“We’re now part of his flock”: Father Divine
The charismatic religious leader with a Philadelphia connection who draws the Crumps north in CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY
“Daddy discovered Father Divine when he was searching to cure ‘the ailments of the heart,’ those terrible fits of mourning that set in.” Ernestine, the teenage narrator of Lynn Nottage’s Crumbs from the Table of Joy — onstage at Lantern Theater Company November 9 through December 17, 2023 — describes her father’s newfound religious fervor as an attempt to soothe his grief from his wife’s death. The source of that balm is Father Divine, a real figure with an uncertain history and a complicated legacy.
Father Divine may or may not have been born George Baker, possibly in Rockville, Maryland or in Georgia, somewhere around 1876. While we do not know for certain where or when he was born or what he was called, we do know that the man who would become known as “the Messenger,” the Reverend Major Jealous Divine, and most famously as Father Divine became a major religious figure of the first half of the 20th century with his International Peace Mission. He combined the fervor of Pentecostal ministers in storefront churches with the tenets of New Thought — a turn-of-the-century movement that (in simplified terms) believed positive thinking could alter one’s reality and circumstances — to form a movement all his own.
Father Divine was a traveling preacher at the turn of the 20th century. He came to prominence in 1919 when he, his first wife Peninnah, and a band of interracial followers moved from Brooklyn to an all-white neighborhood in Sayville, New York, where they opened the first Peace Mission. In 1931, complaints from neighbors — which were likely racially motivated — resulted in a 30-day jail sentence for Father Divine. Two years later, he moved the Peace Mission’s operations from Sayville to Harlem, where his church would eventually become the largest property-owner in the neighborhood for a time, according to PBS’ This Far by Faith. They moved to Philadelphia in 1940, where Father Divine remained headquartered until his death in 1965. He claimed these moves were meant to establish outposts for heaven on earth, but they were also largely motivated by escaping inconvenient financial entanglements, legal battles, or press investigations of the church. Whatever the motivation and wherever the headquarters, however, the International Peace Mission grew; at the movement’s height, about 150 Peace Missions were operating across the country and internationally.
To some, Father Divine was a civil rights hero and a champion of those in need. He envisioned a desegregated society and protested lynching. He advocated communal living and the pooling of resources, and his Peace Missions were affordable, clean, and racially integrated communal living spaces at a time when the Depression made such accommodations difficult to come by. His missions provided good and reasonably priced food to members and to the public in their cafeterias, and they gave food away to those in need during the Depression. They provided trainings and work to those who needed or wanted them, and the Mission owned and supported many businesses — often Black-operated — that offered high-quality but affordable clothes, gas, water, and other necessities that helped followers maintain their personal dignity. Holy Communion Banquets, which the Crump family prepares for and attends in Crumbs from the Table of Joy, were lavish meals served to followers at locations Father Divine was visiting, nourishing both the bellies and the souls of those who attended.
To others, however, Father Divine was a cult leader. He preached and his followers believed that he was an incarnation of God on Earth, going so far as to promise divine retribution on those who crossed him. His followers had to adhere to Father Divine’s strict “International Modest Code,” some of which we see in the play: a commitment to celibacy, even between married people; no smoking, drinking, profanity, or vulgarity; and a separation of the sexes whenever possible. Modest clothing was required, including no pants for women and no shorts for men. Jewelry was permitted; perfume and makeup were not. Disciples might be renamed, and theology was adjusted to suit Father Divine’s life choices, including claiming that his second wife, his white Canadian secretary Edna Rose Ritchings, was a reincarnation of the late Peninnah. Ritchings was rechristened Sweet Angel, and thereafter she took on Peninnah’s mantel of Mother Divine.
While Crumbs from the Table of Joy’s Crump family lives in Brooklyn, Father Divine was basing his movement here in Philadelphia. With the millions of dollars the church had collected and saved, Father Divine purchased hotels for believers old and new who were joining him in Philadelphia, establishing the Divine Tracy in West Philadelphia and the more famous Divine Lorraine Hotel on North Broad Street as “heavens” — safe, affordable, and racially integrated places for his followers to stay (though the sexes were separated by floor). He remained stationed in the Philadelphia area for the rest of his life, calling the city “the International Country Seat of the World.” From his death in 1965 until hers in 2017, Mother Divine led the church and maintained his teachings from an estate in Gladwyne, just outside Philadelphia. Though their numbers have dwindled dramatically, due in part to the loss of their charismatic leader and to the demands of celibacy, the Peace Mission is still in existence and headquartered in Gladwyne.
“If he is the God he proclaims to be, I need his answers now, I need him to help me move on,” Godfrey implores in Crumbs from the Table of Joy. Whether he was a charlatan or a holy man, a civil rights crusader or a cult leader — or all of these at once — Father Divine was God to his followers, a voice for equality, and a source of comfort to the thousands who relied on his Mission’s services. Godfrey seeks peace in the movement, but he cannot force his daughters to do the same. Each member of the family must find their own answers on how to move on, and they must find them in their own way.
More great reading: See other recent articles and interviews on the Lantern Searchlight blog
Lantern Theater Company’s production of Crumbs from the Table of Joy by Lynn Nottage is onstage November 9 through December 17, 2023, at St. Stephen’s Theater. Visit our website for tickets and information.
