Abstract

The Peace Mission Movement, an American intentional religious community founded by the Revd M. J. Divine, also known as "Father Divine," expressed through an intentional use of architecture their own quest for a utopian perfection of consciousness in America. What is especially significant about this expression of perfection is that they did not seek it by building environments of their own creation. Instead, the movement and its leader created a unique religious vernacular architecture not by architectural design, but by a spiritualised appropriation of existing spaces. Through purchasing, restoring, re-using, and preserving many different types of American domestic and commercial structures, Father Divine and his followers developed a theology of material culture and historic preservation that expressed a major theological perspective of their belief system--to spiritualise the material and to materialise the spiritual-all in the service of God and for the transformation of human nature.

Introduction

If one were asked to cite notable examples of religious material culture in the United States, the list would no doubt include the built environments of the American utopian communities cited by Dolores Hayden in her classic study, Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790-1975 (1976). Examining the quest for spiritual perfection expressed in these distinct American religious communities, Hayden includes the utopian architecture of the Shakers of Hancock, Massachusetts; the Mormons of Nauvoo, Illinois; the Fourierists of Phalanx, New Jersey; the Perfectionists of Oneida, New York; the Inspirationists of Amana, Iowa; the Union Colonists of Greeley, Colorado; and the Cooperative Colonists of Llano del Rio, California. These sectarian groups developed models for what they believed to be perfect societies in America, a country understood as destined by God to be a new Eden. [1]

Comprehensive as Hayden's list is, attention needs to be given to an eighth perfectionist American intentional community: the International Peace Mission Movement. The Peace Mission--inspired by their founder and leader, the Revd M. J. Divine, also known as "Father Divine"--expressed through a vernacular architecture their own quest for a utopian perfection of consciousness in America. The recognition, designation, and study of built environments as vernacular architecture by folklife scholars has centred on buildings, artefacts, and landscapes reflecting and sharing traditional conceptions, skills, and aesthetics of a particular community (see Roberts 1972; Upton and Vlach 1986; Glassie 2000). Building typology and construction, however, which some readers may associate with the study of vernacular architecture, is not the focus of this study. This article will emphasise the very act of everyday use that made and continues to make Peace Mission structures "vernacular," that is localised, negotiated, performed, re-created spaces. Buildings are not only artefacts of expressive culture, but important sites for the continuous enactment of culture in everyday life. What is especially significant about the Peace Mission's expression of perfection is that they did not seek perfection by building environments of their own creation, but instead, in the words of Father Divine, they sought to "[bring] perfection" to structures already constructed. The movement created a unique religious vernacular architecture not by architectural design, but by a spiritualised appropriation of existing spaces. Such religious vernacular architecture exemplifies the dynamic nature of all buildings as objects open to the expression of a religious belief system.

Through purchasing, restoring, re-using, and preserving many different types of American architecture, Father Divine and his followers developed a theology of material culture and historic preservation that expressed a major theological perspective of their belief system--to spiritualise the material and to materialise the spiritual--all in the service of God and for the transformation of human nature. For as Father Divine preached at a Sunday service in New York City in the evening of 15 November 1936, if a person kept positive ideas and spiritual thoughts in the mind and present physically, their benefits would naturally reproduce material results:

   By inspiration, information will come. By concentration, the
   reproduction will be put forth into expression. The thing we
   vividly visualize, we tend to materialize, and that which we
   materialize, if we materialize it in consciousness by consciously
   living in the recognition of it, we will also Personify it (The New
   Day, 16 November 1991, 11).

This article examines not only the historical record of the Peace Mission's materialised consciousness, but addresses the still living religious community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as it continues to uphold, celebrate, and enhance Father Divine's architectural ministry. Examining this movement through the lens of vernacular architecture reveals the unique relationship between this religious tradition, their faith, the American context, and the built and re-built environment.

Father Divine and the Peace Mission

Who was Father Divine and what was this movement that created a unique religious architecture by intention and preservation instead of by design and construction? [2] Organised around the central figure of Father Divine, Peace Mission members believe this charismatic African American to be God. Peace Mission beliefs as uniquely formulated by Father Divine included aspects of several religious ideologies influential in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century America: Adventist, Holiness, Roman Catholic, black church, storefront Christianity, and especially ideas from the New Thought movement including Christian Science and the Unity School of Christianity. "He had become convinced of the presence of God within each person and at the same time continued to reflect on the connections between spiritual wholeness and a life with sufficient food and shelter and a modicum of human dignity" (Albanese 1992, 209). Followers felt transformed by the presence of this mystical leader and the seemingly miraculous abundance of food served at a typical Peace Mission ritual occasion that he designated a "Holy Communion Banquet Service." This ritual feasting was central to Father Divine's fame as he and his followers dined, worshipped, sang, ecstatically danced, and praised God together. [3] These public display events of the bounty of God's spiritual and physical harvest served a great variety of foods representative of the abundance received by followers through a life of faith and service to God, Father Divine (see Kephart's description 1987, 94-9). [4] Many men and women became adherents as a result of such material displays in the face of their experience of urban poverty, especially through the years of the Great Depression when Father charged very little or what one could afford for the food. [5]

The origins of this celibate American religious movement can be traced to Sayville, Long Island, New York, where Father Divine came to public attention in the 1920s. He and his first wife, Penninah, who was also African American, purchased in cash an eight-room house as a home and worship space in a predominantly white residential area. [6] A permanent group gathered around Father Divine in this house and in the surrounding neighbourhood, and they lived a cooperative, communal lifestyle first in Long Island and later in Harlem, where the Peace Mission became a major force within the African American community.

