Father Divine\u2019s mausoleum is an ornate affair with ten-foot high bronzed doors and topped by a transparent crystal pyramid. It is visited by a number of the curious as well as by an ever-dwindling number of elderly followers on pilgrimage to the place wherein \u201clies the body of God.\u201d[3] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n On the other hand, Father Jim Jones, a white child of the working poor small town USA, who unsuccessfully sought to succeed Father Divine as the recognized and legal head of the Peace Mission movement, was cremated and his ashes dumped unceremoniously into the vast Atlantic Ocean, his memory tightly wrapped in an interlocked web of all but total and universal hatred, recrimination, derision, condemnation and cultural censure.[4] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Yet all three men articulated and tried to embody in the world the exact same vision: Total universal freedom in a collective of humanity beyond race, gender and class. Organizing first and foremost from the US black urban centers, all three tried with varying degrees of success to establish, maintain and underscore that vision by building tangible utopian communities of followers. Each man, in turn, held themselves up, as perfect \u201csamples and examples\u201d that their followers and the world at large could and should emulate. All three men were to give their lives in total commitment and sacrifice for \u201cthe cause.\u201d This paper presents an overview of the three men and their respective separate ministries, communities and legacies that together make up what is referred to as \u201cthe movement\u201d or \u201cthe cause.\u201d[5] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The Root: The Ministry of Father Jehovia and his Utopian House Church<\/b>[6] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI have trodden the winepress alone.\u201d Samuel Morris was a married middle class black man who attended the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the 1890s when he discovered that he was \u201cGod incarnate.\u201d Although he didn\u2019t exactly go to the papers with the earth-shaking revelation, neither did he hide it from those closest to him, including his wife, Callie, and their two young children.<\/p>\n The immediate task of Mr. Morris as \u201cGod\u201d in this material life was the ingathering of other \u201csouls\u201d or those who, upon hearing the call, would also be awakened to the reality that they also were also \u201cGods\u201d by following the example of the one who was awakened to the \u201cGod consciousness within\u201d first. Unfortunately, many, if not most, who heard it would refuse the call. Among those who refused to accept that God \u201cin the fatherhood degree\u201d had been bestowed, on Samuel Morris was his wife Callie.<\/p>\n The refusal of his wife and of those closest to him to accept his truth caused the very first documented case of a call to personal sacrifice in the new radical utopian movement that would manifest in subsequent generations as the Peace Mission and Peoples Temple. Choosing to be true to his calling, his destiny, and his movement, Morris sacrificed himself and left his home, wife and children behind in Pittsburgh to embark on his life and mission as Father Jehovia. Many were to follow him in the cause by willingly sacrificing families and friends, jobs and any prior reputation of sanity to \u201cthe cause.\u201d<\/p>\n Morris moved to early-20th century Baltimore, Maryland, where he got whatever jobs he could while itinerantly preaching and letting those that would listen know that he was \u201cGod.\u201d One of his preaching methods was to go to various churches, present himself as a guest speaker, and then, once accepted as such, conclude his rambling sermons with the shouted declaration \u201cI\u00a0am<\/i>\u00a0The Father Eternal!\u201d This tactic more often than not resulted in him being bodily seized on the pulpit, scuffled out of the building and unceremoniously dropped outside of the offended church. But with a single-minded persistent determination that would also characterize the two more widely known, successor formations in the movement he started, the Peace Mission and Peoples Temple, Father Jehovia was undeterred in his ministry.<\/p>\n His persistence paid off. His devoted following met for daily worship, study and communal meals under his leadership to learn the way to unity and ascension under the very \u201cbody of God\u201d present with them in the room. The tiny yet high intensity House Church Commune on Fairmount Street continued until it imploded in 1912 with the defection of his top two lieutenants, George Baker Jr. and John H. Hickerson.<\/p>\n Afterward, both Father Jehovia and his communal utopia faded into historical oblivion, with neither compelling conversions nor further high level defections to mark the group\u2019s continued existence. Father Jehovia himself appears to have passed away during the 1930s.<\/p>\n Although it was rarely studied at the time, the legacy and impact of Father Jehovia and his small House Church commune would get belated scrutiny by those studying the life and career of his most famous disciple, George Baker Jr. or, as he came to be known, Father Divine.