Father's Kingdom

The job of any charismatic religious leader carries with it two inherent problems: legitimacy and succession. Uniquely, Father Divine, the African American founder of the International Peace Mission movement, had a third problem, which James T. Fisher of Fordham University euphemistically designates a “public relations issue.” Divine claimed not just to speak for God or embody the will of God, as have so many American prophets, but to literally be God, and that assertion complicates not only his mortal life (1876?–1965) but his contentious historical legacy. Lenny Feinberg's documentary Father's Kingdom approaches Father Divine as a singular religious presence and civil rights pioneer, a theological and cultural celebrity of the mid-twentieth century who undoubtedly deserves a closer look. Though made with care and sensitivity, the film is unlikely to satisfy either Father Divine's admirers or his detractors, and it leaves many aspects of his life unexamined. In the opening sequence consisting of black-and-white news footage, mourners converge on Divine's bucolic seventy-three-acre estate of Woodmont, outside Philadelphia, on the day of Divine's death in September 1965. Not all those assembled believe Father Divine was even capable of death. “Do you believe he's dead?” asks the newscaster of a white woman in line. “No, I do not,” she snaps, with such certainty that the newscaster backs away slowly. Fade to a more recent scene of one of the movement's sacramental feasts around a lavishly set table at Woodmont, where the elderly assembled worshippers still sing, clap, exhort each other, and dish food onto the place setting at Father Divine's vacant chair, talking directly to it as if he were still there: “we thank you, Father Divine, for your ever-presence.” Indeed, Father Divine is simultaneously present and absent in the film. Images of him are everywhere, hanging framed on the wall in nearly every scene, and the film incorporates considerable archival footage of his preaching, public appearances, as well as audio of his recorded sermons. In one scene, a Woodmont caretaker timidly knocks at Divine's bedroom door for permission before entering to place fresh roses among his clothing and personal effects all reverently staged as if he had just stepped out for the evening. Some twenty followers remain living full time at Woodmont in a celibate spiritual community, watching over one another and the estate, as the movement slowly ages out of existence. They dutifully catalog Father Divine's vast archive, keep the candles lit in his mausoleum, and play compact disc recordings of his sermons at their meals. In vignettes exploring the biographies of some of these aged devotees, their sincere devotion shines through, albeit tinged with quixotic futility

Charisma · Kingdom · Legitimacy · Political science · Theology · White (mutation · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies