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 which existed between 1955 and 1978 and was affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). 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 (though 3,000–5,000 is more likely).

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 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:^{[page needed]}

I decided, how can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church. So I consciously made a decision to look into that prospect.

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.^{[page needed]} In 1954, Jones founded his own church in a rented space in Indianapolis, at first, he named it the Community Unity Church.^{[page needed]}

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.^{[page needed]} 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.^{[page needed]} These "healings" involved the use of chicken livers and other animal tissue, which Jones (and confederate Temple members) 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".^{[page needed]} Jones's healings and purported clairvoyant revelations attracted spiritualists.

Jones began closely associating with the Independent Assemblies of God (IAoG), 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.