The author thanks Catherine Albanese, Grace Kyungwon Hong, Leonard Primiano, Noliwe Rooks, Leigh Schmidt, and Tom Watson for assistance with earlier versions of this essay; also Al Raboteau, Lenwood Davis, Walter LeConte, Barbara D. Savage, and Peter W. Williams for suggestions and sources. I am especially indebted to Judith Weisenfeld for first suggesting this line of inquiry.

1. For titles, see New Day, December 16, 1937, 4 (this headline is repeated elsewhere); and January 20, 1938, 27. Unless otherwise stated, documents cited here and throughout this essay are original Peace Mission Movement periodicals, available on microfilm at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. The Peace Mission has also republished a lot of its historical material on the Internet, and, as noted, I have occasionally used web sources as well.

2. For titles, see New Day, January 6, 1938, 22; May 19, 1938, 19; October 19, 1939, 106; and June 22, 1939, 27.

3. The two most useful scholarly monographs on Father Divine are Watts, Jill, God, Hartem U.S.A.: The Father Divine Story (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar, and Weisbrot, Robert, Father Divine and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983)Google Scholar. A somewhat dated but still useful source is Burnham, Kenneth E., God Comes to America: Father Divine and the Peace Mission Movement (Boston: Lambeth Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

4. Watts, God, Harlem U.S.A., 142; Weisbrot, Father Divine, 69. Watt bases her estimate on circulation of the Spoken Word, while Weisbrot includes in his greater number those thousands who attended Divine's communion banquets, defended him against his accusers, and/or simply admired his work on racial equality.

5. This term is from Arthur Huff Fauset's book of the same name, Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944).

6. On this point, see Judith Weisenfeld, “We Have Been Believers: Patterns of African-American Women's Religiosity” in This Far by Faith: Readings in African-American Women's Religious Biography, ed. Judith Weisenfeld and Richard Newman (New York: Routledge, 1996), 9-10. The most complete attempt to trace out Father Divine's relationship to New Thought is Ronald Moran White, “New Thought Influences on Father Divine” (M.A. thesis, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, 1980); I am grateful to Catherine Albanese for this citation and to Peter W. Williams for making this valuable manuscript available to me. White's findings have also influenced the account of Father Divine in Albanese, Catherine L., America: Religions and Religion, 3d ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1999 [1981, 1992]), 207-8Google Scholar. Jill Watts extends this investigation briefly in God, Harlem U.S.A., esp. 21-25; while Beryl Satter has further discussed the influence of New Thought upon Divine as well as Marcus Garvey in Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine and the Gender Politics of Race Difference and Race Neutral-ity,” American Quarterly 48, no. 1 (1996): 43-76. Also, as Satter's endnotes indi-cate, Robert A. Hill, Director of the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Im-provement Association Papers Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, has frequently noted the influence of New Thought on Garvey; see Hill, Robert A. and Bair, Barbara, eds., Marcus Garvey: Life and Lessons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 7, 149, 275Google Scholar; personal correspon-dence with Hill, November 9, 1999.

7. Historian Beryl Satter erroneously reads Father Divine as having denied the body because of his emphasis on celibacy. In her words, “Divine's answer to segregation and racism was to deny the body altogether—both the racialized and the sexualized body…. It was Divine's firm belief that the human body had been transcended that enabled Divine's followers to battle segregation and to live in racially integrated groups; black and white together was the ultimate symbol that the human body itself no longer reigned” (Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine,” 55). This essay attempts to prove that the concrete reality of the human body was crucial for Divine and his followers.

8. The two most comprehensive histories of New Thought are Meyer, Donald, The Positive Thinkers: Popular Religious Psychology from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale and Ronald Reagan (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 1988 [1965]), 84 Google Scholar; and Braden, Charles S., Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963)Google Scholar. The history of New Thought also receives attention in Satter, Beryl, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar, and Albanese, America, 269-72. The larger historiography is spotty, but see especially Parker, Gail Thain, Mind Cure in New England: From the Civil War to World War I (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1973)Google Scholar.

9. On Peale, see George, Carol V. R., God's Salesman: Norman Vincent Peale and the Power of Positive Thinking (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

10. Fillmore, Charles, Keep a True Lent (Unity Village, Mo.: Unity School of Christianity, 1953), 140 Google Scholar. For the larger phenomenon of fasting in this period, see Griffith, R. Marie, “Aposties of Abstinence: Fasting and Masculinity during the Progressive Era,” American Quarterly 52, no. 4 (December 2000): 599–638 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Payot, Jules, The Education of the Will: The Theory and Practise of Self-Culture, trans. Jeliffe, Smith Ely (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1910)Google Scholar; Olston, Albert B., Mind Power and Privileges (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1902), 212 Google Scholar.

12. Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom, 7, 8, 3.

13. Quoted in Witherspoon, Thomas E., Myrtle Fillmore: Mother of Unity (Unity Village, Mo.: Unity Books, 1977), 206 Google Scholar.