Father Divine's movement expanded beyond the United States to Canada, Australia, Panama, England, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and his models of community and the Banquet Service were extended there as well. His sermons were translated and read in French and German throughout the 1930s. In New York City, and especially in Harlem, he commanded enormous spiritual, economic, and political influence and respect. A 1939 New York Times article on "this large Negro community" ("It's Not All Swing In Harlem") assessed:

   Harlem's intellectuals may deny the urge and decry the practice,
   but Harlem masses still believe in churches ... And ... Father
   Divine ... [is] the most significant and dynamic personality
   Harlem has known in the past two decades ... Father Divine has
   linked production, distribution, and consumption. And there is no
   magic or voodoo about his hold upon his followers. A big sign
   prominently displayed in the mission on 126th Street offers what
   many consider the best answer: "No true Divine follower on relief!
   Saved the City of New York $20,000,000 since 1932!" (Stewart 1939,
   20).

The Divine Cooperative Plan

Father Divine claimed millions of dollars had been saved by the city because of his economic vision called the "Divine Cooperative Plan." While Father Divine's standards for followers were strict, as he insisted on "an honest day's work for an honest day's pay," moral standards were equally strict as Father banned smoking, drinking, gambling, swearing, and sexual relations among the followers who were asked to live by his "International Modest Code." He provided economic security in the form of lodging, food, and employment. Among his programmes was the opening of free employment bureaus where the Peace Mission worked at finding jobs at no charge for any individual. Economic ideas were a basic part of his overall principles and commonly found in his sermons, lectures, letters, and even church by-laws. [7] The reality of God's economy stressed individual independence but also saw the cause of humanity served through a cooperative system of community sharing and community spending of resources:

   We usually have a-full and a-plenty to eat. That is the first
   thought, if you please. Plenty of comfort and convenience! Then
   the cost of living is cut from forty to seventy-five to eighty
   percent by MY Cooperative System and by unifying the people
   together, causing them to love one another ... There is a-plenty to
   do, a-plenty of labor, a-plenty of business and a-plenty of trade.
   All can be put into expression and be giving active service. If your
   business, profession, if your labor and your trade will become to be
   absolutely unselfish and work cooperatively, the very Spirit of MY
   Presence will lift up a standard so effectively that the spirit of
   progressiveness will be in evidence among you, even as I have it
   among ourselves and among MY immediate staff (Father Divine 24 July
   1940 n.d., 34).

The Peace Mission funded itself through a system of "profit-sharing--no Hoarding--no Graft or Greed" (Father Divine 7 February 1937 n.d., 42). Cash resources, Father Divine preached in a sermon, were to spread out in a Profit Sharing Plan throughout the movement:

   But, by putting your means of exchange to work and putting it into
   circulation, causing it to go around according to the plan and
   purpose of God and man, then and there you are using your means of
   exchange for the purpose it was created. The means of exchange
   should be put into circulation, to cause you and others to be
   successful and prosperous. By so doing, you will be using your means
   of exchange according to the Gospel. Now isn't that Wonderful?
   (Father Divine 7 February 1937 n.d., 42).

As a part of the Cooperative Plan, "true followers" would not accept any type of government assistance from federal, state, or local sources, and especially refused national programmes for "relief" from poverty established during the 1930s. As employees, church members were to take no tips, gratuities, bribes, or gifts for services. No type of insurance was to be obtained, whether for automobiles or homes, for theft, or for personal injury. [8] God, Father Divine, was the only source of compensation for property and personal possessions lost due to fire and, certainly, was the only power to rely on to prevent such hardships. All purchases of any kind or amount were to be made in cash. This "cash and carry system" included the refusal to purchase any need with a personal cheque, on credit, or using any type of instalment plan. Father Divine set an example for his followers by always paying for properties in cash. Sometimes such payments were made in small bills, which were delivered to banks in several suitcases for Father by followers.

Materialising the Spiritual

As membership in the Peace Mission grew, so obviously did the need for more space. The press chronicled Father Divine and his movement throughout the 1930s and 1940s (and until his death in 1965), drawing special attention to the movement's acquisition of real estate in New York City and state, and later in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [9] A major part of the economic principles that Father Divine enacted and spoke about publicly to his followers and other listeners was the "private ownership of property honestly acquired." In 1943, Father Divine succinctly synthesised his ideas on the importance of ownership and prosperity in a sermon:

   I believe in private ownership of enterprise; I believe in the
   private ownership of personal and real property, but I believe
   in you acquiring the private ownership of enterprise, or personal
   and of real property honestly. I do not believe in you taking
   advantage of others to acquire your respective aim, but I do believe
   that a person who is qualified to advance and has the skill and the
   ability to increase his holdings and even his ability to acquire more
   skill and more understanding, more professions and more trades. I
   believe in mass production from every side! Aren't you glad! (Father
   Divine 28 February 1943 n.d., 40-1).

