, which always had to meet the approval of Somerset’s real minister.
In Jones’s view, the services were frustrating. There was always a strict order of worship, with everything decided in advance and conducted within a rigid time frame so worshippers could enjoy Sunday afternoons at home. It was the opposite of the spontaneous, joyful, and open-ended worship that Jones so naturally embraced in African American churches.
Away from Somerset, there were more problems. Despite his claims to the reporter from Richmond, Jones was no longer attending college. Even with Marceline working full-time, more income was needed, and the student pastor position was unpaid. Jones worked at a number of odd jobs, mostly in factories and shops. But it was difficult to make ends meet, and in August 1952 Jones was badly shaken by what he considered a personal betrayal.
Ronnie Baldwin had lived with the Joneses for more than a year. Jones and Marceline doted on the boy, and believed their affection was returned in equal measure. They made plans to formally adopt Ronnie, but didn’t consult the youngster until after they had legal documents drawn up and ready for him to accept and his mother to sign. But grateful as he was for the kindness s
hown by them, Ronnie wouldn’t agree. He still wanted, at some point, to be permanently reunited with his mother and brothers.
Marceline was hurt, but Jones was outraged. He ranted at Ronnie for an entire night, warning him that his birth mother was an unrepentant whore—Ronnie would immediately regret giving up the love and security that he and Marceline provided. The boy still refused. Jones seemed to believe that once he did anything for someone, from that moment forward the person belonged to him, with no right to disagree about anything or ever leave. While Marceline closed herself in another room, Jones harangued Ronnie until dawn, then petulantly sent the youngster back to his mother in Richmond.
Ronnie thought that was the end of it. His mother was doing better, and enrolled her son in a local elementary school. Soon afterward, Ronnie was summoned from class to the principal’s office; there was an urgent phone call for him. It was Jones, calling from Indianapolis to tell Ronnie that his desertion had broken Marceline’s heart. Hadn’t she and Jim treated Ronnie wonderfully, caring for him when no one else in the world did? Now would Ronnie come back and let them adopt him? Ronnie still refused.
At the end of September, the Baldwins held a family get-together in Richmond. When Ronnie arrived, Jim and Marceline were already there. As soon as Ronnie saw Jones, he turned and ran, certain that Jim would never let him alone. As Ronnie recalls it, “I took off . . . he jumped in his car, he chased me through the west side of Richmond. I went through houses and yards and everything.” Jim cornered Ronnie outside the boy’s house. But Ronnie’s older brother Dean confronted Jones, telling him to go away and leave Ronnie alone. From that moment, Jones never had anything to do with Ronnie.