<\/p>\n \u201cFather Can\u2019t Never Die!\u201d<\/b> \u201cHe put on righteousness as his breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.\u201d George Baker Jr. was a single man in his late 20s and a Sunday school teacher in the local Baptist church the crusading utopian preacher, Father Jehovia, visited sometime in 1907. Unlike almost everyone else at his church, Baker did not reject the tall man with the divine claims, but rather was extremely interested in what he had to say. Soon after he accepted the itinerant minister\u2019s claim to divinity, becoming a follower of Father Jehovia and joining him and a few others disciples in the tiny House Church.<\/p>\n As a new and convinced recruit, Baker willingly took on the mantle of self-effacing sacrifice on joining the group, and let go of his prior life, cutting all ties to his past. He laid the \u201cbody,\u201d the life and identity of George Baker Jr. down, never to pick it up again. He even went so far as to deny that he ever was a \u201cGeorge Baker Jr.\u201d when questions about his origins arose many decades later. Like his leader, he willingly sacrificed everything to \u201cthe cause.\u201d In return, he took on a new identity in the House Church of Father Jehovia as \u201cthe Messenger\u201d of God. As the small group grew, the young messenger\u2019s position was further clarified when he was declared \u201cGod in the son ship degree\u201d under Samuel Morris as God \u201cin the father ship degree.\u201d He would initially retain the title even after defecting from the House church in 1912.<\/p>\n The young messenger began his new life by going on an extended missionary tour of southern states, specifically Georgia, looking for recruits, taking odd jobs, and preaching when and wherever people would hear him. Similar to the initial efforts of Father Jehovia before him, Baker presented himself to speak in a variety of churches, and similarly he was cast out of them when the church elders heard his \u201cI and you are Divine\u201d messag. The difference between Baker and his mentor was in Baker\u2019s success. The same message preached in the small town black communities of rural Georgia gathered a still small but fanatically dedicated core of supporters. Black women \u2013 weighed down by continuous break-backing labor without relief, caring for many children, both their own and others, and suffering both the nonchalant, casual racism from white people and the casual sexism of men \u2013 were thrilled by the message that, like men, they too were \u201cGod\u201d and that the messenger had come, embodying a degree of God in his own person to set them free from within.<\/p>\n Unfortunately for these newly-recruited women, who may have been clearly willing to let their burdens go, many of their husbands and children, did not share in their excitement and attendant abandonment of family. Baker would soon be arrested and, giving no name except \u201cGod,\u201d sentenced to an insane asylum.<\/p>\n What characterized them and tied them to the previous legacy of Father Jehovia, besides their leader, was their collective decision to cut all previous \u201cmortal\u201d ties to follow the young messenger, to sacrifice the familiar, and to face the unknown, all on behalf of the cause. Like those before them and those yet to come, their sacrifice included family and friends, jobs, churches and any prior reputation of sanity.<\/p>\n This tiny band of House church black communards would grow from a small apartment in Brooklyn, to a larger, but still fledging interracial group operating out of a house in the all-white suburbs on Long Island. They would go on to attract publicity when the mainstream media, looking for some curious diversions with which to divert people\u2019s attention during the Great Depression, discovered that \u201cGod in the body\u201d of a five-foot-two-inch black man and his fanatical followers made good copy. Adding to the coverage of the bizarre Father Divine mystique was the spectacle of the Peace Mission, as his cult came to be known in 1932, feeding hundreds of thousands with free or low-cost meals with an apparently endless supply of food and money in the midst of economic hard times.<\/p>\n There were nevertheless notes of concern over allegations of sexual, mental and other abuse among Father Divine\u2019s followers. News coverage ran the gamut from the sensational (\u201cThe [sexual] slavery\u201d of hapless young white girls, \u201chypnotized into joining the Peace Mission\u201d[8] <\/span><\/sup><\/a>) to the alarming (The Peace Mission \u201calliance\u201d with the Communist Party USA[9] <\/span><\/sup><\/a>) and the clearly laughable (Father Divine\u2019s claim to \u201csubjectively control the cosmic forces of nature\u201d[10] <\/span><\/sup><\/a>). But there were also respectable journals of mental health that weighed in with discussions over allegations of neurotic and psychotic behaviors and tendencies seen among some Peace Mission members.