After followers had satisfactorily paid all past debts and stabilised their personal finances, they were guided not to invest in stocks and bonds, which was contrary to Peace Mission teachings, but to contribute any savings into property ownership. This component of the Plan consisted of using the collective resources of members to purchase at a reduced price urban, suburban, even rural properties in need of redevelopment "to be used for the advancement of FATHER DIVINE'S Work and Mission, thereby putting the money to exchange for the common good of humanity" (Mother Divine 1982, 23). Father Divine would then direct those members or "co-workers" who worked closely within the organisation of the Peace Mission to renovate the properties for use as residences for members or as hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, barber shops, garages, income tax and secretarial services, as well as centres for domestic service.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Peace Mission cooperative farms were established in Western New York including a thirty-two-acre self-contained community in Kingston, New York, known as "the Promised Land." From these orchards and fields, produce was soon supplied to the Mission's urban businesses (New York Times 7 August 1938, 62).

This work of restoration and re-use had its roots in the monistic worldview of the Peace Mission, a perspective on the single governing principle of reality shared by such American metaphysical movements as Unity and Christian Science--all related to the nineteenth-century spiritual movement known as "New Thought." This non-dualistic view of what is "really real" can be observed in the words of one Peace Mission song, "There's No Heaven In The Sky." The present reality is heaven, and the development of perfect consciousness in this life is possible. Not only would such a consciousness result in a source of spiritual supply, but also an abundance of all material needs.

Father Divine's truth transcends the material world, but the material world still bears the reflection of that spiritual transcendence. Such a connection with the "universal mind substance" allows individuals to re-create and rebuild their lives whether a direct follower of Father Divine or someone just touched by his message. These were powerful ideas to Depression-era American urban poor in Harlem and other communities of African Americans, referred to as "dark-complected people" due to Father Divine's avoidance of racial references, as well as to "light-complected" individuals in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. This theological perspective was often related to and amplified by Father Divine in messages concerning Peace Mission buildings. In a September 1938 statement to his followers gathered at Jamaica, Queens, he elaborated on how the restoration of buildings was connected to the restoration of the person:

   Then I say, you can see these old buildings in different communities
   that were run down, dilapidated, and absolutely good for nothing, as
   you may term them to be, as God is the Center of Attraction and a
   Standard of Perfection expressed, He demonstrates it by bringing
   perfection in these different places ... the perfection of
   competence ... the perfection of truth, both in the minds and the
   hearts and lives of the children of men, and in the surroundings;
   renovating old material, natural buildings, remodeling and renovating
   them, causing them to be comfortable and convenient, causing them to
   have all improvements for the comfort and convenience of the
   inhabitants of such buildings a sample and an example for others
   (The New Day 12 September 1938, 13).

Father Divine had no reservations about re-using the buildings acquired from other denominations such as Roman Catholics or Baptists. No matter a building's original purpose, once it is consecrated to the service of humanity it resonates with a positive vibration that is experienced daily. He explained in 1947 in a private conversation in his office at the Circle Mission Church on Broad Street in Philadelphia that:

   the advantage of the sacredness of the edifices or the edifice there
   [is] because it has been under the jurisdiction of a religious
   organisation that is highly admired by MYSELF and MY following ...
   we feel the atmosphere there as we do not feel or would not feel
   automatically in the beginning of a place until it is fully
   consecrated--if it has not been consecrated by others (The New Day
   16 August 1947, 13).

Of course, any property could be converted to an "evangelical" purpose, and Father Divine would proudly announce recent acquisitions in his messages at Holy Communion Banquet Services:

   And making this an occasion of the season, through MY
   Condescension to present MYSELF and appear in Person, I have come
   to call your attention to the Blessings of those of the Followers
   who have recently purchased 22 E. Kinney Street [Newark, N.J.]-
   having purchased it, renovated it and have now set it up for the
   Dedication and Consecration to the Service of God; for when you
   serve yourself and others ARIGHT you serve your fellowmen!
   (22-3 November 1945 message; printed in The New Day 30 November
   1991, 3).

All Peace Mission properties, and living quarters, were spiritualised through their cleanliness (see 16-7 February 1950 message; printed in The New Day 16 April 1983, 5) and safety, and marked by their ubiquitous adornment with framed photographs of Father and Mother Divine and mottos of the Mission in every room. Such preparations marked a building's dedication and consecration to the service of God. [10] Properties with Banquet Rooms still stand prepared with clean plates, glasses, and silverware for a Service, always with the expectation of Father's personal presence and with the belief in Father Divine's spiritual presence. Father Divine maintained offices in all major church properties, and he would unexpectedly arrive at these extensions to visit with staff. Large properties were important, but Divine acknowledged the spiritual significance of followers' domestic environments as well. In the same November sermon, he proclaimed:

   I ABUNDANTLY and BOUNTIFULLY BLESS YOU ALL--causing your homes as
   selected and purchased and owned, to no longer be houses as they
   have been, of VICE and Crime and SIN, but DEDICATED as HOUSES of
   PRAYER, where you in your own Homes will be able to WORSHIP GOD
   under your own Vine and Fig Tree where no man can make you ashamed!
   ... I AM causing every Home, at least, I shall cause every home to
   be as a CHURCH! Aren't you glad! ... To be a CHURCH for PRAISE and
   WORSHIP, where you WORSHIP GOD by DAY and by NIGHT in all you SAY
   and in all you DO! (22-3 November 1945 message; printed in The New
   Day 30 November 1991, 3).

