46 Facts About Father Divine

Father Divine founded the International Peace Mission movement, formed its doctrine and oversaw its growth from a small and predominantly black congregation into a multiracial and international church.

Father Divine declined several offers to write his biography, saying that "the history of God would not be useful in mortal terms".

Father Divine refused to acknowledge his relationship with any family.

Father Divine was probably called George Baker around the turn of the century.

Father Divine attended a local Baptist Church, often preaching, until 1907, when a traveling preacher named Samuel Morris spoke and was expelled from the congregation.

Father Divine preached with Morris in Baltimore out of the home of former evangelist Harriette Snowden, who came to accept their divinity.

Divine and Father Jehovia were later joined by John A Hickerson, who called himself Reverend Bishop Saint John the Vine.

Father Divine traveled south, where he preached extensively in Georgia.

Father Divine taught celibacy and the rejection of gender categorizations.

On February 6,1914, several followers' husbands and local preachers had Father Divine arrested for lunacy.

Father Divine was found mentally sound in spite of "maniacal" beliefs.

Father Divine had given no name when arrested and was tried as "John Doe ".

In 1914, Father Divine travelled to Brooklyn, New York, with a small number of followers and an all-black congregation.

Harris, who wrote a biography about the Peace movement and its leader said that Father Divine had met Peninah in Georgia and came North with her and that they bought the house in Sayville as a married couple.

Penniniah would later claim that Father Divine had healed her from crippling arthritis or rheumatism and after this she became one of his early followers.

Father Divine played a major part in the Peace Mission's development throughout the 1920s and 1930s, establishing the group's "Promised Land" in Ulster County in upstate New York, where she attempted to open an orphanage.

Father Divine purchased his 72 Macon Avenue house from a resident who wanted to spite the neighbor he was feuding with.

Father Divine's neighbor taunted him, and the feud escalated until Fellows decided to move.

Father Divine held free weekly banquets and helped newcomers find jobs.

Father Divine began attracting many white followers as well as black.

Remarkably, during the Depression, Father Divine submitted his $1,000 bail in cash.

Father Divine held banquets for as many as 3,000 people that summer.

Cars clogging the streets for these gatherings bolstered some neighbors' claims that Father Divine was a disturbance to the peace and was hurting their property values.

Father Divine had them wait in silence for ten minutes, and then they filed into police custody.

Forty-six pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace and incurred $5 fines, which Father Divine paid with a $500 bill, which the court was embarrassingly unable to make change from.

Father Divine had supporters in Washington, California and throughout the world thanks to New Thought devotees like Eugene Del Mar, an early convert and former Harlem journalist, and Henry Joerns, the publisher of New Thought Magazine in Seattle.

Father Divine taught that contemporary leaders strayed from these ideals, but he would become increasingly patriotic through his life.

Father Divine moved to the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, where he had accumulated a significant following in the black community.

Nonetheless, Father Divine was increasingly called upon to offer political endorsements, which he initially did give.

For example, New York City mayoral candidates John P O'Brien and Fiorello H LaGuardia each sought his endorsement in 1933, but Father Divine was apparently uninterested.

However, this opened up an enormous potential liability from all ex-devotees, so Father Divine resisted and appealed the judgment.

Father Divine's political focus on anti-lynching measures became more resolved.

The Verinda Brown lawsuit against Father Divine Devine dragged on and was sustained on appeal.

The exact date is not known, because Father Divine never talked about it or even acknowledged her death.

However, it occurred sometime in 1943, as her last known appearance was at a banquet in New York in 1942 and biographers believe Penninah's death rattled Father Divine, making him aware of his own mortality.

Father Divine claimed that Ritchings, later called "Mother S A Divine", was the reincarnation of Penninah.

For example, light-hearted stories ran when Father Divine announced Philadelphia was capital of the world and when he claimed to inspire invention of the hydrogen bomb.

On September 10,1965, Father Divine died of natural causes at his Woodmont estate.

Jones' custom of tape-recording all his sermons was copied from Father Divine, who "spoke" to his followers via archived sermon tapes once ill health forced him to cease speaking at meetings.

Father Divine's sermons were emotionally moving and freely associated between topics.

Father Divine's speech was often peppered with words of his own invention like "physicalating" and "tangiblated".

Father Divine preached of his divinity even before he was known as "Father Divine" in the late 1910s.

Father Divine's doctrine taught that his life fulfilled all biblical prophecies about the second coming, regarding himself as Jesus Christ reborn.

Father Divine lectured that Christ existed in "every joint" of his follower's bodies, and that he was "God's light" incarnated in order to show people how to establish heaven on earth and to show them the way to eternal life.

Father Divine was particularly concerned with the downtrodden of society, including but not limited to African Americans.

Some biographers, such as Robert Weisbrot, speculate that Father Divine was a forerunner to the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s, heavily influenced by his upbringing in the segregated South.