The Marriage of Father and Mother Divine
In the summer of 1946, Father Divine married a twenty-one-year-old white Canadian woman. The news story was another source of great controversy and public criticism for a religious group whose spiritual leader was a sixty-five-year-old African American believed to be an incarnation of God. For over two decades, Americans watched Father Divine’s International Peace Mission Movement grow to be a major economic and political force. As he had done many times in the past, Father Divine used the public controversy over the interracial, celebate 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.
1919 – 1946
In the minds of the followers, the Divine marriage marks a transition between two distinct eras in the evolution of the Peace Mission Movement. The first era was one of struggle both within and outside of its community of followers. Within the community, the struggle was to lift its many African American members out of poverty and toward economic independence. 
Outside the community, the struggle was primarily with racial prejudice. From its humble beginnings in the suburbs of Long Island in 1919, to Harlem during the Depression, to Philadelphia during WW II, Father Divine and his followers built a communitarian and racially integrated religious movement centered around worship in the form of “holy communion” banquet services. In two decades, Divine’s messages reached hundreds of thousands across the country and around the world. Followers of Father Divine believed he was God and devoted their lives to him and his Peace Mission by leaving behind their families, possessions and names. The Peace Mission employed its “co-workers” in collectively owned hotels, shops, garages, domestic services, farms and cafeterias. 
By the 1940’s, Father Divine and his followers had amassed a great wealth in income producing real estate.
1946 – Present
The second era, since the 1946 marriage, has been “the realization of Heaven on Earth.” Father Divine delivered what he had promised: spiritual and material blessings. The co-workers today live in racial harmony, eat healthy foods, have homes with their own rooms, hold jobs, enjoy leisure and peace of mind. The struggle for social justice continues. The Peace Mission feeds underprivileged children, provides good food and shelter for very little money, and works on political campaigns that express Father Divine’s ideas (such as Ross Perot’s Reform Party). However, much of their time and energy goes into meditative living. Many of the followers are in their seventies and eighties and some are over a hundred, but all express their devotion to Father Divine through daily purposeful work.