Father Divine in Philadelphia

In 1942, Father Divine left New York City due to legal difficulties involving a monetary judgement won in a lawsuit by a former member (see New York Times 4 January 1940, 44; 11 December 1947, 27). He settled permanently in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (New York Times 20 July 1942, 15), beyond the judicial reach of New York State authorities. Several years after his first wife died, he took a second wife, a young "light-complected" Canadian, who had worked as one of his personal secretaries. She came to be known within the movement as Sweet Angel or Mother Divine (see Primiano 1998). Their marriage in 1946 (New York Times 8 August 1946, 20), although declared spiritual and celibate, provoked fear and anger within the racist climate of post-World War II America and even surprise within the movement itself.

Father Divine died in 1965, what Peace Mission members understand as the physical departure of God from this plane of existence to remain in the spiritual plane. The second Mother Divine or "Mother in the Second Body," as referenced by followers who believe in the possibility of soul transference and reincarnation, was left as the visible leader of the movement. In 1964, the year before Father Divine died, the New York Times again highlighted the movement, noting how Father Divine had amassed an estimated real-estate portfolio worth $20 million (13 September 1964, 53). Almost forty years later, the Peace Mission continues to exist mainly in the city of Philadelphia, living in community, although reduced in membership, and still maintaining a significant number of real-estate holdings.

When Father Divine moved his congregation to Philadelphia from Harlem in the early 1940s, the Peace Mission began to sell off its New York City properties and purchase a series of commercial and residential buildings in the movement's new centre of activity. Always a wise real-estate investor and innovative entrepreneur, the Mission's physical presence in Philadelphia expanded over the next twenty years to include three hotels in the city (as well as two hotels in northern New Jersey) and many other properties financed by the followers and classified by the Peace Mission into "Churches," "hotels catering to the general public," "hotels exclusively for followers," and "homes and businesses" (properties listed in Mother Divine 1995; reprinted 1999, 22). Several grand examples of Philadelphia Victorian architecture were acquired, and these buildings have been maintained and, in some cases, restored to pristine condition during the administration of Mother Divine, who still maintains an active schedule. Mother Divine has worked to retain Father Divine's standards and her interest in upholding Father Divine's economic policies involving the sacred importance of property and business ownership were reflected in her 1982 book, The Peace Mission Movement:

   The Peace Mission has always served the community through its
   hotels, cafeterias, food markets, dress shops, barber shops, gas
   stations, shoe repairing and dry cleaning establishments and such
   services that provide the necessities of life at lower prices than
   can be found elsewhere. This is "preaching the gospel in dollars
   and cents" as Father Divine would say, by giving the best for the
   least. Therefore HE considered these businesses places to be more
   sacred than the churches (Mother Divine 1982, 29).

Many of the Philadelphia properties of the Peace Mission are in the centre-city district and are presently used to house Peace Mission members, but there were buildings used throughout the city's neighbourhoods at one time. Father Divine saw something in such unappreciated buildings that other Philadelphians did not. It should be remembered that such alterations were done not in an era of the historic preservation of grand urban Victorian construction. When first purchased in the 1940s and 1950s, many citizens of Philadelphia saw such buildings as architectural monstrosities that needed to be replaced. Always interested in promoting the internationality of the Mission, Father Divine dubbed one Victorian urban mansion at 1430 North Broad Street in North Philadelphia, which served as a sorority or a residence for female community members visiting from other countries, the "Divine International House." The house itself was designed by Will E. Decker and built circa 1890 for lumberyard owner Charles E. Ellis, who was a real-estate developer. With a Romanesque Revival exterior style, the interior has extensive hand-carved woodwork in the shape of mermaids and mythical animals. The staircase is done in what architectural historian, Robert M. Skaler, has described as the Viking-revival style and the interiors are eclectic showing Japanese, Italian Renaissance, Turkish, Romanesque, and Colonial styles. A remarkable vernacular touch is the response of the Peace Mission, which purchased the property in 1953, to the more immodest elements in the house's interior decoration that do not reflect Father Divine's modesty code, which held that male and female followers not even ride in the same automobiles (with the exception of Father Divine, himself), that married guests not be permitted to reside in the same hotel rooms, and that Father and Mother Divine not even share the same quarters in their residences. 1430 Broad Street contains a unique decorative feature even for the Victorians, let alone mid-twentieth-century followers of Father Divine: three hand-carved mermaids in the first-floor of the town house were originally rendered with exposed breasts. Instead of destroying these works of art utterly inappropriate in a Peace Mission residence according to their beliefs, the religious community negotiated the building's historical value with their aesthetic of propriety. As one follower proudly explained, they "converted them to our [the Peace Mission's] standard" by having followers sew proper cloth coverings for the mythical creatures (Figure 1). While removing the immodest architectural elements from their sight, they still preserved the integrity of the original domestic interior.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Approximately three blocks from this structure on Sixteenth Street lies another property maintained and preserved by the Peace Mission, what they have called Father Divine's Bible Institute of Philadelphia. This building is attributed to John McArthur, Jr. and was erected between 1881 and 1883 for the owner of the Disston Saw Company. Of its many splendid rooms, the library has especially outstanding woodwork and a fireplace with tiles depicting Shakespearean characters. The various rooms of the house, in careful states of preservation, stand as impressive waiting rooms for guests who come to attend yearly Holy Communion Banquet Services there, especially those honouring the wedding anniversary of Father and Mother Divine. A large room in the rear of the structure, which was added by a caterer who owned the building in the 1920s, had been used by Father Divine for Banquet Services and was renovated with new paint and light fixtures in time for the fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration in 1996. In the 1950s, this building was a part of a complex of Peace Mission properties in this area used for Bible instruction and significantly for the production of the movement's newspaper, The New Day, which was published as a weekly until 1992.