[11] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n What was overlooked was any serious and sustained assessment or analysis of the motivations and impacts of the Peace Mission\u2019s actions on issues of social change in the US. Had anyone taken a careful look, they would have discovered a social laboratory setting in which a relatively small handful of US citizens, mostly but not all of African descent, mostly but not all poor, mostly but not all female, were collectively using an uniquely-crafted, eclectically-informed organizational tool that had elements of a church, a social club, a military formation and a political party, all while being none of these. Using the established and disinterested observational tools of analytical investigation, they may have discovered a thriving collective of serious, often fanatically-devoted people, all of whom were willing to sacrifice their own fortunes, prior identities and even their own lives to bring about a non-racial, non-sexist and non-classist utopia to reality.[12] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The Peace Mission of the 1930s and 1940s \u2013 with its huge collective farms and the expensive real estate properties \u2013 was made possible only by its members\u2019 complete commitment to \u201cthe cause.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout this period, Peace Mission members risked the very real possibility of lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan, extra-judicial harassment by racist and rogue elements within local police departments, firings from what few jobs they\u2019d been able to get during the Depression, rejection from blood kin, accusations of being communist, the loss of children in custody proceedings, and confinement in psychiatric hospitals. In the face of all these negative potentialities and realities, Peace Mission members responded that they were ready, at any and all times, to give Father their very lives for the cause.<\/p>\n Dealing with the Last Enemy: Death<\/b>[13] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n It is not known what Father Jehovia\u2019s teachings were on the mortality of the body, hence we don\u2019t know what influence he may have had upon his most successful disciple. What is known, though, with documented certainty, are the 1930s and 1940s Peace Mission teachings on death. In sum the Peace Mission teachings were that\u00a0God\u2019s \u201cappearance\u201d on earth in bodily form as Father Divine was heralded as a fulfillment of Biblical passages about the return of Jesus Christ at the end of the world to gather saints and to enact and install the kingdom of God in which pain, sorrow, suffering, and death would be no more. In addition, those who fully accepted this reality and submitted their bodies to that \u201cconscious recognition\u201d would never die. The Peace Mission press was filled with tales of members who were beyond the allotted three score and seven years, all giving \u201cThanks to Father\u201d for allowing them to beat the odds.<\/p>\n Father\u2019s Angels<\/b>[14] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The expansion of the Peace Mission had taken it beyond the simple and small house church organization of its first 20 years of existence. During that time, Father Divine had developed a largely female secretarial staff that he called \u201cco-workers\u201d and the mainstream media called \u201cAngels.\u201d This group of 20 or more oversaw the day-to-day operation of the Peace Mission and its numerous and expanding extensions.\u00a0They answered Father\u2019s correspondences. They collected and kept track of membership donations. They directed the distribution of the internal goods and services. They supervised the staff that procured foodstuffs and that prepared and served the iconic mass Peace Mission communal meals. They ran interference with a curious and often hostile press, while simultaneously producing and distributing the Peace Mission\u2019s own periodicals and other promotional material. Perhaps most importantly, they were entrusted with the task of hushing up potential scandals,\u00a0dealing with defectors, protecting Father\u2019s reputation and \u2013 when necessary \u2013 burying Father\u2019s dead.<\/p>\n In a group already characterized by a high level of total and absolute devotion\u00a0towards the leader and his teachings, this internal Peace Mission group was characterized by an even higher commitment and sacrifice to the cause. And even within this elite group, Father Divine, who alone knew all, saw fit to parcel information to them on a \u201cneed to know\u201d basis. This was especially apparent on the issue of periodic deaths inside the Peace Mission.<\/p>\n Despite Father\u2019s best efforts, some members just wouldn\u2019t \u201cstay out of death\u2019s way.\u201d When that happened, announcements made over the intercom in the large communal housing extensions would instruct members to stay in their rooms. Once the premises were secured, a team of individuals chosen by Father would remove the body from the premises and deliver it, usually under cover of night, to the doorstep of a nearby hospital or morgue. Since living arrangements in the communes was ultimately the responsibility of Father and assigned through his staff of angels, the \u201cmissing\u201d Divinite could rationally be assumed to have been simply transferred somewhere else. These transfers were as arbitrary as they were common. They were also not to be questioned.