A netfriend (who is an avowed fundamentalist) wrote:

Jim Jones wasn’t a Christian fundamentalist. Virtually every tenet of the faith he preached is contradicted or disavowed by Christian fundamentalist dogma.

Mark Tindall replied:

Really??????

In Protestant fundamentalist Indiana, Jones became a pastor by age 19, and the Peoples Temple he began six years later in 1956 contained in microcosm the organizational strategies he would later practice in more bizarre and violent ways. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=19990201&s=drew

The People Temple’s was an outgrowth of Jim Jones’ Bible based fundamentalist teachings. http://reclaim.org/main/aboutus.html

Jim Jones started out as a conservative fundamentalist Bible teacher in San Francisco http://www.swordandspirit.com/LIBRARY/texts/TXTprofile.php

John R. Hall’s book Gone From the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 2004) …. concludes that “[s]omehow this man of obscure Hoosier origins stumbled across the keystone of a central contradiction of U.S. Protestantism: the perfectionist schism between the fundamentalist concern with individual salvation and the social gospel emphasis on saving ‘this’ world in God’s name” (p. 38). Jones, in other words, reveals tensions in the broader culture, and so the edges of the story are blurred and expanded beyond where they first lie. http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume6/artvdc-hall.htm

Occupation: Cult Leader/Fundamentalist Christian Preacher/Murderer

Ordained minister in the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ Led the Jonestown suicide/massacre (November 18, 1978)

Moved his original cult from Indiana to California and finally to Jonestown, Guyana http://www.amiannoying.com/2001/view.asp?ID=1105

A fundamentalist minister, Jim Jones by name, had a large congregation in San Francisco. He had favorable endorsements from the President of the United States and from the Vice-President and his wife. Jim Jones was on the housing authority of San Francisco, a very prestigious and elite group. He was building some welfare old-age homes, also helping young people off drugs, and his church was exemplified as one of racial harmony because it had blacks and whites and Hispanics, a very good cultural mix. In fact, there were apparent miracles in his church where people were ‘healed’ and they came out of their wheelchairs and so forth. http://www.iiw.org/net96/lectures/13.txt

1956- Peoples Temple founded in Indianapolis as an integrated church combining evangelical, enthusiastic religion and loosely socialist politics. Jim Jones, the founder and pastor of the church, preformed healings which attracted many members. The congregation was predominately black.

1960- Jim Jones was appointed director of the Indianapolis human rights commission.

1961- The Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church, as it came to be called, became a part of the Disciples of Christ. Jones was ordained by that faith in 1964.

1965- Jones moved the Temple’s headquarters to Ukiah, California, a city near San Francisco which he thought would be a safe haven in case of a nuclear war.

1967-1977

The Peoples Temple attracted more members and much favorable coverage in the press and from the political establishment as Jones himself and the Temple in general became more active in the community. Jones was even appointed to the San Francisco Housing Authority.

It was also during this time that some questions were raised by people outside of the group as to possible human rights violations within the group. the organization of concerned relatives was formed in response to reports of beatings and other punishments afflicted on members by Jones and the Temple’s leaders.

It was also during this time that Jones decided to move his congregation to Guyana.

1978- By the end of 1977, more that 900 Temple members were in residence at the commune in Guyana. At the end of the day, November 18, 1978, 914 members had committed suicide. http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~reli291/Jonestown/Jonestown.html?FACTNet

Other groups that became synonymous with “cult,” such as the People’s Temple of the Rev. Jim Jones, began as a respected progressive Christian congregation headed by an ordained minister with the Disciples of Christ, a mainline Protestant denomination. ….

FUNDAMENTALIST, with a capital “F,” most specifically refers to a 20th century Christian movement that stressed a literal interpretation of the Bible. That movement espoused five “fundamentals” for Christian faith-the inerrancy of Scripture, the divinity of Jesus, the virgin birth, the doctrine of atonement and Jesus’ bodily resurrection and physical return. Some Christians now feel the term “fundamentalist” has a derogatory connotation, but that does not mean fundamentalists should not be called “fundamentalists.” Most would prefer the term “conservative evangelical,” which may also be an accurate way of describing this type of Christian. Writers should also think as to whether the term “Pentecostal” or “fundamentalist” best describes the group or person in question. http://www.rna.org/faq9.php