Along Philadelphia's main street stands another intact Victorian domestic environment, the Fraternity Peace Mission Evangelical Home at 507 South Broad Street. Designed in 1882 by George T. Pearson, this structure was originally owned by J. Dundas Lippincott and the Peace Mission purchased the property in 1943. It is an eclectic design rooted in the Queen Anne style, and the last remaining residential mansion in this vital part of the city. As elegant as this structure is as a residence for men, it also exemplifies the multi-task orientation of buildings within the movement. In this case, this fraternity is also used to house church archives, especially Father Divine's ministry of sermons, interviews, and letters, many of which were published and republished in The New Day. This building is found only blocks from John McArthur's elaborate Victorian City Hall, the very centre of the city's financial and commercial core. Peace Mission buildings were purchased in many different neighbourhoods and environments including white residential, African American urban, city commercial, segregated suburban, and isolated rural areas.

Father Divine's use of church buildings for a variety of purposes complemented the practice found in American denominations in the pre-World War I and post-World War I period of viewing such buildings as income-producing institutional and mission plants. Most denominations started promoting such endeavours as part of a church efficiency movement that stressed sound fiscal policy for congregations. Elbert Conover's 1928 text on church building, Building the House of God, suggests that:

   Many existing buildings can be remodeled to enable the church to
   render a far more satisfactory program than has previously been
   possible ... In some sections, particularly in congested centers,
   there is need for church plants in which social service and
   educational activities require a large proportion of the space
   ... Sometimes, in order to maintain religious work in a city center
   where land values are exceedingly excessive, it seems necessary to
   devote a large part of the building space to income-producing
   purposes (Conover 1928, 193-5).

Father Divine adopted a policy of church efficiency, but not one that concentrated on the construction of new church properties. He and his followers were solely interested in the restoration and re-use of older buildings for Peace Mission purposes, as was well exemplified by their use of a former Pennsylvania Railroad Y.M.C.A. building at Forty-First and Westminster Street in West Philadelphia. Dubbed the Unity Mission Church, the building is the work of architect Thomas Lonsdale with a construction cost of $100,000 in 1896. The followers purchased the abandoned and derelict property in 1943, as well as adjacent residential properties to house members in apartments, also establishing a Peace Mission Co-op Grocery Store to meet the needs of their own restaurant, their followers, and the neighbourhood. The Peace Mission property included a cafeteria, public spaces and sitting rooms, a banquet room, and auditorium for services. The building's original gymnasium space and kitchens were adapted for Church use. Children from this African American neighbourhood, for example, would often play in the safety of the building's gymnasium (see Skaler 2002, 115). This large building was sold in 2000, but near-by properties were converted into the Peace Mission Evangelical Home in the late 1970s, which remains a personal care facility open to Peace Mission members.

Hotels owned and managed by the Mission not only contained guest rooms, but also included a public restaurant or cafeteria, rooms for co-workers, an auditorium for daily religious meetings and songfests, as well as large halls for Holy Communion Banquet Services. The 246-room Divine Lorraine Hotel (sold in 2001) on North Broad Street functioned to meet multiple needs, as did the 150 room Divine Tracy Hotel, 20 South Thirty-Sixth Street adjacent to the University of Pennsylvania campus in West Philadelphia (New York Times 19 May 1949, 31). Built in 1901 and designed by architects Milligan and Webber, the former Tracy Apartment House was purchased in 1949 for $200,000 in cash. This still-operating hotel open to the public at rates much lower than a conventional hotel contains offices of "Peace Mission Enterprises," which until recently included typing, notary, laundry, dry-cleaning, and income-tax services. The Keyflower Dining Room served meals at the Hotel until 2000, with specific macrobiotic dishes prepared beginning in 1980, when Mother Divine re-invented the diets of followers to include more healthy foods. Although the public kitchen is now closed, there continues to be a frequently used, large Holy Communion Banquet Room in this building, fashioned out of its former bar and lounge areas. Adhering to the Modest Code, of course, married couples cannot reside in the same rooms, men and women remain segregated in terms of gender, and guests must be met in the hotel's lobby. Notably, like all Peace Mission properties, no racial segregation is allowed, making these institutions distinctive in the quality of their services and for their inclusion of members of all races in a period when African Americans were not permitted to reside in certain urban hotels in the United States (see Skaler 2002, 29).

