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The Marriage of Father and Mother Divine

from The Father Divine Project (2004)

Created by Will Luers

Posted byWill Luers

In the summer of 1946, Father Divine married a twenty-one-year-old white Canadian woman. The news story was another source of great controversy and public criticism for a religious group whose spiritual leader was a sixty-five-year-old African American believed to be an incarnation of God. For over two decades, Americans watched Father Divine’s International Peace Mission Movement grow to be a major economic and political force. As he had done many times in the past, Father Divine used the public controversy over the interracial, celibate marriage as a way to spread his messages. The marriage, he said, was the ultimate example of God’s approval of racial integration, of international peace and the “life of Christ”. Mother Divine was the embodiment of the conviction: “I know You Are God” and by marrying one of his followers, he married his whole Church.

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