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Jones' Introduction to the Church
Jim Jones was born in May 1931, in Crete, Indiana. Growing tired of the capitalistic nature of the United States, Jones had aspirations of spreading his Marxist philosiphy. He decided the best way to do this was by infiltrating the church. Through connections with a local superintendent, Jones was able to do this. Despite knowing Jones was a communist, a Methodist superintendent allowed him to enter the Somerset Methodist Church in Indianapolis as a student pastor in June of 1952. -
Departure from Somerset
While preaching at Somerset, Jones gained a small amount of notoriety for selling small monkeys that he imported from South America and sold door to door for $29 each. This earned him a spot on the front page of the Indianapolis Star in April of 1954 after he refused to pay for a shipment of monkeys that had died on their voyage to the U.S. This notoriety only grew as he pressed his church to allow African-Americans to attend services, which they resisted. This forced Jones to leave the church. -
New Beginnings
After departing from Somerset, Jones sought to found his own church. Thus, in 1954, he did. Initially, Jones spent a short while as an associate minister at Laurel Street Tabernacle, where he gathered the first few members of his eventual church. However, using the money accrued from his door-to-door pet sales, Jones was eventually able to rent a space and open the first interracial church in Indianapolis, called "Wings of Deliverance." It was later renamed to “Community Unity Church." -
The "Community Unity Church"
Now running his own church, Jones needed a way to attract followers and believers of his teachings. He was able to do this by faking healings, the most notable being those that involved showing animal tissue or liver to simulate a "tumor" that was removed from the actor's body through Jones' healings. This allowed the Community Unity Church to garner followers and funding through donations for Jones to eventually buy a building instead of renting one out. -
Joint Meetings
After beginning the Peoples Temple, Jones joined the Independent Assemblies of God, or IAoG, and lead joint meetings with ministers such as William Branham, who was a healing evangelist and Pentecostal leader in the global Healing Revival. This led to the rapid growth of the Peoples Temple, due to exposure, and the belief that Jones had a supernatural healing gift. -
Transition to the Peoples Temple
With the money raised at the previous building, Jones was officially able to buy his own church building, which he named, "Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church". This birthed the "Peoples Temple" phrase. Once off the ground, The Peoples Temple was very enticing, as it was accepting of all races and cultures, and did plenty of things to give back to the community. Food drives, nursing homes for the elderly, and fighting for racial equality were among some of them. -
Expansion
After the joint healings and exposure of the Peoples Temple, the religion grew. Especially in its representation of African-Americans due to its all-inclusive nature. The temple had increased its African-American membership from 15% to nearly 50% and aimed further capitalize on this by hiring African-American preacher Archie Ijames, who was one of the first to commit to Jones's socialist collective program. -
Joining the Christian Church
In 1959, Peoples Temple joined the Christian Church Disciples of Christ) and was once again renamed the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel. This affiliation allowed Jones and the Peoples Temple to both raise the dwindling membership of the organization and restore its reputation. -
Tightening Control
In 1959, Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple began changing. More was taken from and expected of the members of the Peoples Temple. Jones began preaching abstinence and promoting the adoption of children, requiring that members spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with their Temple "family" rather than with their relatives, and establishing a process called "religious communalism", where members would donate their material possessions to the Temple in exchange for all of their needs being met. -
Helping the Community
In February of 1960, a soup kitchen was opened by the Peoples Temple organization to help those in need and expanded their social services. Things like rent assistance, job placements, canned goods, clothing, and more were provided to members of the religion. This helped elevate the organization's reputation in the eyes of the public. -
Indianapolis Human Rights Commission
Later in 1960, the legitimacy of Peoples Temple only grew in the eyes of the people when Jim Jones was appointed to the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission. He made attempts to integrate local businesses and received an increase in local media coverage. -
Failed Conversion
A lot of the new "family" ideas preached by Jones were in order to make members of the temple feel like they were a part of something, whilst preaching political ideas of communism and anti-capitalism. However, despite disguising these ideas as religion, Jones struggled to convert most midwesterners to communism. Jones then changed his message in order to fit his larger goals for the Temple, including building himself up to be a Christ-like figure and evolving to atheistic-esque philosophy. -
Relocation
In 1962, Jim Jones traveled to Brazil seeking a new place to establish Peoples Temple, as he claims he had a vision of a nuclear attack that would wipe out the midwestern United States including Indianapolis. After little to no financial aid or support, Jones abandoned the idea and instead chose to move to California. Jones returned from Brazil in 1963 to a dysfunctional church, and moved to a city near Ukiah in California as a fresh start, with some of his followers behind him. -
Fear Mongering
Following the Temple's move to California, Jim Jones began using drugs, which worsened his paranoia. He harnessed this paranoia, and exaggerated and projected fear onto his followers, claiming The Peoples Temple had enemies actively trying to destroy them. The enemy he warned members about changed over time, from the Ku Klux Klan, to Redneck Vigilantes, Nazis, and the American Government. -
City Expansion
Now residing in California, Jones felt he needed to expand to more of the urban areas, as the populations were far larger there than anywhere The Peoples Temple had existed prior. The Temple began holding services in Los Angeles and San Francisco, eventually establishing permanent facilities in both cities as a mark of expansion for the organization. -
Size of the Temple
After its urban expansion, the Peoples Temple was bigger than ever. Jones would often exaggerate and routinely throw numbers like 20,000 around, but the Temple had between 3,000 and 5,000 active members at the time. Regardless of the official members, the services and facilities established in San Fransisco regularly drew a few thousand people for campaign work or attendance at its peak. -
Establishment of Jonestown
After scrutiny of the Temple from the media, and looming fear of a fascist takeover in America, The Peoples Temple signed a lease to rent land in Guyana. They felt as though the African-American members of the temple were not accepted in America, and Guyana was a black country where the Black members of the temple could exist in peace. This settlement would later be dubbed, "Jonestown", and became the new home to The Peoples Temple. -
Jonestown Massacre
The Jonestown Massacre occurred on November 18th, 1978, in Jonestown, Guyana. After reports of abuse and mistreatment of members of the Temple, U.S. Representative Leo Ryan visited Jonestown in order to investigate these claims. While there, several members desired to leave with him, but were intercepted by Temple security guards and shot and killed. Jim Jones then forced over 900 members of the temple to ingest cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, killing them all. Jones committed suicide shortly after. -
Dissolution of the Temple
In December 1978, the Peoples Temple filed for bankruptcy and was eventually dissolved following a successful petition from Charles Garry, the corporation's attorney. The buildings that formerly belonged to the temple still exist, however, The Peoples Temple religion has long since died out. -
Aftermath
After the Jonestown Massacre, the Temple's San Francisco facility was besieged by the national media and relatives of the victims. The event became one of the best-known in U.S. History and was covered in countless newspapers and magazines. Surviving members of the Temple that did not follow Jones to Guyana feared for their life, believing there were brainwashed assassins from Jonestown out with the intent to kill them.