One of the earliest Peace Mission building purchases in Philadelphia was the Circle Mission Church, Home and Training School of Pennsylvania on South Broad Street, formerly the Hotel Dale, purchased in 1939. This complex of buildings at Broad and Catherine Streets was developed in approximately 1905 into one property from twin Victorian homes built in 1889, with the Church Gospel Mission Home built as an adjacent structure in 1897 (see Skaler 2003, 19). All of these buildings were purchased in 1939 and were transformed into Father Divine's headquarters and personal residence upon his 1942 arrival in Philadelphia. A large public dining room, dress shop, barber shop, library, classrooms, followers' rooms, multiple kitchens, and a Holy Communion Banquet room could be found in this large site, which still accommodates the residential and spiritual activities of members. Father Divine used a large second-floor space as his personal office where he would work with his many secretaries dictating messages, answering correspondence, conducting business, and "interviewing" visitors who sought to speak to him. This front room had windows and a large balcony facing 764-772 South Broad Street, just ten blocks from the city's business, commercial, and governmental core; Father Divine employed the balcony as a public stage for appearances to his followers as well as the general public. He, for example, used this public space to present his new wife, Sweet Angel, as Mother Divine to gathered followers and passers-by in August 1946 (Figure 2).

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Such holdings served a multitude of ambitious purposes, continuously teaching the followers a framework of empowerment: spiritual, economic, and, of course, racial. With respect to the latter, Father Divine championed the integration of America and the application of pressure on Americans to apply the racial standards of the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution to all citizens. To force and remind Americans "to enact the Bill," as members would say, Peace Mission members integrated everything: Church cars (Father's automotive entourage was often highlighted by alternating black and white-coloured limousines "enacting the Bill" down a highway or through a city), Church residences, and especially the Holy Communion Banquet Services where members sat in an integrated pattern projecting out from Father and Mother Divine's places at the head of the table. In a book review of a work on Father Divine, historian Oscar Handlin recognised the relationship of Divine's plan for the distribution of goods and services to his policy of integration: "To the appeal of providential supply amid universal want, Father Divine joined absolute intransigence on the racial issue. To the residents of the Harlem slums the demand not for equal but identical treatment was indeed God-like" (Handlin 1953, 14).

The Mount of the House of the Lord

Father Divine's vernacular architecture of intention as well as what could be called his theology of historic preservation is most prominent in the restoration, preservation, and re-use of Woodmont (Figure 3), a Victorian Manor House found in the exclusive Main Line suburb of Gladwyne, just outside of Philadelphia. Designed by the Quaker architect William L. Price and completed in 1894 for the industrialist Alan Wood at an estimated cost of $1,000,000, Woodmont is located at the highest point along the West bank of the Schuylkill River. Architectural historian George E. Thomas in his volume on Price notes:

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

   the house was constructed of the local stone trimmed with limestone
   and finished on the interior by many of Philadelphia's principal
   decorative artists. The estate included its own power plant as well
   as stables, barns, and extensive gardens ... Woodmont ... was an
   immediate triumph, imitated by other architects, and never eclipsed
   in the Philadelphia area in terms of ornateness and costliness.
   Especially astonishing was the five-story-high great hall rising to
   the peak of the immense tile-clad roof (Thomas 2000, 66, 265).

The design of the estate's Manor House was itself influenced by "Biltmore," George W. Vanderbilt's sprawling house in Asheville, North Carolina. Father Divine received word about the structure through a follower who worked as a domestic for the elderly owner, and he purchased the seventy-seven-acre estate and house for $75,000 in cash in 1952. The New York Times indicated at the time of its dedication that "the followers of Father Divine ... restored it to the grandeur of its early days themselves. The restoration work, real estate experts said, would have cost at least $250,000 had it been done by private contractors" (11 September 1953, 98).

Woodmont represents the pinnacle of Father Divine's perfectionist theology of transformation. Describing this idea of change through religious intention in a message at the Banquet Service at the Rockland Palace, at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue in New York City, it is possible to apply his meaning to both the renewed lives of followers and renewed lives of buildings touched by his movement:

   I am transforming the people by the renewing of their minds! I AM
   changing their minds! As well as I AM reforming them mentally, I AM
   actually TRANSFORMING them by the renewing of their minds! They have
   a different mind and different nature and different characteristics!
   They do not have the characteristics they had before they knew Me!
   They think, they act, they speak and they live and they even feel
   different, because they are NEW creatures, according to the Gospel!
   Aren't you glad! (The New Day 1 January 1942, 15).

He taught his followers that heaven can be found presently on the earth and that the spiritual could transform the material anywhere. Again in New York City, he preached: "Rest from doubts and fears! Rest from superstition! No longer imagining Heaven geographically, but the recognition of GOD'S ACTUAL HEAVEN in all places wheresoever you live Evangelically and are subject to true Evangelism, and angelism manifested in your system" (15 November 1936; reprinted The New Day 16 November 1991, 11).

