Peoples Temple
The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, originally Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church and commonly shortened to Peoples Temple, was an American new religious organization that existed between 1955 and 1978 and was affiliated with the Christian Church. Founded by Jim Jones in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Peoples Temple spread a message that combined elements of Christianity with communist and socialist ideology, with an emphasis on racial equality. After Jones moved the group to California in the 1960s and established several locations throughout the state, including its headquarters in San Francisco, the Temple forged ties with many left-wing political figures and claimed to have 20,000 members.
The Temple is best known for the events of November 18, 1978, in Guyana, when 909 people died in a mass suicide and mass murder at its remote settlement, named "Jonestown", as well as the murders of U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan and members of his visiting delegation at the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip. The incident at Jonestown resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Because of the killings in Guyana, the Temple is regarded by scholars and by popular view as a destructive cult.
Before California
Indiana formation
Before he founded his church, Jim Jones had become interested in communism and frustrated by the targeting of communists in the U.S. during the Red Scare. This, among other things, provided a clerical inspiration for Jones; as he himself described it in a biographical recording:Although Jones feared that he would end up being the victim of a backlash for being a communist, he was surprised when a Methodist superintendent helped him enter the church, despite his knowledge that Jones was a communist. In 1952, Jones became a student pastor in Sommerset Southside Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, but left that church because it barred him from integrating African Americans into his congregation. In 1954, Jones founded his own church in a rented space in Indianapolis, at first, he named it the Community Unity Church.
Jones had previously observed a faith healing service at the Seventh Day Baptist Church, which led him to conclude that such healings could attract people, and generate income, which he could use to accomplish his social goals. Jones and the Temple's members knowingly faked healings because they found that the healings increased people's faith and generated financial resources which they could use to help the poor and finance the church. These "healings" involved the use of chicken livers and other animal tissue, which Jones claimed were cancerous tissues which had been removed from the bodies of the people who had been healed.
In 1955, Jones bought his first church building, located in a racially mixed Indianapolis neighborhood. He first named his church Wings of Deliverance, and later that year, he renamed it the Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church, the first time he used the phrase "Peoples Temple". Jones's healings and purported clairvoyant revelations attracted spiritualists.
Latter Rain Movement
Jones began closely associating with the Independent Assemblies of God, an international group of churches who embraced the Latter Rain movement. The IAoG had few requirements for ordaining ministers and were accepting of divine healing practices. In June 1955, Jones held his first joint meetings with William Branham, a healing evangelist and Pentecostal leader in the global Healing Revival.In 1956, Jones was ordained as an IAoG minister by Joseph Mattsson-Boze, a leader in the Latter Rain movement and the IAoG. Jones quickly rose to prominence in the group. Working with the IAoG, Jones organized and hosted a healing convention to take place from June 11 to June 15, 1956, in Indianapolis's Cadle Tabernacle. Needing a well-known figure to draw crowds, he arranged to share the pulpit again with Reverend Branham.
Branham was known to tell supplicants their name, address, and why they came for prayer, before pronouncing them healed. Jones was intrigued by Branham's methods and began performing the same feats. Jones and Branham's meetings were very successful and attracted an audience of 11,000 at their first joint campaign. At the convention, Branham issued a prophetic endorsement of Jones and his ministry, saying that God used the convention to send forth a new great ministry.
Many attendees in the campaign believed Jones's performance indicated that he possessed a supernatural gift, and coupled with Branham's endorsement, it led to rapid growth of Peoples Temple. Jones was particularly effective at recruitment among the African American attendees at the conventions. According to a newspaper report, regular attendance at Peoples Temple swelled to 1,000 thanks to the publicity Branham provided to Jones and Peoples Temple.
Following the convention, Jones renamed his church the "Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel" to associate it with Full Gospel Pentecostalism; the name was later shortened to the Peoples Temple. Jones participated in a series of multi-state revival campaigns with Branham and Mattsson-Boze in the second half of the 1950s, making multiple joint appearances with them. Jones claimed to be a follower and promoter of Branham's "Message" during the period. Peoples Temple hosted a second international Pentecostal convention in 1957 which was again headlined by Branham. Through the conventions and with the support of Branham and Mattsson-Boze, Jones secured connections throughout the Latter Rain movement.