<\/p>\n God Lays Down His Body For The Cause<\/b>[15] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Although the death of a member of the Peace Mission could be \u2013 and was \u2013 covered up or disguised, the death of Father Divine himself could not be. George Baker Jr. had been born in 1879. But in his Peace Mission, his birth date \u2013 as well as his birth name \u2013 were concealed, in order to focus attention on the message and on the cause. Thus for members, the age of \u201cthe Body\u201d was just one more mystery. Some inside the Mission supposed the body was \u201ceternal and timeless.\u201d Nothing was ever said or done to dissuade any one from thinking otherwise.[16] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Yet starting in the mid 1950s, the media, as well as rival black cultist and religious leaders, began bandying about stories about the death of Father Divine. It didn\u2019t help that, although Divine might appear at some public events, he did not speak. The rumors were always premature, though, as the Peace Mission delighted in demonstrating.[17] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Eventually \u2013\u00a0around 1960 \u2013 Father Divine did indeed stop all public appearances, reserving his strength for brief glimpses at some of the Mission\u2019s communal dinners. Finally, on September 10, 1965 the impossible happened: \u201cGod\u201d died. Faced with withering publicity over God\u2019s death,[18] <\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Father Divine\u2019s 40-year-old white widow, Sweet Angel Divine, went on the theological offensive. After overseeing the funeral arrangements for her husband, she developed the rationale to explain just how and why \u201cGod\u201d could or would \u201cDie.\u201d It was an exercise in ideological apologia and theological argumentation designed to reinterpret the objective truth through the lens of the subjective assertions of Peace Mission ideology. She observed that God had not died at all, but had simply \u201clain down\u201d for the cause that which he had picked up for the same cause: the bodily expression that the members had seen and called Father Divine. She also held out the prospect that he could, or would, return in that very same body, or perhaps a different one, of his choosing. Whether he did that or not was \u201cGod\u2019s business.\u201d Besides, she concluded, whether in or out of \u201cthe body,\u201d God was still God and \u201cFather Divine is God.\u201d[19] <\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Sweet Angel Divine went on to succeed her husband as \u201cthe symbolic maintainer of the Peace Mission.\u201d[20] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The 21st Century: Laying the Peace Mission Down<\/b>[21] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n In the 50 years following the death of Father Divine, the decline in the Peace Mission movement has become terminal. Whereas the 1950s witnessed the acquisition of Father Divine\u2019s last trophy real estate transaction with the purchase of the Woodmont estate as his retirement home, the next 40 years would see the shedding of properties he could no longer control. The last of the Ulster County missions, which once made up his once-vaunted \u201cPromised Land\u201d of the 1930s, was sold off in 1985.[22] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The Peace Mission independent press, inaugurated during the glory days of the 1930s, folded in the 1980s. The last of the once-vibrant West Coast Peace Mission extensions closed in the 1980s as well.[23] <\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0The Divine Lorraine and then the Divine Tracy, both iconic Peace Mission properties that had symbolized the resilience of the Peace Mission experiment, were sold in 2000 and 2006 respectively.[24] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n As we witness the natural death of the Peace Mission at the beginning of the 21st century, we also recognize that it is a testament, not only to the leadership skills of George Baker Jr. in his guise of Father Divine, but also to the membership that he \u201cfathered,\u201d that the movement survived as long as it did.[25] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cLay Your Body Down!\u201d<\/b>[26] <\/span><\/sup><\/a> \u201cHe is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God.\u201d In 1956, with rumors in the media of his death already swirling, Father Divine and his Peace Mission had moved into the backwaters of social change movements. Indeed, even in its years of well-publicized expansion and radical organizational positions on racial integration, women\u2019s rights, and class distinctions, the influence of the movement on the larger society was still marginal. At the age of 77 and essentially retired from active life, George Baker Jr. was past his prime, and his movement was past its heyday.