The Peace Mission purchased Woodmont as it was literally about to be destroyed for the cost to the owner of levelling the building. Dubbing the restored estate, "the Mount of the House of the Lord," Father Divine saw the property fulfilling his principle that "there is abundance in virtue'--that the accumulation of virtuous acts results in great things for the community. Woodmont became one of the grandest projects of Father Divine, a project taken up and continued by his wife: to establish a place of beauty and spiritual perfection. As he had explained in 1942: "Then I say, VISUALIZE the PERFECT PICTURE and reproduce it, materialize it and multiply it, and live in the CONSCIOUSNESS of GOD'S Presence!" (The New Day 1 January 1942, 15). Today, Woodmont has been maintained not only because the Peace Mission appreciates the heritage of American architecture, but because they feel that within the beauty of architectural perfection, and perfection of landscape, followers and visitors may experience the abundance of God and further seek a unity with the consciousness of God. A 1999 description of the spiritual meaning of the property published by the movement extols it as a living "Garden of Eden," as the fusion of heaven and earth: "The mysterious, majestic beauties of Woodmont have been extolled to the highest--its picturesque Grounds and its intriguing Buildings. These are obvious to any eye. But there is a deep, Spiritual Magnitude of Woodmont also, which is apparent only to the Inner Eye" (The New Day Digest September 1999 1, 13). In re-inventing the secular estate to fit into Peace Mission theological perspective, Woodmont also was described by Father Divine on 24 June 1953 as a new Temple of God; citing Isaiah 2, 2-3 and Micah 4, 1-2, he preached:

   ... the repetition of history ... as it was with the building of the
   Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, in Mount Moriah, so it is in the
   rebuilding of the Temple of the Lord ... at Philadelphia in Woodmont
   (The New Day 15 September 1979, 45; reprinted in Mother Divine 1982,
   59).

The preservation and beautification of this property has had a notable influence on the expressive culture and general aesthetics of the movement. The hallmarks of the "Divine style" under Father Divine were bounty, community, integration, and a nationalist spiritual ethos called "Americanism." Influenced by their Woodmont theology and under the leadership of Mother Divine, this aesthetic has been expanded to include safety, graciousness, orderliness, tradition, stasis, respectability, and propriety. [11] A Victorian Quaker aesthetic may have inspired the creation of Woodmont, but the Peace Mission aesthetic has maintained it for fifty years. Woodmont stands as the embodiment of Father Divine's perfectionist utopian community, and with its workshops, garages, orchards and fields it represents the synthesis of Divine's communal lifestyle. The property's pristine condition is the marriage of Father Divine's emphasis on the principle of perfection (The New Day 21 May 1942, 50) to his understanding of an activist use of the material world to express that perfection. This union encapsulates Father Divine's theology of material culture where a sacramentalism of material usefulness is the primary objective of a world created by God and re-created, renewed, and restored by humans influenced by God.

In a celebratory meeting after midnight on 13 September 1953 in the auditorium of the Unity Mission Church on 41st Street in the city, he directly addressed to his followers the meaning of the dedication and consecration of Woodmont from a theological and racial perspective:

   We know you all know a Standard of morality, of modesty, of
   Holiness, of Virtue and of Honesty, all of these attributes and
   qualities have been established and that is second to none! But as
   an abstract expression we are happy to say, the materialization of
   these things is taking place in our experience ... I have broken
   that line of demarcation and brought an end to localization! That's
   why you have the privilege and the pleasure to go up to the Mount
   of the House of GOD. And you may come in the front door! ... There
   was a gentleman called ME up or wrote ME whichever, and said he was
   once the chauffeur for one of the owners there. Even though being a
   chauffeur, he was not permitted to go in the front door! I AM not
   holding no grudge nor emphasizing anything that one should hold
   against the tide of that time, and the seasons of the time that
   brought about segregation and discrimination, inequality,
   oppression, and suppression because I had not brought an end to it
   as I have now! He testified the other day that he was happy to be
   there and he could come in the front door! Even though it has been
   renovated and made new--some declare it's much better than it was
   before--you can come in and act and look like people the kind of
   people God made! (printed in The New Day 5 September 1992, 3-4).

His interest in acquiring grand properties in which his followers might have worked as servants at one time was not lost on Father Divine. The use of such residences by his followers was a social and cultural irony that appealed to him throughout his ministry.

In September 1999, in a ceremony at Woodmont, the property was dedicated as a National Historic Landmark by the United States National Park Service. This occasion marked for Peace Mission members a zenith of public acceptance and respectability, not only of their property, but of Father Divine's ideas of universal consciousness. This celebration of ownership, preservation, and transformation of the house's original purpose signalled the triumph of the principles of racial equality and Integration that Father Divine championed.

