The Masada Cafe at the House of Prayer for All People
“The best oxtails I’ve ever had,” my friend said when he took me to The Masada Cafe at the United House of Prayer for All People in Savannah. The simple church-based cafeteria offered greens, fried chicken, red beans and rice, and other soul food delicacies.
It is home cooking, like at Big Mama’s kitchen, for a very reasonable price. We returned the next day, so my friend could have the dishes he’d missed, unable to load everything on his plate.
He spoke about when he and some buddies had gotten out of jail for a civil rights demonstration in the 1960s and ate at Father Divine’s church. Father Divine was a little man, about five feet tall, but he called himself God and presided over an integrated network of churches, with about one million members in its prime. He professed himself as God or he believed God existed in all people. He provided spiritual nurture, housing, food, transportation, and basic needs in addition to the message.
Sweet Daddy Grace, the founder of the United House of Prayer for All People, similarly believed in integrated services to accompany basic needs. The Savannah, Georgia church still operates a great soul food cafeteria.
Predecessors of the Civil Rights Movement
Father Divine and Sweet Daddy Grace both believed in the Great Man’s role in founding and maintaining their religious traditions, a mix of American religious practices, preacher as leader and/or cult leader. They were contemporaries in the first half of the twentieth century. They were forerunners to the Civil Rights Movement, espousing many of the same values that carried the black church and Dr. Martin Luther King to the forefront of change.
But I had never heard of Sweet Daddy Grace before, and my northern white roots must have a large part to play, as well as the compartmentalization of black issues in our historical amnesia. At the height of his influence, 350 congregations totaling three million members were founded and shaped by the church Daddy Grace developed. He lived large — clothing, cars, women, houses, but that was seen as inspirational. He was a showman, promoter, preacher, and faith healer, bringing revivals to town along with call-and-response brass bands. This following was all before the era of televangelists.
Father Divine went further than Sweet Daddy Grace did in his call to unity. While Sweet Daddy Grace primarily served an African American following, although he was open to all, Father Divine asserted there was no such thing as race. It took me, born much later, to attend a university conference on social construction to understand that race is meaningless except for the value we assign it. Especially the way, in America, we have calculated percentages of blood inheritance for racial identity, tribal identity, or passing, it is confusing to understand what race is unless we say race is irrelevant. (A documentary on Father Divine, Father’s Kingdom, is available for streaming on mainstream services. The reference is https://www.fatherskingdommovie.com/)
Far right-wing policies against racial identity politics and the tenet that race should not mean anything get convoluted and similar, for very different reasons. We live at a time when the juncture is messy. But the juncture has always been messy.
Self-reliance and collectivism
Father Divine also preached self-reliance and asked that anyone who had used the welfare system pay that money back to the system. At the same time, he asked followers to give any personal wealth to the collective of the Peace Mission, and then Father Divine purchased mansions and hotels where people could live on behalf of the Mission. The followers left now live on a 72-acre estate in Pennsylvania.
Father Divine wore expensive suits, took a limousine, and lived well — but he was at the forefront of social change. And oh yes, he married a light-complected (what we would call white) woman in 1946.
The question of whether he exploited his followers or not remains. What also remains is the question of why anybody believes in anyone who promises a better way of life.
At a time, in the 1930s and 40s, when the military was segregated and beaches were segregated, Father Divine bought a hotel with a beachfront and offered rooms to the Coast Guard if they desegregated service personnel hotel stays. His hotel was desegregated. In so doing, he desegregated both military stays and allowed beach access to people of color and whites.
He also was an anti-lynching advocate, in the days when the NAACP hung a flag that said “A Man was Lynched Today” outside their New York City headquarters.
Celibacy requirements doom continuity
Father Divine had a celibacy requirement for his followers. Celibate religious communities, like the Shakers and the Peace Mission followers, have the problem of dying out, and their communities dying out with them.
Father Divine’s legacy is important and remains. So does Daddy Grace’s United Houses of Prayer for All People. Father Divine’s values are challenging as they mix what we think of as traditional liberal and conservative values and the difficult: 1) Race doesn’t exist. 2) People should be self-sufficient. 3) People should live collectively and pool their resources. 4) Followers should be celibate.
Why don’t we celebrate these two Preacher Men? They are challenging. They don’t fit into the boxes we have. They may have something to say to us now.
Sharon Johnson is a grandmother who walks by the river.
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