CLAIMS TO BE GOD

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21218, 14 September 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

CLAIMS TO BE GOD

HEAVENS AT HARLEM :: FATHER DIVINE & HIS ANGELS

The Reader’s Digest

REBECCA GRACE’S lawyer exclaimed: “This is the beginning of the -end for Father Divine—or god—or whatever else he calls himself.” as the New York Supreme Court last March handed down a decision ordering the return of 3937 dollars which plaintiff and her husband. Onwards Universe, had turned over to god for keeping in his heavenly treasury. It looked bad for the plump little brown-skinned man who has called himself successively The Messenger, Major J. Divine, Father Divine, and finally god. The court’s decision struck at the heart of his amazing control over millions of coloured people, divesting him of the divine, and highly essential, right to keep everything that came into his possession without accounting to any earthly power for it. But his angels sent 600 white-robed disciples to picket the courthouse, with banners and placards denouncing the verdict and assuring the leader of the Heaven-Is-Here cult that they had no intention of wrecking his kingdom by clamouring for their money. Who is this man whom millions call god—this man who rides in a special 25,000-dollar automobile, who has seven secretaries and two bodyguards, who feeds thousands lavishly and free of charge, who has bought property in New York State alone valued at 1,000,000 dollars, yet pays no income tax and swears he has nothing? Father Divine’s personality is so contagious that it sways even his enemies. He admits he is semiliterate, but when he gets warmed up to his favourite subject—himself—he becomes eloquent. “I cannot get a place large enough to hold the masses when they know I’m there. Wherever I am personally present people gather. It matters not what kind of a lover you may be—if you contact me harmoniously, whether you be male or female, you will love me the best. You may not wish to do it, and you may regret it, but you are obliged to do it,” he declares. His political influence could be great, but he refuses to support any party or candidate. He has his own Righteous Government Programme, which he wants sponsored in exchange for his votes—an anti-lynching law, abolition of capital punishment, a law against specifying an individual’s race or creed in newspapers and other publications, prohibition of vaccination and compulsory medical examinations, prohibition of strikes unless labour unions pay full wages to strikers, and the unification of North, South and Central America into the United Countries of America with one language and one flag. On a typical day, god’s first banquet is served at a heaven in lower Harlem, from 12 noon to 4, for 75 angels, half of whom are white. The messiah blesses the food, silver, water and napkins. Then women bring in soup, followed by steak, fried chicken, duck, with all the trimmings. The table linen is spotless, the silver gleaming, the mahogany furniture rich looking. Three deep around the room and out into the hail crowd pilgrims from heavens in other cities, singing, confessing sins, offering testimonials. “Father gave me my first chance to be somebody,” says Beautiful Faith. “All my life I didn’t amount to nothing—just cooking and cleaning for the white folks. But since I come to know father is god, I’m important. I’m a dietitian in god’s kitchen.” Multiply Beautiful Faith by thousands and you get the, Secret of Father Divine’s Success From menial jobs in homes, laundries and factories, from basement rooms in poverty-ridden sections of northern cities, from lean-to shacks of the deep South, have come hordes of coloured folk—poor, uneducated, inarticulate, their drab lives weighted by an overwhelming inferiority complex. Father Divine lifts them into the spotlight, gives them angelic names and assures them that they are God’s chosen people. Out of a world of constant rebuffs and segregation, they suddenly emerge into a haven where they mingle on equal terms with white people. An applicant for heaven must pass a religious-con-viction test, with a pretty fair story of having been reborn—and be willing to work at anything. The applicant must renounce the world—vow to smoke no more, drink no more, and forget about sex. This pretty well eliminates the drifters.

