Jones was born on May 13, 1931 in a rural area of Crete, Indiana, to James Thurman Jones (1887-1951), a World War I veteran, and Lynetta Putnam (1902-1977). Jones was of Irish and Welsh descent; he later claimed partial Cherokee ancestry through his mother, but his maternal second cousin later stated this was likely untrue. Economic difficulties during the Great Depression necessitated that Jones' family move to the town of Lynn in 1934, where he grew up in a shack without plumbing.

In 1951, Jones began attending gatherings of the Communist Party USA in Indianapolis. He became flustered with harassment he received during the McCarthy Hearings, particularly regarding an event he attended with his mother focusing on Paul Robeson, after which she was harassed by the FBI in front of her co-workers for attending. He also became frustrated with ostracism of open communists in the United States, especially during the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. This frustration, among other things, provoked a seminal moment for Jones in which he asked himself, "How can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church."  Jones was surprised when a Methodist superintendent helped him get a start in the church even though he knew Jones to be a communist and Jones did not meet him through the Communist Party USA. In 1952, he became a student pastor in Sommerset Southside Methodist Church, but claimed he left that church because its leaders barred him from integrating blacks into his congregation. Around this time, Jones witnessed a faith-healing service at a Seventh Day Baptist Church. He observed that it attracted people and their money and concluded that, with financial resources from such healings, he could help accomplish his social goals.  Jones organized a mammoth religious convention to take place on June 11 through June 15, 1956, in a cavernous Indianapolis hall called Cadle Tabernacle. To draw the crowds, Jim needed a religious headliner, and so he arranged to share the pulpit with Rev. William M. Branham, a healing evangelist and religious author who at the time was as highly revered as Oral Roberts. Following the convention, Jones was able to launch his own church, which changed names until it became the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel. The Peoples Temple was initially made as an inter-racial mission.

Did these gatherings grow violent?
He became flustered with harassment he received during the McCarthy Hearings,