This content was created by Craig Dietrich. The last update was by Will Luers.
The Divine Tracy (part 2)
1 -001-11-30T00:00:00-07:52 Craig Dietrich 2d66800a3e5a1eaee3a9ca2f91f391c8a6893490 10 3 Two episodes documenting the 50th anniversary banquets held at The Divine Tracy Hotel on April 26th, 1996. 6-7 minutes each. plain 2011-05-10T11:10:51-07:00 wluers@gmail.com Critical Commons Will Luers 2f0376b300f2ff7145f4f5c8f06d3ab51e0c730dThis page is referenced by:
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The Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary
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In April, 1946, the remaining Peace Mission members celebrated The Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary of Father and Mother Divine with seven banquet services held at various properties in the Philadelphia area.Mother Divine arrived at each banquet by limousine and wearing a formal gown, as she had always done at her anniversary banquets with her husband since their marriage in 1946. She greeted the invited guests of Father Divine and then took her place at the head of the long table next to the place set for her "personally absent," but still spiritually present husband.
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The Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary
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2011-05-11T14:21:47-07:00
In April, 1946, the remaining Peace Mission members celebrated The Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary of Father and Mother Divine with seven banquet services held at various properties in the Philadelphia area.Mother Divine arrived at each banquet by limousine and wearing a formal gown, as she had always done at her anniversary banquets with her husband since their marriage in 1946. She greeted the invited guests of Father Divine and then took her place at the head of the long table next to the place set for her "personally absent," but still spiritually present husband.
- 1 2010-08-10T14:06:35-07:00 The Holy Communion Banquet Service 20 The main communal ritual of the Peace Mission. Table are multi-course dining events that include singing and testimonials. plain 2016-09-06T16:54:49-07:00 "The Holy Communion Banquet Service" was central to Father Divine's fame as he and his followers dined, worshipped, sang, ecstatically danced, and praised God together. These public display events of the bounty of God's spiritual and physical harvest served a great variety of foods representative of the abundance received by followers through a life of faith and service to God, Father Divine (See Kephart's description 1987:94-99). Many men and women became adherents as a result of such material displays in the face of their experience of urban poverty, especially through the years of the Great Depression when Father charged very little or what one could afford for the food.
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Philadelphia
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In 1942, Father Divine left New York City due to legal difficulties involving a monetary judgment won in a lawsuit by a former member (See New York Times 4 January 1940:44; 11 December 1947:27). He settled permanently in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (New York Times 20 July 1942:15), beyond the judicial reach of New York State authorities. Several years after his first wife died, he took a second wife, a young "light-complected" Canadian, who had worked as one of his personal secretaries. She came to be known within the movement as Sweet Angel or Mother Divine (See Primiano 1998). Their marriage in 1946 (New York Times 8 August 1946:20), although declared spiritual and celibate, provoked fear and anger within the racist climate of post-World War II America and even surprise within the Movement itself.
Father Divine died in 1965, what Peace Mission members understand as the physical departure of God from this plane of existence to remain in the spiritual plane. The second Mother Divine or "Mother in the Second Body," as referenced by followers who believe in the possibility of soul transference and reincarnation, was left as the visible leader of the Movement. In 1964, a year before Father Divine died, the New York Times again highlighted the Movement noting how Father Divine had amassed an estimated real estate portfolio worth $20 million (13 September 1964:53). Almost forty years later, the Peace Mission continues to exist mainly in the city of Philadelphia, living in community, though reduced in membership, and still maintaining a significant number of real estate holdings.
When Father Divine moved his congregation to Philadelphia from Harlem in the early 1940s, the Peace Mission began to sell off its New York City properties and purchase a series of commercial and residential buildings in the Moverment's new center of activity. Always a wise real estate investor and innovative entrepreneur, the Mission's physical presence in Philadelphia expanded over the next twenty years to include three hotels in the city (as well as two hotels in northern New Jersey) and many other properties financed by the followers and classified by the Peace Mission into "Churches," "hotels catering to the general public," "hotels exclusively for followers," and "homes and businesses" (Properties listed in Mother Divine 1995; Reprinted 1999:22).