Indianapolis expansion
Jones used the convention meetings with other Pentecostal speakers to gain wide publicity, and Jim Jones continued to disguise the fact that he was using religion to further his political ideology. Those conventions drew as many as 11,000 attendees, as James Warren Jones and the other preachers conducted "healings" and impressed attendees by revealing private information—usually addresses, phone numbers, or Social Security numbers, which private detectives could easily discover beforehand. Jones and Temple members also drove through various cities in Indiana and Ohio on recruiting and fundraising efforts.The Temple stressed egalitarian ideals, asking members to attend in casual clothes so poor members would not feel out of place, and providing shelter for the needy. While the Temple had increased its African-American membership from 15% to nearly 50%, in order to attempt further gains the Temple hired African-American preacher Archie Ijames. Pastor Ijames was one of the first to commit to Jones's socialist collective program. In 1959, the church joined the Christian Church, and was renamed the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel. This affiliation was a successful attempt to both raise the dwindling membership and restore the reputation of the organization.
In February 1960, the Temple opened a soup kitchen for the poor and expanded their social services to include rent assistance, job placement services, free canned goods, clothing, and coal for winter heating. Jones and his wife Marceline helped to increase the Temple's soup kitchen service to an average of about 2,800 meals per month. The Temple's public profile was further elevated when Jones was appointed to the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission. He engaged in public attempts to integrate businesses and was the subject of much local media coverage.
Changes and "religious communalism"
Jones had read extensively about Father Divine, the founder of the International Peace Mission movement. Jones and members of the Temple visited Divine several times, while Jones studied his writings and tape recordings of his sermons. The Temple printed Divine's texts for its members and began to preach that members should abstain from sex and only adopt children.In 1959, Jones tested the new fiery rhetorical style that Divine had used in a sermon. His speech captivated members with lulls and crescendos, as Jones challenged individual members in front of the group. The speech also marked the beginning of the Temple's underlying "us versus them" message. Jones carefully wove in that the Temple's home for senior citizens was established on the basis "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", quoting Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program. He did so knowing that his Christian audience would recognize the similarities with text from the Acts of the Apostles which stated: "distribution was made to each as any had need." Jones would repeatedly cite that passage to paint Jesus as a communist, while at the same time attacking much of the text of the Bible.
The Temple began tightening control over its organization, asking more of its members than did other churches. It required that members spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with its Temple "family" rather than with blood relatives, the beginning of a process to wean members from outside contact and redirect their lives toward a total commitment to the Temple and its goals. Jones began to offer a deal towards a socialist collective, which he called "religious communalism", in which members would donate their material possessions to the Temple in exchange for the Temple meeting all those members' needs. Pastor James was one of the first to commit.
The Temple had little luck converting most Midwesterners to their ideals. Admiring the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Jones traveled to the island nation in 1960 in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade poor black Cubans to move to his congregation in Indiana. The Temple's religious message transitioned during this period, to one treading between atheism and the subtle notion that Jones was a Christ-like figure. While Temple aides complained privately, Jones said that the new message was needed to foster members' dedication to the Temple's larger goals. He maintained such implications until the mid-to-late 1970s.
In 1961, Jones claimed he had had a vision in which Indianapolis and Chicago were destroyed in a nuclear attack, convincing aides that the Temple needed to look for a new location. A 1962 Esquire magazine article listed the nine safest places to be in a nuclear war, with Belo Horizonte, Brazil, topping the list because of its location and atmospheric conditions. Jones traveled through Brazil from 1962 through early 1963. He requested money from the Temple while in Rio de Janeiro, but the Temple lacked adequate funds for such a request because of shrinking finances in Jones's absence. Jones sent a preacher that had become a follower in Brazil back to Indiana to help stabilize the Temple. Jones returned to Indiana in 1963.