The Marriage of Father and Mother Divine
1 2011-05-07T21:40:30-07:00 Will Luers 2f0376b300f2ff7145f4f5c8f06d3ab51e0c730d 10 1 In the summer of 1946, Father Divine married a twenty-one-year-old white Canadian woman. The marriage, he said, was the ultimate example of Gods approval of racial integration, of international peace. plain 2011-05-07T21:40:30-07:00 wluers@gmail.com Critical Commons Will Luers 2f0376b300f2ff7145f4f5c8f06d3ab51e0c730dThis page is referenced by:
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Introduction
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An American story of race, religion and intentional communal living.
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The wedding anniversary photographs from the archive of Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement, express a unique religious belief system through the vernacular of American wedding photography.Within an iconography of conservative American values and the stylistic codes of wealth, independence and success, the photographs perform a radical act that would have been shocking to most of the public in the 1940s and the 1950s. Marriage between the races was socially taboo and in many states illegal. The photographs "visualize" the social ideal of racial harmony through the celibate 1946 marriage between Father Divine, a 65 year-old African American man, and Mother Divine, a 21 year-old white Canadian woman.The religious belief that this photograph depicts, however, is not the interracial union of two human beings, but the marriage of a single human being to her "God."
*This is a work-in-progress.
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The Marriage of the Lamb and the Bride
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In 1946, four years after Peninnha's death, Father Divine again legally wed. Father Divine's marriage to a twenty-one-year-old white Canadian woman, Sweet Angel or the second Mother Divine, was a source of tremendous public criticism in the United States for a religious group which was already a source of national conversation and controversy.As he had done many times in the past, Father Divine used the public commotion over his 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.