<\/p>\n For those interested in getting involved with \u201cthe cause\u201d during the Cold War, there were normative and established mainstream organizations, like the NAACP and labor unions, and new ones like the nascent civil rights movement under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For a certain young white minister and his wife, both of whom were passionate about racial integration, however, these groups weren\u2019t enough. In 1956, the young couple made a pilgrimage from their Indiana church to Philadelphia to see and hear Father Divine and experience his declining Peace Mission movement for themselves. They were Reverend James and Marceline \u00a0Jones. Their church was Peoples Temple.[28] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Jones\u2019 decision to make the Peace Mission an early and sustained focus of fellowship was both prophetic and curious. At the beginning of his own ministry, he was exploring and then cementing an allegiance with a movement that was clearly contracting and in decline. In 1959, after three years of fellowship, he let it be known openly \u2013 that is, in front of Father and Mother Divine, the secretarial staff and the followers at the Peace Mission headquarters \u2013 that he had come \u201cto take Father\u2019s place\u201d at the helm of the Peace Mission movement. He would do more than simple rescue the group, he would renew and resurrect it in the way no one else was capable of doing.[29] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n This was not just some spontaneous outburst or raw emotion at work. Jones had taken practical steps to do what he stated he had come to do. He had already displayed his organizational power by building his own multi-faceted interracial church, complete with an emphasis in home based elder care.[30] <\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0He had demonstrated the ability to perform spiritual as well as political miracles. He had a multi-racial family consisting \u2013 within one year of this fateful trip \u2013 of three adopted and one natural child. Shortly after Stephan was born, Jim and Marceline made history by adopting a black baby \u2013 the first white couple in the state of Indiana to do so \u2013 and naming him Jim Jones Jr. In so doing, Jim Jones was showing total commitment and sacrifice for \u201cthe cause\u201d in an undisputable and personal way.[31] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The year 1960 also marked the beginning of Jim Jones\u2019 search for a place to replant and bring to fruition Father Divine\u2019s three-decades-old vision of a rural-based utopian intentional community called \u201cThe Promised Land.\u201d Again through his action, Jones was showing what no other disciple of Father Divine could. He began to \u201creincarnate\u201d the very same God that Father Divine had been at his historical peak.[32] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Like Father Jehovia traveling from Pittsburgh to Baltimore, and George Baker Jr as \u201cthe Messenger\u201d testing out Baltimore, rural Georgia, and other locations throughout the South before settling in New York City, the young white minister who sought to both embody and succeed them visited several places in the western hemisphere \u2013 Cuba, Guyana, and Brazil among them \u2013 in part to find a place in which to implement the utopia of justice and racial equality that all three men had dreamed of. In that regard, Peoples Temple\u2019s move to Redwood Valley, California in 1965 could be considered an intermediate and temporary stopover on the way to a true Promised Land. Jones\u2019 claim to be the only leader to do this was reinforced that year when he offered Peace Mission members the \u201cprotection\u201d of his presence in Redwood Valley, the new location of the \u201cbody of God,\u201d[33] <\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0after Father Divine finally \u201claid his body down.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones became more aggressive in that campaign in 1971, when he led a bus caravan of Temple members to Philadelphia and the Peace Mission. His proposition then was unchanged from what it had been twelve years earlier \u2013 he had come to take Father Divine\u2019s place at the helm of the Peace Mission movement \u2013 but this time, he thought his hand was strengthened by Divine\u2019s departure and the potential of a rudderless organization left behind.<\/p>\n Jones was wrong. The Peace Mission had a leader \u2013 Mother Divine \u2013 who, unlike her husband and predecessor, was strong enough to firmly reject Jones\u2019 offer. At age 46, and with six years as the new leader, the independent woman had spent her entire adult life inside the walls of the Peace Mission, first as the young secretary, then as a mistress, then as the acknowledged wife of the leader. The idea of Jim Jones directing the Peace Mission had no appeal for her, and she rejected his assertion that he was the resurrection of her former husband. After a tense communal dinner \u2013 and, according to accounts by several Temple members, a mysterious late night meeting between Jones and Mother Divine, the Peace Mission leader sent him and his followers packing. All Jones had to show for his efforts was the defection of one member of Mother Divine\u2019s secretarial staff and about two dozen of her followers.