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Brochure of the Peoples Temple, portraying leader Jim Jones as the father of the "Rainbow Family".

Peoples Temple was a cult founded in 1955 by Reverend James Warren Jones (Jim Jones). Based on left-wing principles such as racial integration, Peoples Temple is best known for the mass murder/suicide of its members that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978.

Jones established what became the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, Indiana during the 1950s. The church was initially incorporated as the Wings Of Deliverance in 1954. In 1960 the organization affiliated itself with the Protestant denomination, Disciples of Christ. This affiliation was a successful attempt to both raise the dwindling membership and restore the reputation of the group. Beginning in 1967, Jones and his congregation moved to Redwood Valley, California. The Redwood Valley church officially opened in 1969. After Jones began a series of recruiting drives in San Francisco and Los Angeles the membership in the Peoples Temple increased from approximately 700 in 1970 to 3,000 in 1972. Despite exaggerated claims by the Temple, its greatest actual membership was around 3,000.^[1]

Jones and his church earned a reputation for aiding the cities' poorest citizens, especially racial minorities, drug addicts, and the homeless. Soup kitchens, daycare centers, and medical clinics for elderly people were set up, along with counseling programs for prostitutes and drug addicts who wanted to change their lives. The Peoples Temple made strong connections to the California state welfare system. During the 1970s, the Peoples Temple owned and ran at least nine residential care homes for the elderly, six homes for foster children, and a state-licensed 40-acre ranch for developmentally disabled persons. They had a college tuition and dormitory program at Santa Rosa Junior College. The Temple elites handled members' insurance claims and legal problems, effectively acting as a client-advocacy group. For these reasons, sociologist John Hall described Peoples Temple as a "charismatic bureaucracy"^[2], oriented toward Jones as a charismatic leader, but functioning as a bureaucratic social service organization.

Although some descriptions of Peoples Temple emphasize Jones’ autocratic control over his followers, in actuality it had a complex leadership structure with decision-making power unevenly dispersed among its members. At its core, the Peoples Temple was ruled by Jones and his inner circle, but members of the Planning Commission also had much of the power. The Planning Commission, including approximately 100 members, were responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Temple.

In the mid-1970s journalists, law enforcement, and politicians were showing interest in the Peoples Temple. Jones reacted with frequent long and angry speeches to his followers, claiming that the defectors were lying, and the outside world was trying to destroy them. At the same time, an increasing number of former members revealed abuses within the Peoples Temple^{[citation needed]}.

Main article: Jonestown

Jones reacted to the increasing scrutiny by leasing land from the government of Guyana, and founding the town of Jonestown in 1974. The town had as few as 50 residents as late as 1977. However, after Jim Jones encouraged all of his followers to move there, the population grew to over 900 people by the end of 1978. Those who moved there were promised a tropical paradise, free from the supposed wickedness of the outside world.

On November 17, 1978, the group was visited at Jonestown by Leo Ryan, a United States Congressman from San Francisco, California, who was investigating claims of abuse within the Peoples Temple. During this visit, a number of Temple members expressed a desire to leave with the Congressman, and on the afternoon of November 18, the entire group accompanied Ryan to the local airstrip. There they were intercepted by Temple security guards who opened fire on the group, killing Congressman Ryan, three journalists, and one of the Temple defectors. The shootings were captured on video by one of the journalists killed in the attack.

On the evening of November 18, because of these shootings, Jones ordered his congregation to drink cyanide-laced Flavor Aid. This mass suicide has become known as the Jonestown massacre. Those who resisted committing suicide were shot, strangled, or injected with cyanide. Jones was found with a gunshot wound in his head. Upon investigation his body contained high doses of drugs. In all, 913 people died, including over 270 children.^[3]

Ten years after the mass suicide at Jonestown, the building housing the Peoples Temple in San Francisco (at 1849 Geary Boulevard in the city's Western Addition neighborhood) sustained structural damage in the Loma Prieta earthquake. Since the owner was unwilling to reinforce the structure, the building was demolished, and the property remained undeveloped until the United States Postal Service opened a post office at the site in the late 1990s.

The Peoples Temple is not to be confused with The Temple of the People, a theosophically-oriented religious organization headquartered at Halcyon, California, or the Peoples Church, an independent church affiliated with the Assemblies of God in Fresno, California.

• Shiva Naipaul: Black and White, London 1980 ISBN 0-241-10337-1
• Deborah Layton: Seductive Poison, 1998 ISBN 0-385-48984-6

• "When you meet the friendliest people you have ever known, who introduce you to the most loving group of people you've ever encountered, and you find the leader to be the most inspired, caring, compassionate and understanding person you've ever met, and then you learn the cause of the group is something you never dared hope could be accomplished, and all of this sounds too good to be true-it probably is too good to be true! Don't give up your education, your hopes and ambitions to follow a rainbow." by Jeannie Mills who was an early defector from the Peoples Temple.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Congressman Tom Lantos' Remarks on the 25th Anniversary of the Tragedy at Jonestown and the Death of Congressman Leo Ryan

• The Jonestown Carnage
• Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, a movie
• Seductive Poison, a book by Deborah Layton survivor of People's Temple
• Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple

• San Diego State University: Extensive site with source documents, list of dead, pictures
• Audio Recording of Jonestown Suicide
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Peoples Temple
• Transcription of Suicide Tape
• original 1977 "Inside Peoples Temple" article from New West magazine by Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy
• Dickerson, Tobin Peoples Temple (Jonestown) on the website of University of Virginia (note: the articles on this UVa website are sometimes written by students with the quality of the articles highly dependent on the student)
• American Experience | Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, a documentary of the events that led to the mass deaths.
• film, Jonestown: Paradise Lost

v • d • e Congressman Leo J. Ryan
Tributes	Leo J. Ryan Award  · Leo J. Ryan Memorial Park  · Leo J. Ryan Federal Building
Published works	USA/From Where We Stand  · Understanding California Government and Politics
Legislation	Hughes-Ryan Act
Awards	Congressional Gold Medal, List of Congressional Gold Medal recipients
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