James F. Jones (minister)

Jones died of a heart attack at 63 years old on August 12, 1971, at the Dominion parsonage on La Salle Blvd in Detroit under the care of a church "prince", "Lord" Claude Haley. At the time of his death, according to contemporary accounts in Jet magazine, church leaders were trying to design a crypt to place his body near his mother's at Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.

On August 17, 1971, over 4,000 people attended Prophet Jones viewing at Swanson Funeral Home, 806 Grand River, Detroit. It was also reported that cars jammed the intersection and the front of the funeral home as the line of viewers stretched out to the street by the late afternoon. Plans for the funeral service were described as being lively and reminiscent of when Jones packed crowds into his churches at the Oriole movie theater and the Fine Arts movie theater at 2940 Woodward. The funeral service would also include Jones's ladies and princesses dressed in white dancing and shouting with tambourines. The funeral was planned to be two services, the first a lively memorial service planned by his followers to be held August 18, 1971 at 7:30 pm and a traditional rite with celebrities at 10:00 am on August 19, 1971, at the Adlai Stevenson Building Auditorium on 10100 Grand River. He was to be temporarily buried inside a crypt at Woodlawn Cemetery, Woodward and Eight Mile.

The Dominion consisted of numerous churches called "Thankful Centers" around the United States and elsewhere. In a newspaper interview in 1953, Jones claimed about thirty-five churches and six million followers eventually belonged to or were 'registered into' his Dominion. Detroit's membership, called Thankful Center #1, was claimed to be about 1,500.

In addition to his high level parties and celebrations at his Arden Park parsonage the press also covered Jones's visit to Father Divine at his Pennsylvanian estate in 1953. Jones was also friendly with C. L. Franklin for some time. In addition to being interviewed by the likes of Burt Lancaster, a local Detroit TV reporter, Jones also employed his own press agent, Ulysses W. Boykin, the owner of the Detroit Tribune newspaper and a former staff aide to boxer Joe Louis. Another aide of Jones, Ophelia Kemp, was the mother of Hollywood actress Freda Rentie. Jones attended the famous singer Dinah Washington's funeral, and was classified as a mourner in the Jet 1964 issue.

Noted for his ardent U.S. patriotism, Prophet Jones opened his religious radio broadcast with the national anthem and the pledge of allegiance to the flag. A supporter of the Republican Party, Jones created a secular medal award, the Crispus Attucks, and presented it to Michigan's Republican Senator Homer S. Ferguson and Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson. In 1951 Prophet Jones delivered the invocation at the opening session of the Michigan State Legislature in Lansing. In 1952 Prophet Jones prophesied that General Dwight D. Eisenhower would win the 1952 presidential election. After Eisenhower's election victory Prophet Jones received an invitation to the inauguration. His attendance there was noted in the press. He stayed at the Rhode Island Plaza Hotel. Many of his supporters now looked at him as a prophet to the White House.

At his Arden Park home in the 1950s Jones hosted lavish eight-day-long birthday banquets, called Philamethyu and Hushdomcalama in his honor that were much covered in the press. Michigan governor G. Mennon Williams and Detroit mayor Albert Cobo sent him birthday greetings in 1954. Prominent African Americans from the elite of politics, business, sports, entertainment and music such as Lionel Hampton and his wife Gladys Hampton attended the birthday banquets and other gatherings held in the Sky Room.

Jones proclaimed that the split with Triumph was purely for spiritual reasons as around this time he received word from God to manifest the Kingdom with himself as Prophet and Ruler preaching the "true gospel". According to the Church of Universal Triumph, Dominion of God web-site, the command to form the organization was revealed to "Prophet" Jones, September 24, 1944, by the God of the universe supported by the scriptures, citing Rev. 11:15; 18:1–4; 21:1–5; Matthew 6:8,10, and Amos 3:7.

In 1944, Jones formed his new corporation, called the Church of Universal Triumph, Dominion of God, in Detroit.

Jones lived the life of a millionaire. The first of his three Detroit parsonages was a three-story, multiroom mansion at 246 Ferry Avenue and was described as "luxurious" in an article in The Detroit News of July 2, 1944.

