Temple Hayes

Named after her grandfather, Temple Ann Hayes was born in 1959 to a Southern Baptist family in Anderson, South Carolina. She began playing softball at the age of ten, and seventeen years later with a batting average of .686, Temple was nominated as an All-American and elected to the National Softball Hall of Fame in 1979.

Temple’s background includes three years of military service in the United States Army Reserves and several years as a business owner. In 1991, she became a Church of Religious Science minister, moving to Florida to serve with various churches in Stuart, West Palm Beach, Sarasota and St. Petersburg. That same year, she launched herself as a motivational speaker and spent the next thirteen years traveling the United States and abroad for a variety of clients, including Procter and Gamble, Washington Mutual, State Farm Insurance, and Compaq.

In 2007 Temple became an ordained Unity Minister. Rev Temple Hayes is now at First Unity Spiritual Campus in St. Petersburg, Florida where she is also Minister of First Unity Church. Rev Temple is also the founder of several grass roots organizations recognizing the rights of all living beings.[1]

Much of Temple Hayes' teachings focuses on spirituality and metaphysics and the philosophical underpinning that “God is good all the time for everybody” and every body includes all life — men, women, children, animals, nature, insects— and their inalienable rights to live fully and pursue their dreams regardless of their creed, their color, their nationality, their sex, their sexual orientation, or their religious affiliation. She believes it’s time for the religious right and the spiritual left to come together and embrace all God’s children and creations. "We teach people how to think, not what to think, and folks find that appealing," Hayes says. "But we do make sure to tell people that, while the mind is a powerful way to get what you want, you may face some pain along the way. Nothing comes easy." [2] The general theme of her thoughts, like that of her favorite mystic and Sufi poet Rumi is essentially the concept of unity with God, and “though sometimes in life we’re challenged as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we need to remember it is but a shadow and the way out is the way through into the light. We can reconnect and live fully with our desire for oneness.” [3]