14. Ibid., 212.

15. Bengamin Gayelord Hauser's book, Look Younger, Live Longer (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1950), for instance, sold more than 450,000 hardcover copies in a short span of years; according to bestseller lists, it was the number three bestselling nonfiction book of 1950 and number one for the year 1951. Though some of Hauser's findings were excoriated by the Food and Drug Administration, he was one of the most populär food and diet writers of the period.

16. Quoted in Witherspoon, Myrtle Fillmore, 214.

17. Ibid., 270, 275.

18. Fillmore, Charles, “As to Meat Eating,” Unity 19, no. 4 (October 1903): 195, 198-99Google Scholar.

19. Fillmore, Keep a True Lent, 22. This posthumous collection of Fillmore's writings compiled Unity articles and excerpts from other books by Fillmore published years earlier.

20. Ibid., 19, 20.

21. Watts, God, Harlem U.S.A., 190 n.24. Watts is here arguing against Ronald Moran White, who maintained that Divine's teachings were most heavily influenced by New Thought writers Robert Collier and Baird Spalding. Though recognizing that Divine cited Fillmore's influence, White omitted the latter from his account, as Divine never mentioned any specific Fillmoreauthored texts that he had read or sold; see White, “New Thought Influences on Father Divine.” Watts's own evidence of Fillmore's direct influence on Divine is somewhat sketchy; at the same time, Divine's language so nearly duplicates Fillmore's on numerous occasions that proof of the precise sources read by Divine, besides being apparently impossible to obtain, seems unnecessary.

My own reading of Divine's New Thought influences should not be taken as a complete account of New Thought teachings on the body. Such a topic is too dense for an essay of this size, but it will receive fuller treatment in my forthcoming book on American religion and fleshly disciplines.

22. Song sung by the Rosebuds, a choral group of young female followers who pledged celibacy and performed songs during communion banquets; reprinted in Burnham, God Comes to America, 133.

23. Watts, God, Hartem U.S.A., 90.

24. Message delivered June 26, 1942; republished online, “I have Established the Perfection of a Feast for the Children of Men,” http://www.libertynet.org/fdipmm/worddrtv/42062617.html,3.

25. Earl Wilson, “Hahn'tchuglad?,” Negro Digest 2, no. 5 (March 1944): 61-63; condensed from New York Post, January 3, 1944. See also Sid Hantman, “No Food Shortage for ‘God,'” Negro Digest 4, no. 12 (October 1946): 25-26; and the somewhat less hostile article by Edwin A. Lahey, “Peace! It's Still Wonderful,” Negro Digest 2, no. 7 (May 1944): 27-30. About the gentlest description of the movement was Gunnar Myrdal's report of “this bizarre sect” in Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper and Bros., 1944), 871n.; see the report commissioned by Myrdal and authored by Guion G. Johnson and Guy B. Johnson, “The Church and the Race Problem in the United States,” Carnegie-Myrdal Study ofthe Negro in America Research Memoranda Collection, 1935-1948, Schomberg Center microfilm reels (roll 7), especially appendices C and D on Father Divine's movement.

26. Braden, Charles Samuel, These Also Believe: A Study of Modern American Cults and Minority Religious Movements (New York: Macmillan, 1956), 45, 28Google Scholar.

27. Quoted in ibid, 54.

28. New Day, October 26, 1939, 86.

29. Message from August 11, 1936; printed in New Day, August 27, 1936, 3.

30. Message from August 2, 1936; printed in New Day, August 13, 1936, 3.

31. New Day, November 23, 1939, 24; see also 48 in the same issue.

32. Message from October 20,1937; printed in New Day, October 28, 1937, 25.

33. No shred of evidence has ever emerged to support the latter claim. Even Sara Harris, who seemed obsessed with Divine's sex appeal and the public displays of orgasmic ecstasy he could generate simply by glancing at one of his female followers, admitted that the notion of Divine carrying on in secret with his harem of virgins (including his own wife) was virtually unimaginable (Sara Harris, with the assistance of Crittenden, Harriet, Father Divine: Holy Husband [Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1953]Google Scholar).

34. Hadley's report was reprinted in Sujfolk County News, April 25, 1930, 1, 7 (quotes). This article is also cited in Watts, God, Hartem U.S.A., 64-68.

35. Watts, God, Hartem U.S.A., 2.

36. The Montgomery County Sentinel, recounting Nancy Baker's death in 1897, called her “without a doubt the largest woman in the county, if not the state” (May 28, 1897, 3, cited in Watts, God, Hartem U.S.A., 12). Yet, the fact that the newspaper did, in Watt's words, “memorializ[e] Nancy as a curiosity” does not indicate anything about her son's own view of the matter. His later emphasis on food and fat (which Watts does link to a demonstration of prosperity and power [67-68]) suggests a possible alternative reading.