Jones came to Detroit as a missionary for the southern-based Pentecostal sect, Triumph the Church and Kingdom of God in Christ. He thus led two of the largest predominantly black Pentecostal churches in Detroit during the 1940s and 1950s. He broadcast live weekly sermons over Canadian stations CKLW reaching the Midwest. In 1955 he began hosting Sunday night programs on WXYZ-TV, making him the first black preacher in Detroit to host a weekly television program. He was well known for his late-night services, which were broadcast in Detroit. Jones died at 63 years old and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit.

In 1938 the expanding Triumph sect sent Jones, accompanied by his adolescent personal secretary James G. Walton, to Detroit as a missionary. Jones, had traveled extensively on Triumph Church business for many years without 'purse or script' in such states as Missouri, Tennessee and Georgia. In Detroit Jones began a radio ministry. It was around this time that he became known to the public by the title in which he became famous, "Prophet Jones".

In 1924 Jones, popularly called "sonny" and "son", became an officially ordained minister in the Southern-based Triumph the Church and Kingdom of God in Christ at age 18. Jones rose steadily within the Triumph Church after becoming a fully accredited officer. By the 1930s he attained the status of a "Prince" inside the Triumph Church hierarchy.

Jones employed a personal staff of twelve domestic servants who were financed by the Dominion. His cooks went everywhere with him. "A great person preaching the unadulterated gospel has to be careful", he said. Jones alleged that the founder of the Triumph Church, Father Smith, had died in 1920 after being poisoned by adversaries. Later Jones sold his "French Castle" to rival Daddy Grace. This left him with his third large residence at 8311 La Salle Blvd, Detroit. This home continues to serves as the current Detroit Dominion parsonage.

In 1917 at eleven years old, Jones quit school. He spent his life evangelizing, preaching, prophesying and pasturing in the Triumph cause, as he understood and eventually reinterpreted it. As an adult Jones said when he was a little boy God spoke to him and told him he was destined to "distil" great and good thoughts in the minds of men.

The second mansion was his Arden Park-East Boston Historic District parsonage and it was even larger than the first mansion and it was also claimed to be 'opulent' in the press. Aretha Franklin recalled as a child loving this Detroit mansion, which Jones painted a different color throughout the year. Prophet Jones called this mansion the "French Castle". It was also known as the "Dominion Residence". According to Hue magazine the Arden Park Dominion parsonage was previously a fifty-four-room former gambling casino, which Jones purchased from gambler Danny Sullivan. According to Ebony the house was purchased by his flock at reported cost at that time, $30,000. The house had been previously built in 1917 by General Motors Corporation executive Edmund A. Vier for $100,000. The house was styled after an 18th-century French chateau.

In 1915, Triumph the Holy Righteous Church changed its name to Triumph the Church and Kingdom of God in Christ. Its leader, Father Smith, was anointed Holy Apostle, Priest and King of the Triumph the Church and Kingdom of God. Smith claimed, and his followers believed, that he was divinely inspired to found and lead the Triumph Church and that God spoke directly to him. Jones in 1944, thirty years later, started a similar church called the Church of Universal Triumph, Dominion of God, in Detroit, wherein he and his teachings would both emulate and supplant those of Father Smith amongst his own followers.

James Francis Marion Jones (November 24, 1907 – August 12, 1971), also known as the Rt. Rev. Dr. James F. Jones, D.D and as Prophet Jones, was an American black religious leader, televangelist, faith healer and pastor who led the religious movement that developed into the Church of Universal Triumph, Dominion of God, Inc. from 1938 until his death in 1971.

James Francis Marion Jones was born in Birmingham, Alabama on November 24, 1907. His father, a railroad brakeman named James W. Jones, married a schoolteacher named Catherine Lewis. He was their only child. In 1912 the five-year-old James F. Jones joined and began preaching sermons in Triumph the Holy Righteous Church. The Triumph the Holy Righteous Church was a Black Nationalist/Pentecostal church founded by Father Elias Dempsey Smith in 1902 that Jones' parents, former members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, converted to. Young Jones preached in the tents, convocations and other venues of the early Triumph Church as a child prodigy.