This page was created by Craig Dietrich. 

The Father Divine Project

Peace Mission Songs

Peace Mission aesthetics forge a creative space between structure and freedom, and this negotiation is clearly represented in their performance of sacred song. Musical precision is admired, but not required in Peace Mission congregational and choral activities. In the everyday musical life of the Peace Mission, the Movement's emphasis on structure and freedom meant and means leaderless choruses; extensive, spontaneous congregational singing; singers who in the majority of cases cannot read music; and choral singing without a great deal of structured practice. 

Father Divine and his followers absorbed a diversity of musical styles to aid their perfectionist worldview. They borrowed the melodies of spirituals, Gospel song, jazz, Broadway show tunes, traditional church hymns, popular copyrighted compositions, and even classical music to create their song tradition.  In this sense, their music shares a kinship with music in Holiness Churches in the 1920s and 1930s where, according to Lawrence Levine (1977), musically they reached back to the traditions of the slave past and out to the rhythms of the secular black musical world around them. They brought into the church" the sounds of ragtime, blues, and jazz." At the same time that the Holiness Churches incorporated popular tunes into their services, they changed the content of words into religious ones. Similarly, the Peace Mission worked to renew lyrics from secular consciousness to "God-consciousness." Jazz was a problematical musical form and culture for many African-American ministers and congregations in the 1920s and 1930s. After Divine associated jazz with "the underworld and the world of debauchery, of vice, and of crime," he worked to "transform" such music in acceptable church songs. 


It is a part of New Thought and Peace Mission belief that words can effect positive change in everyday life. The Peace Mission's approach to all songs has been that they potentially could aid human beings, and be turned into something powerful, spiritual, self-referential, and positive. An excellent example of a powerful spiritual belief contained in a song is the composition of  Miss Mary Justice, a sort of "anti-spiritual," "There's No Heaven In the Sky," which speaks of the Peace Mission belief that heaven is a physical and spiritual reality 'right here, right now." 

There's no heaven in the sky

Which has been some poor saint's cry.

Longing for this happy day

We know enjoy.

 

We have heaven here on earth

By our Father's transforming birth

No more to die

To meet our Savior in the sky.

 

From the sky

From the sky

Thank you for taking

Our minds and attentions from the sky.

So for many, weary years

We toiled in sour, pain, and tears

Planning to die

To meet our Savior in the sky.

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