Depending on whom you ask, Father Major Jealous Divine, better known simply as Father Divine, was either: (a) a charismatic, materialistic con man; (b) the 20th Century’s first and most fascinating religious cult leader; (c) a visionary who by word and deed inspired followers to live exemplary lives, and who paved the way for the American civil rights movement; or, (d) (as his followers claim) God incarnate, fulfilling the Biblical prophecies for the Second Coming of Christ and the Coming of the Jewish Messiah.

What we do know is that by the time Father Divine’s Universal Peace Mission Movement moved its world headquarters to the Philadelphia area in 1947, it claimed to have more than 2 million members worldwide. Many people’s lives were genuinely changed for the better thanks to Father Divine’s teachings about peace, clean living, hard work, and equality among all people. Their names were genuinely changed as well – to descriptive words like Delight, Faithful, Meekness, Love, Sweet Angel, etc.

Father Divine viewed race as merely a divisive social construct and, seemingly practicing what he preached, married Mother Divine, a Caucasian woman from Canada 40+ years his junior, in 1946.

Although Father Divine died in 1965, and although the Universal Peace Mission Movement’s membership has declined due in part to another of Father Divine’s teachings – celibacy – his worldwide movement lives on, as do its vast real estate holdings. Two Philadelphia area sites in particular serve as dramatic reminders of Father Divine’s legacy. The first is Woodmont, the breathtakingly beautiful Gladwyne mansion and estate (donated in 1953 by a follower), where Father Divine’s body is buried and where Mother Divine – now in her mid-80s – still lives and keeps a place set for him at the dinner table. The second is the creepy, deserted Divine Lorraine Hotel, a real-life Tower of Terror looming over the grim landscape of North Broad Street. In its heyday, the Divine Lorraine had been one of Philadelphia’s most opulent hotels and, under Father Divine’s direction, became the city’s first hotel to admit guests of all skin colors.

Father Divine is said to have declared Philadelphia the Capital of the World. To that, and to the cause of peace to which he devoted his life, we say “Thank you, Father.”

International Peace Mission Movement Official Website

Father Divine Project Multimedia Documentary

AmericanReligion’s Father Divine Webpage

ReligiousMovement’s Father Divine Webpage

 

         

 

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