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Here is the first part of a 1997 interview with Mother Divine held in Sayville, Long Island. She talks about her marriage to Father Divine as “a supernatural experience.”

Sayville, Long Island (about 40 miles East of New York City) is where Father Divine’s ministry was transformed nearly overnight. In 1931, Father and Mother Divine (Peninniah) had purchased a house in the small white suburb of Sayville and there they held their Holy Communion banquet services where everyone was served “more than wine and a wafer.” In the middle of the depression, these multi-course feasts must have been miraculous. Visitors from all over, black and white, began arriving at 71 Macon Street, “the Home of the Soul,” to be fed and healed. The dancing and singing would often continue late into the evening. One night in 1932, there was a police raid on the house during a particulary spirited service. Father Divine and several followers were arrested. They were charged with disturbing the peace, but the case became about the white community’s fear of racial commingling. The events that followed turned Father Divine into a nationally known figure and brought tens of thousands to the belief that he was “God, condescended in a body.”

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In the spring of 1996, Dr. Leonard Primiano (my college Folklore professor) called me with an event he wanted to record on video; did I have any time? The event was the 50th Wedding Anniversary of Father and Mother Divine. Who? Over the next two years, I would learn a lot about Father and Mother Divine. Leonard and I gathered over 70 digital video hours of interviews, banquet services, tours, song and dance with Mother Divine and the remaining members of the Peace Mission Movement. Conceived as a feature-length documentary, we soon realized that to make a traditional and linear documentary we would have to concentrate on one main story and consequently diminish all the others. But there are too many potent strands in this little-known story of Father Divine and his followers – race, faith, gender, electronic media, religious freedom, the elderly, reincarnation, food, political activism, Americanism. To do justice to the subject, we would need to make a “database documentary” made up of short videos, photo galleries, audio recordings and text, all searchable and open to comments from anyone who came by for a visit. The Father Divine Project has found its ideal form – a vlog with an RSS Feed. This is an ongoing project with zero funding, so please be patient with how things look for now. If you are interested or just curious, please consider subscribing to the video feed. To view the videos, you will need the latest version of apple’s free quicktime player. LINKS: The International Peace Mission Movement Wikipedia: Father Divine Lev Manovich on Database Narratives The Labyrinth Project on Interactive Narrative