The Circle Mission Church
1 2011-05-10T12:10:29-07:00 Will Luers 2f0376b300f2ff7145f4f5c8f06d3ab51e0c730d 10 1 test plain 2011-05-10T12:10:29-07:00 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.Guests from the city's private and public sectors joined followers and co-workers in re-enacting a "divine"celibate marriage that, to the believers, was a union of races, nations and most importantly a union of Heaven and Earth. For the hundreds of elderly believers still in the Movement, the marriage was not only between God and his "spotless virgin bride," but between God and themselves, his own church. Peace mission believers, male and female, continue to wear a wedding ring in recognition of this 1946 bond.
- 1 2010-08-10T14:06:35-07:00 The Holy Communion Banquet Service 17 The main communal ritual of the Peace Mission. Table are multi-course dining events that include singing and testimonials. text 2011-12-02T19:08:05-08:00 "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.