As the movement grows older and its membership is greatly reduced, Mother Divine is faced with the challenging task of seeing that these buildings are sold to owners and developers who appear harmonious with Father Divine's ideals. In Peace Mission belief, if a person has not fully melded into the consciousness of God during his or her lifetime that individual will most likely be reincarnated back into the world. For this reason, Mother Divine seems content to let some of these buildings, which have been used for a time for God's purpose, to "pass off and pass on" into another incarnation of service. The only exception will be Woodmont where Father Divine is himself buried and where his wife intends to build a library and study centre. At the present moment, his tomb with its granite walls imitating the shape of his Woodmont office, his red marble sarcophagus in the shape of the Ark of the Covenant, and the impressive bronze figure-filled doors (created by the sculptor Donald DeLue, see Howlett 1990, 159-65), called the "Portal of Life Eternal," represents the most significant and original design statement the Peace Mission has ever made (see description in Mother Divine 1982, 60-4). The Shrine to Life, as the tomb is designated, is Mother Divine's feminised new creation and aesthetic statement joining Father's environment of re-creation and re-use.

A Vernacular Architecture of Intention

The material culture of the Peace Mission invites both followers and non-followers into the perfectionist worldview of Father Divine. Followers, through a vernacular architecture of intention, produced within existing structures a unique religious environment best understood through an appreciation of its usefulness. Henry Glassie, in his textbook on vernacular architecture, reminds readers that vernacular architecture should imply not only work on housing types or the classification of historical structures, but it should be a constant reflection on buildings' usefulness and their interpretability as creative, artistic, expressive texts illuminating individuals and communities. "Architecture intrudes in the limitless expanses of space, dividing it into useful, comprehensible pieces ... We call buildings vernacular to highlight the cultural and contingent nature of all building" (Glassie 2000, 21). [12] Father Divine's approach to architecture was built on an idea of the potential of all buildings to aid human beings, to take their contingency and turn them into something powerful, contestational, against the status quo, and positive. These structures aided Father Divine in the building of an economically viable religious organisation; they also were the foundation of his plan for improving and empowering his followers as free, self-sufficient human beings. The purchase of any particular building was based on its potential for re-adaptation as habitat, business, and church. Ownership and re-use also worked to achieve another goal as symbols of economic viability and freedom of expression within American religious, social, and financial constraints. "Architecture gives physical form to claims and names, to memories and hopes. As a conceptual activity, architecture is a matter of forming ideas into plans, plans into things that other people can see. Architecture shapes relations between people. It is a kind of communication" (Glassie 2000, 22).

Father Divine was a master of communication; as an orator using the traditional sermon-style of the African American preacher, he would dazzle and mesmerise his audiences with the length of his unscripted homilies, the passion of their delivery, and the fluidity and liberation of their New Thought ideas. Father Divine also recognised the power of material culture as a tool for expression. He knew that actions at times spoke louder than words, especially to a general public who might not be exposed to his words, but certainly could witness his works. In 1948, soon after the followers purchased the Lorraine Hotel at the notable intersection of Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue in North Philadelphia, Father Divine marked the new property with enormous signs high atop the eleven-storey structure, replacing the previous roof-top "Hotel Lorraine," which faced north and south. He did not re-name the building, "Father Divine's Hotel," as one might expect, but he spiritualised the former name by adding his own and consecrating it: "The Divine Lorraine Hotel" (Figure 4). There his re-invention of this business stood as a beacon marking the northern sector of the city, announcing his presence in two directions of this thoroughfare as if the eyes of God were now literally observing the actions of all below and above. Father Divine understood the importance of such public display and how, with the help of his followers, he could re-mmake even the most unyielding city to function for a positive purpose whether in Harlem, Newark, or Philadelphia. The potential of buildings in those cities related not only to the specific individuals who lived and worked in them, but radiated out to the wider community at large. Father Divine created urban networks reaching out from the inner city all the way to the suburbs to demonstrate and insist on racial equality and justice.

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

Dell Upton's groundbreaking history of American architecture is especially noteworthy for its integration of the canon of acknowledged American built environments with modest structures. By integrating such diverse examples, he articulates the story of architecture as vernacular culture. Significantly, Upton makes a point to stress the importance of looking at how American architecture actually functions in everyday life: "Buildings are changed in construction and they are changed in use. They are used differently from the way they were intended and they are appreciated or experienced differently from the way architects or patrons might have imagined" (1998, 12). In an earlier article, Upton introduces and explains this point:

   Once introduced into the landscape, the identity of a building and
   the intentions of its makers are dissolved within confusing patterns
   of human perception, imagination, and use. Consequently, the meaning
   of a building is determined primarily by its viewers and users. This
   process of creation goes on long after the crew leaves the site; it
   never stops. Every structure contains several different buildings as
   imagined by different segments of its public. None of these is
   necessarily consistent with the others, nor do any of them bear any
   necessary relationship to the intention of designer, builder, or
   client. Yet so much of architectural history is directed toward
   identifying the pure form, the original condition, the architect's
   intention. How relatively unimportant these are! (Upton 1991, 197).

As architectural historian George E. Thomas has noted, there is little doubt that William Price wanted to attract attention to the house he designed for Alan Wood, Jr. Over ninety years later, Woodmont retains its effect. A convert to the Peace Mission once remarked at a Holy Communion Banquet Service that the first time he saw Woodmont, Father Divine's "Mount of the House of the Lord," he said to himself: "I know if God had a house that had to be it." In preserving the Woodmont estate, Father Divine was not only interested in saving and restoring a significant piece of American architectural heritage. Restoring William Price's creation was secondary to the restoration of his many African American followers to full and equal status in their own country. What better way could