International Peace Mission movement
Thus, the core belief of the International Peace Mission Movement is that everyone is treated equal in the eyes of God.
The International Peace Mission movement is built on the principles of Christianity, democracy, Americanism, brotherhood, and Judaism with understanding that all religions teach the same basic truths.
The Peace Mission viewed the banquets as the reinstatement of the "Christian love feast" mentioned in the New Testament and the Last Supper that Jesus Christ attended before his crucifixion.
Members of the Peace Mission were encouraged to pool their individual resources and invest in businesses, the profits of which were to be divided up and shared.
Father Divine traveled down South to Georgia to preach and got into conflicts with local ministers and was sentenced to 60 days on a chain gang.
On February 6, 1914, several followers' husbands and local preachers had him arrested for lunacy and Divine was incarcerated in an insane asylum.
Father Divine was later released and pronounced mentally sound in spite of his "maniacal" beliefs, and admonished to leave the state.
The New York based media frenzy following the death made this event and its repercussions the single most famous moment of Father Divine's life.
Also, the Peace Mission movement opened several budget enterprises, such as restaurants and clothing shops.
Father Divine became impressed with the Communist Party's commitment to civil rights and resulted in an alliance being formed.
Based on a rumor of police killing a black teenager, the Harlem Riot left four dead and caused over $1 million in property damage in Father Divine's neighborhood.
In January 1936, the movement organized a convention to create political platforms incorporating the doctrine of Father Divine.
Among other things, the delegates opposed school segregation and many of Franklin D. Roosevelt's social programs, which they interpreted as "handouts".
She died in seclusion amongst what was, at the time, the Peace Mission's farms and other rural upstate New York business collectively called the "Promised Land".
Peninniah Divine had been prominently active in the itinerant ministry of George Baker Jr from the Valdosta, Georgia, days and was regularly covered in the Peace Mission press up till about 1940 or 1941 before coverage of her simply stopped and she disappeared from Peace Mission life.
Despite predictions by some in the press and others of the imminent collapse of the entire movement, the marriage became one of the most important and celebrated events in the Peace Mission.
Followers at the time believed that Peninniah was an exceptional case and viewed her "return" as "Sweet Angel" as a special miracle of Father Divine.
In 1953 the Movement acquired its signature parsonage Woodmont, a 72 acres (0.29 km2) hilltop estate in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia.
However, unlike its earlier joint meetings and public marches with the Communist Party USA during its zenith decade of the 1930s, it did not participate in the burgeoning American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
By the 1950s, which included the beginnings of the modern US Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War between the US and the USSR was at an all-time high.
Over the decades, few new members have replaced the followers who die; thus the ability to sustain and maintain Peace Mission properties and publications has been severely degraded.
The Peace Mission central newspaper, the New Day, first published in the movement's heyday year of 1936, ceased publication in 1989.
Remaining properties of the Peace Mission include the Circle Mission Church, Home and Training School Inc in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is the movement's international headquarters, the original commune home in Sayville, Long Island, New York, at 72 Macon Street, which was Father Divine's primary residence from 1919 to 1932 and is the Peace Mission's New York headquarters, and the movement's remaining signature property, the 73-acre, hilltop Woodmont manor house and estate outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The Peace Mission provides scheduled tours of both the Woodmont manor home and Father Divine's nearby mausoleum called the "Shrine To Life".
On October 29, 2017, approximately 200 guests convened to celebrate the dedication and grand opening of the Father Divine Library and Museum at Woodmont.