Visibilating and Tangibilating and Personifying your fondest imagination. As a supernatural power, as infinite spirit, as universal substance, I came to redeem the children of men!” Born 60-odd years ago near Albany, Georgia, Divine claims to remember nothing of his early days, but it has been reasonably established that he is the George Baker who, known as The Messenger, held meetings twice a week in a little church in Valdosta, Georgia. His basic theme was: “If God dwelleth in me, my body is His body—and lam god. It’s truly wonderful. It’s indeed wonderful!” Charged by Valdosta’s leading coloured people with blasphemy, The Messenger headed north, accompanied by three women and two men who believed in him. The women did housework and washing, the men did odd jobs; they pooled funds to buy transportation to the next city. In about a year they reached New York. Settled in a six-room flat on West 40th Street, The Messenger began holding nightly meetings. His group grew to 15, to all of whom The Messenger’s word was law. All his disciples had jobs, and each week he received every cent they earned, some 150 dollars. Out of this he took care of them, buying cheap but substantial food and bargain-counter clothes, spending about 50 dollars and putting the rest in his pocket. They lived three or four in a room, with one room reserved for meetings, and every night he lectured on the goodness oi God; on Sundays they sang and rejoiced all day long and enjoyed a sumptuous banquet. By 1919 expansion was necessary. Somewhere on the trip to look at a house in Sayville, Long Island, The Messenger was reborn: when he got off the train he was Major J. Devine (note the first e, now an i), and as such signed the deed for an eight-room house. • There, for almost ten years, progress was slow. To most white residents he was just a soft-spoken little man who ran an employment agency and got their patronage because his workers were industrious and honest. To coloured Sayville he was “the Reverend,” a man of God who helped anybody in need and never charged for it. He fed people by hundreds each week and paid all bills in cash. It became easy to call him Father Divine, instead of Major Devine. By 1929 he had 50 workers. His Sunday banquets, still free, became so lavish and prolonged that visitors from Harlem and afar poured in. His house became to them heaven in very deed, and they themselves his angels. To newcomers who asked how to become angels, his answer was: “Surrender to me all your earthly possessions.” The Sunday celebrations at Sayville became so popular, so noisy with angelic shouts and song that one night the police carted god and 80 angels—ls of whom were white—to jail. Convicted of maintaining a public nuisance, Divine was fined 500 dollars and sentenced to a year in jail. On hearing his sentence, he warned the judge: “You can’t convict god. Ali who oppose me, I destroy!” Four days later the judge was dead of a heart attack. Loudly the angels rejoiced at this punishment for opposing god’s will. To make the incident more fantastic, the sentence was reversed upon appeal and god went free. The story catapulted Father Divine from a smalltime cult leader to national prominence. He moved his heaven to Harlem, where he was welcomed by thousands anxious to ride to glory on his chariot. Parades were staged; crowds waited for hours in front of his new heaven to see him or touch him as he passed. By 1936 he had a thousand angels and was Collecting 10,000 Dollars Weekly. He had shrewdly bought several apartment buildings and private houses, which he packed with some 2000 roomers, whom he called his children, at weekly rentals starting at 1 dollar and totalling nearly 5000 dollars. He opened 25 peace restaurants, serving 10 and 15-cent meals, which would cost twice as much elsewhere. He can cut prices because he has farms upstate and trucks in his own vegetables, chickens, eggs and beef. The most notable of his New York State properties is The Promised Land at West Saugerties. Valued at 250,000 dollars, the tract includes 2500 acres of rich truck garden and pasture land. His most-talked-about purchase is Krum Elbow, across the Hudson from President Roosevelt’s Hyde Park home. These 500 acres, with a mile frontage on the river, are a show place for entertaining important visitors, and a vacation and picnic spot for followers. They arrive in chartered boats in summer, by bus and auto in winter. He has purchased a dozen mansions in swank residential suburbs. New York City’s 22 heavens and extensions now include a 100-room hotel, six apartment houses, and two score private homes. In New Jersey he has some 20 properties, including an auditorium, a 50-room hotel and private beach. Philadelphia has a heaven and nine extensions, plus a dozen laundries, dress shops, shoe repair shops and restaurants. Similar expansion has taken place in other cities from Boston to Los Angeles—and Father Divine has much farm land in California, whence oranges and other fruits are sent east. There are two extensions In London, five in Australia, and seven in Canada. Switzerland has 14 peace missions, Panama eight, the British West Indies four. For all these centres there is The New Day, from which the presiding angel reads Divine’s messages. This 116-page weekly carries, on the average, 21 of Divine’s speeches—and a recent issue had 376 advertisers from 23 States of the Union and four foreign countries. Father Divine claims 50,000,000 followers. The method of enumeration seems to have been an actual count in the various centres, allegedly totalling about 5,000,000, plus an “unknown number of connections” which Divine estimated to suit his fancy. He says, “I have no organisation. Anybody who believes in my Righteous Government Programme is my follower.” Characteristically he closes his letters with: “I am well, healthy, joyful, peaceful, lively, loving, successful, prosperous and happy in spirit, body and mind, and in every organ, muscle, sinew, joint, limb, vein and bone—and even in every atom, fibre and cell of my bodily form. Rev. M. J. Divine (better known as Father Divine).”

Most of Divine’s while followers have the same reasons for calling him god as his coloured followers. They have been misfits in their world—lonely, neurotic, unhappy. In Father Divine’s heaven they feel they are wanted. They have work to do, the world to save. But a second group of white followers is made up of successful, well-to-do people. They are pure religionists, such as an engineer—Devoted Patience—who says that he makes 1000 dollars a month and visits heaven regularly in order to “be in god’s actual presence and do all I can to help carry his message.’' The daughter ot a wealthy Long Island family became an expert stenographer in order to serve as one of Divine’s secretaries. Two other white girls are members of his staff. White also are Edward Potter, lawyer, and John Lamb, private secretary. They are the powers behind the throne, responsible for all legal and business matters. Their leader’s alleged penury seems to be explained by a plan of their devising whereby his most trusted angels receive all the money, and furnish god with cash only when he needs it. When god speaks in his heaven a microphone carries his voice to every room in the building. Wearing highheeled shoes to make his five feet five seem taller, he intones with a soft, hypnotic voice : “One million blessings, blessings flowing free, there are many blessings, flowing free for you.” He keeps repeating, substituting billion for million, then trillion and on up to the highest figure he can think of—encouraged by shouts, screams and handclaps. There is a refrain, too, that his followers constantly sing, as work-roughened hands clasp and unclasp: “I love to sing the praise of thee, sweet Father Divine; I love to sing the praise of thee, practical all the time.” “It’s wonderful,” whispers god impressively. “This is the beginning of the re-creation of the creation. I will re-create the whole creation and change the world from mortality to immortality. Aren’t you glad! I am