For members of the movement, celibacy, one part of a larger strategy of control of the material in favor of the spiritual, helped to ensure physical health and eternal life in this world. Father Divine warned a member of the dangers of not fully letting go of the material, writing, “of course, if you do not get rid of resentment, anger, lust, passion, jealousy, envy, and every other characteristic of carnality, you cannot remain well, healthy, and happy for those characteristics will bring adversities upon you and cause the return of such old afflictions as you have been freed from when you first received the witness of the Holy Ghost.” Celibacy was also a tool to help focus attention on God in the person of Father Divine. Father Divine himself underscored this in a letter he wrote to Moore in 1948 in response to a question she posed about her correspondence with Wonderful Love, a female follower and member of the virginal Rosebuds in Philadelphia. He wrote, “it has been somewhat of a ritual between MY Real True Buds that they would correspond only with the ONE they so greatly admire and therefore, put no one between their LORD and SAVIOR.” He required this focus on himself rather than on relationships of any sort with others and expected his followers to keep him at the forefront of their minds at all times. “Do your job conscientiously,” he told followers, “but think constantly of me.”
Observers of the movement from its early days in the 1930s were skeptical of the claims of celibacy and focused especially on the question of whether Father Divine had sexual relations with his followers. The media gave particular attention to various accounts of former members that Father Divine did not practice the celibacy he required of members in their daily lives, most notoriously the charges leveled by Faithful Mary in the 1930s and Ruth Boaz in the 1950s that they engaged in sexual relations with him. Some observers also noted the possibility for the expression of same-sex sexuality in the sex-segregated world of Father Divine’s “heavens,” assuming that some followers acted upon this impulse. Behind the sensational headlines, the nature of daily personal interactions among Father Divine’s followers remain difficult to recover. Any challenges believers might have faced in working to subordinate the material to the spiritual and to keep Father Divine in their thoughts at all times might, indeed, have involved a struggle to remain celibate, but also to resist emotional attachments to other members.
Happy S. Love’s brief correspondence with Dorothy Moore allows us to consider how an individual might attempt to make sense of human desire and sexuality in the context of a particular set of religious habits, practices, and spiritual vocabulary. Happy S. made clear in her letter that she enjoyed “keeping company” with Dot, but was aware of the possibility that her assertion might be interpreted as contrary to the movement’s theology concerning directing emotional energy toward anyone but Father Divine. Consequently, she clarified her position by noting that, “what I mean by company like a friend. In a way of speaking to pal around with. Because you seem to be a happy person.” And yet, she forged ahead, appending the love poem that opened this entry and sending a photograph the following month. Happy S. penned her love poem in the spiritual vocabulary of the Peace Mission Movement through which members often spoke of their devotion to Father Divine in romantic terms. From one perspective, the poem can be taken as an act of spiritual witness in which Happy S. assures Dot of Father Divine’s love and ability to fulfill all needs – “you have no other to seek, Cause He will forever be, The very one you need.”
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