\u2022 While there are documents which indicate the contrary, the group was best known as Peoples Temple, without the article \u201cthe\u201d preceding it. In its use as an adjective \u2013 \u201cthe Peoples Temple choir,\u201d \u201cthe Peoples Temple philosophy,\u201d \u201cthe Peoples Temple leadership\u201d \u2013 the \u201cthe\u201d is appropriate, but as a stand-alone name, the group\u2019s name is simply \u201cPeoples Temple.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Similarly, there is no apostrophe in Peoples Temple. There are references throughout newspaper articles, legal documents, correspondence and even some of the Temple\u2019s own material \u2013 especially from its Indiana and early Redwood Valley days \u2013 to “People\u2019s Temple” or, even more rarely, “Peoples\u2019 Temple,” but the preferred spelling is \u201cPeoples Temple.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Jeff Guinn (2017: 79), when Wings of Deliverance \u2013 the original name of Jones’ church \u2013 moved to an old synagogue at the corner of 10th and Delaware in Indianapolis, the word “Temple” was carved in stone outside the building. The group, or Jones, decided to keep that language. And it became “Peoples Temple, not People’s, because the apostrophe symbolized ownership. After all, one of the key Temple goals was to discourage obsession with material possession.” Yet another explanation for the name comes from John R. Hall (1987: 43\u201344), who says that use of the term “temple” was widespread in Pentecostal Christianity. And, “emphasizing the populist orientation of their group, they called themselves Peoples Temple.”<\/p>\n
The play called The People\u2019s Temple<\/em> deliberately inserted the apostrophe to differentiate the drama from the group itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2022 While there are documents which indicate the contrary, the group was best known as Peoples Temple, without the article \u201cthe\u201d preceding it. In its use as an adjective \u2013 \u201cthe Peoples Temple choir,\u201d \u201cthe Peoples Temple philosophy,\u201d \u201cthe Peoples Temple leadership\u201d \u2013 the \u201cthe\u201d is appropriate, but as a stand-alone name, the group\u2019s name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":35361,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-35417","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35417"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117774,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35417\/revisions\/117774"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}