<\/p>\n Jim Jones had shown, in both word and deed, that he was as fanatically devoted to \u201cthe cause\u201d as either Samuel Morris in the persona of Father Jehovia, George Baker Jr in the persona of Father Divine, or the followers of either man were or had been. Unlike Mother Divine, Jones was not content to simply revere the past record of Father Divine. He was determined to fulfill and exceed it.[34] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Two years after the Temple\u2019s fateful trip to Philadelphia, its leaders began negotiating with the government of the South American country of Guyana to acquire land for a huge communal farm and town to be built out of the jungle. The agricultural project would become known to the world as Jonestown.<\/p>\n The Fruit: Jonestown\u00a0and Total\u00a0Commitment and Sacrifice to The Cause<\/b><\/p>\n The horror and tragedy of the mass murders and suicides at Jonestown,\u00a0Guyana became both the pinnacle and the termination point of Jim Jones and his ministry, and the moment that both became known in the popular mind. For most Americans, the horror became what Jim Jones and Peoples Temple were all about.[35] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n A broader, composite view allows us to see the horror of the perpetrators and victims in a contextual light. What appears at first glance as just profoundly disturbing can also be just profoundly confusing, if one focuses on only a few of the pieces in isolation instead of considering how all the pieces fit to complete the puzzle. All assembled together, the total picture becomes clear: Three men, Samuel Morris, George Baker Jr and Jim Jones appeared last century, however marginally, as strategic activist generals of the broad battle against racism in the USA. At once revolutionary vanguards, spiritual leaders, and dedicated utopians, they raised armies of committed and self sacrificing troops from all races (albeit predominantly black), of both sexes (albeit predominantly women), of all classes (albeit predominantly working class), and of all backgrounds (albeit mostly segregated inner cities).<\/p>\n The three leaders then guided their armies in a strategy to wage war on racism, gender oppression and unjust class division, on all levels, right inside the very belly of the beast. The cause was just, and no price was too high to pay for victory, even death.[36] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Seen from this perspective, all of the events in this battle that began a century ago, the intriguing, the innovative, the confounding \u2013 in short, the good as well as the horrible \u2013 become understandable. The war for the cause began with a man in 1898 seeing a vision of a better world. Tragically \u2013 but almost inevitably \u2013 it ended some 80 years later in Jonestown, where a different man with the same vision, led his followers to death.<\/p>\n Jonestown, Guyana, then, was the fruit from the Peoples Temple branch that sprouted from the Peace Mission tree which had sprung from a seed of dramatic reconstructing as a challenge that Father Jehovia planted in a world that he saw and would not accept. In the end, the soil of racial, gender and class oppression proved to be too inhospitable to sustained growth.<\/p>\n (E. Black\u00a0is an independent researcher with an interest in Peoples Temple as a new religious movement and social phenomenon. Her particular focus is\u00a0exploring the relationship between Peoples Temple and an earlier new religious movement, the Peace Mission Movement of Father Divine. Her other article in this edition of\u00a0<\/i>the jonestown report\u00a0is\u00a0<\/i>Farming Utopia: The Promised Lands of the Peace Mission and Peoples Temple<\/a><\/i>. Her previous writings from the site may be found\u00a0<\/i>here<\/a><\/i>.)<\/i><\/p>\n Sources<\/b><\/p>\n Books and Articles<\/em><\/b><\/p>\n Black, E.\u00a0The Three Virtual Intentional Communities Of God In A Body In Real Time (1868-2008)<\/a>, 2008.<\/p>\n —.\u00a0The Reincarnations Of God: George Baker Jr. and Jim Jones as Fathers Divine<\/a>, 2009.<\/p>\n —.\u00a0Housing God In Life And Death: Architecture and the final resting place in two radical movements<\/a>,\u00a02011.<\/p>\n Burnham, Kenneth.\u00a0God Comes To America<\/i>. Boston: Lambeth Press, 1979.<\/p>\n Chidester, David.Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple and Jonestown<\/i><\/a>. Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 2003.<\/p>\n Divine, Mother.\u00a0The Peace Mission Movement<\/i>. New York: Anno Domini Father Divine Publications, 1982.<\/p>\n Hall, John R.\u00a0Gone From the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History,<\/i>\u00a0New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1987; reprint 2004.<\/p>\n Harris, Sara.\u00a0Father Divine: Holy Husband<\/i>. New York: Doubleday Publishing Company, 1953.<\/p>\n Hoshor, John.\u00a0God In A Rolls Royce: The Rise of Father Divine: Madman, Menace or Messiah.\u00a0<\/i>New York:\u00a0Hillman-Curl, Inc., 1936.<\/p>\n Jones, Jim,\u00a0Pastor Jones Meets Rev. M. J. Divine<\/a>, 1959<\/p>\n Mabee, Carleton.