Tim Reiterman in his book RAVEN gives a biography of Jim Jones and a fairly even-handed story of the People’s Temple. But he understates Jones’ complete commitment to communism. He does not mention that the audio recording of Jones while the Kool-Aid murder/suicides are happening are of a harangue about socialism. He should have included an entire transcript in the appendix.
Congressman Ryan who was murdered by the People’s Temple in Guyana also pandered to the pavilion crowd saying that for many “Jonestown was the best thing” that ever happened to them. But Jones learned that people were handing notes to Ryan informing him that they wanted to leave Jonestown. It was this PR embarrassment which led to the murders at the airstrip and the subsequent mass poisoning.
I read RAVEN. Jones was no “fundamentalist” Christian, he was a relativist-materialist, capital-C Communist who was desperate to receive help from the USSR as the camp’s controllers started to lose control of themselves their prisoners, and their image down in Guyana.