Everything you have goes into the common fund.
Wages, savings, houses, pensions and social security cheques were signed over, and members lived on an allowance. It paid for the buses, the care homes and the Guyana land, and it also meant that by 1978 almost nobody at Jonestown had a passport, a ticket or money of their own.
The common fund is the mechanism that turned a church into something a member could not leave. It also did real work: it paid for the care homes, the buses and the land in Guyana, and it meant elderly members were housed and fed. The Temple asked for it in stages, beginning with time and ending with a signature. By November 1978 the great majority of people at Jonestown had no passport, no money and no ticket, which is a fact about property arrangements rather than about belief, and it belongs in any honest account of why more people did not walk out.
The same ground, other faiths
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