37. Interestingly, Divine's second wife, whom he married in 1946 (Peninniah died in 1943), was thin. Half a century later, as she presided over the Peace Mission Movement from the Woodmont estate in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, Mother Divine was reported to live a health-conscious life, exercising and presiding over a very different menu than that of her husband years before. According to Watts, the communion banquet offerings centered on “natural foods, poultry, vegetables, and tofu,” which “reflected her concern with health and nutrition” (Watts, God, Hartem U.S.A., 177).

38. New Day, June 29,1939,42.

39. New Day, October 26,1939, 45.

40. New Day, November 23,1939, 56.

41. New Day, December 30,1937, 8.

42. Song sung by Father Divine; republished online, “I Have Established the Perfection of a Feast for the Children of Men… Our Father's Message Given whilst at the Holy Communion Table, June 26, 1942,” http://www.libertynet.org/fdipmm/worddrtv/42062617.html.

43. Literary critic Doris Witt has examined the symbolic meanings of food and hunger in African-American life in her book, Black Hunger: Food and the Potitics of U.S. Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), though religion (and Father Divine) is ignored. My thanks to Noliwe Rooks for bringing this text to my attention.

44. Mother Divine, The Peace Mission Movement: Founded by Reverend M. J. Divine, Better known as Father Divine / As Fxplained by Mrs. M. J. Divine, Better known as Mother Divine (Philadelphia: Imperial Press, 1982), 28.

45. Message delivered June 1, 1941; republished online, “The Festive Board that Extends around the World,” http://www.libertynet.org/fdipmm/wrddrtv2/621117ar.html, 9.

46. New Day, August 3, 1939, 60.

47. New Day, October 19, 1939, 106.

48. New Day, August 3, 1939, 60.

49. New Day, November 30, 1939, 29.

50. Words of Father Divine as recorded on October 26-27, 1938; again on March 30, 1947; republished online, “Festive Board,” 12.

51. Words of Father Divine as recorded on October 18, 1938; republished online, “Festive Board,” 13.

52. Words of Father Divine as recorded on July 4, 1941; republished online, “Festive Board,” 26.

53. New Day, August 24, 1939, 86.

54. New Day, November 16, 1939, 85.

55. Message given July 9, 1939; printed in New Day, July 13, 1939, 73.

56. New Day, June 2, 1938, 43.

57. Ibid., 43. The point about body odor was made again in 1945: “You will not even feel like you once felt; you will have New Characteristics and a New Disposition; you will be a New Person! You will not even so much as smell like you once smelled, because a new nature and a new disposition, new characteristics and new ideas and new opinions will make you different completely, WITHOUT as well as WITHIN you—and WITHIN as well as WITHOUT! That is the mystery!” (New Day, October 6, 1945, 8; cited in Charles S. Braden, These Also Believe, 64-65).

58. See especially Constance Classen, Howes, David, and Synnot, Anthony, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (London and New York: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar; also Corbin, Alain, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination, trans. Kochan, Miriam L. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986)Google Scholar. On Quimby's reflections on the odor of illness, and the significance of odor more generally, see Albanese, Catherine L., Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 108-10Google Scholar; on Swedenborg, see Schmidt, Leigh Eric, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 214-15Google Scholar.

59. New Day, July 14, 1938, 20.

60. Ibid., 40, 41.

61. See New D«y, July 20, 1939, 67-69. Elsewhere in the same issue, Divine made the same point: “But if you live in mortal consciousness and adhere to mortal connections, mortal identities mentally or spiritually, you are obliged to be affected by the infirmities of those with whom you have been connected and of those with whom you are connected. You are identified to your old infirmities by your old characteristics and by your old disposition and especially by your mortal recognition of your cursed lineage with which you have been connected!” (74)

62. Ibid., 69.

63. New Day, August 10,1939, 55.

64. Cited in Watts, God, Hartem U.S.A., 12.

65. Kenneth Burnham argues that Divine and his followers “created a 'holy family’ which denies participation in overt sexuality and creates a ‘substitute family’ based on the strictest of moral codes. Persons of all shades of complexion worship, work, eat, and live together, demonstrating that racial propinquity need not mean sexual aggression” (Burnham, God Comes to America, 116; further discussion of celibacy on 117-18). While Divine's rule of celibacy may deserve further scrutiny, such elaboration is beyond the scope of this essay.

66. New Day, August 24,1939, 87.

67. This passage appears twice in the New Testament: Matt. 17:21 and Mark 9:29.

68. New Day, July 14, 1938, 19. Another interesting example of this teaching is found in New Day, November 25, 1937, 22, when Father Divine chastises a man whose testimony was apparently filled with negative thoughts and affirmations of adversity.

69. Seen. 53.

70. Cited in Watts, God, Hartem U.S.A., 168.

71. Song cited in Braden, These Also Believe, 19-20 (italics in original).