\u00a0Promised Land: Father Divine’s Interracial Communities in Ulster County, New York.<\/i>\u00a0Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, 2008.<\/p>\n Miller, Timothy.\u00a0America\u2019s Alternative Religions<\/i>. Albany:\u00a0State University of New York Press, 1995.<\/p>\n Moore, Rebecca.\u00a0Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple.<\/i>\u00a0Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009.<\/p>\n Parker, Robert Allerton.\u00a0The Incredible Messiah: The Deification of Father Divine<\/i>. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1937.<\/p>\n Reiterman, Tim, with John Jacobs.\u00a0Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People.\u00a0<\/i>New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982.<\/p>\n Watts, Jill.\u00a0God, Harlem, U.S.A.: The Father Divine Story<\/i>. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995.<\/p>\n Weisbrot, Robert.\u00a0Father Divine<\/i>. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n Periodicals and Newspapers<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The Afro American<\/em>\u00a0–\u00a0Oct 10, 1936<\/a><\/p>\n Baltimore Afro-American<\/em>\u00a0–\u00a0Jun 1, 1957<\/a><\/p>\n Jet<\/i>\u00a0Magazine, June 30, 1955<\/p>\n Lawrence Journal-World<\/i>,\u00a0September\u00a011, 1965<\/p>\n The New York Times<\/i>, September 11, 1965<\/p>\n Reading Eagle<\/em>\u00a0–\u00a0Apr 22, 1937<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n Websites<\/em><\/b><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.afrigeneas.com<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/jonestownapologistsalert.blogspot.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.lowermerionhistory.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.newyorker.com<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wikipedia<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Divine Lorraine Hotel,\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Divine_Lorraine_Hotel<\/a><\/p>\n International Peace Mission Movement,\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/International_Peace_Mission_Movement<\/a><\/p>\n Jim Jones,\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jim_Jones<\/a><\/p>\n Jonestown,\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jonestown<\/a><\/p>\n Peoples Temple,\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peoples_Temple<\/a><\/p>\n Edna Rose Ritchings,\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edna_Rose_Ritchings<\/a><\/p>\n Woodmont,\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Woodmont_(Gladwyne,_Pennsylvania)<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n YouTube<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n [2]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0For more on Woodmont\u00a0see\u00a0Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n [3]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0For information and views of Father Divine\u2019s crypt Mausoleum and Shrine, see\u00a0YouTube<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Shrine to Life At Woodmont<\/a>. See also The Shrine To Life at The Mount Of The House Of The Lord<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The Lower Merion Historical Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n [4]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0For an account of the disposal of Jim Jones body, see\u00a0What was the disposition of Jim Jones\u2019 body?<\/a> For assessments of his career, see The Jonestown Tragedy: What Have We Learned in 30 Years?<\/a>,\u00a0Jim Jones and the History of Peoples Temple<\/a>, and The Secret Life of Jim Jones: A Parapolitical Fugue<\/a>.<\/p>\n [5]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Other assessments on the intertwined careers of Father Jehovia, Father Divine and Jim Jones by this author are\u00a0The Three Virtual Intentional Communities Of God In A Body In Real Time (1868-2008)<\/a>\u00a0(2008),\u00a0The Reincarnations Of God: George Baker Jr. and Jim Jones as Fathers Divine<\/a>\u00a0(2009), and\u00a0Housing God In Life And Death: Architecture and the final resting place in two radical movements<\/a>\u00a0(2011).<\/p>\n
\nJehovah as quoted by the Prophet Isaiah 63:3 in the Holy Bible<\/p>\n
\nThe Tree: The Ministry of Father Divine and his Peace Mission movement<\/b>[7] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n
\nThe Prophet Isaiah speaking of Jehovah in Isaiah 59:7 in the Holy Bible<\/p>\n![\"06-20a-black\"](\"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/06-20a-black-245x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Upon his release and subsequent banishment from Georgia, he took a core group of six or seven disciples \u00ad\u2013 mostly women, all black \u2013 up to New York City. This small band of post- Father Jehovaites or proto-Divinites traveled together working, lodging, preaching and recruiting as a group as they went. By the time they reached New York city in 1914, the group consisted of twelve.<\/p>\n
\nThe New Branch: The Ministry of Jim Jones and Peoples Temple<\/b>[27] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n
\nQuote from a vision of the apostle John from the book of Revelation 19:3, Holy Bible<\/p>\n