"As a Living Shrine I Came": Remembrance, Creativity, and Paradox in God's American Tomb

Abstract

This article discusses the development of a sacred sense of place in an American sectarian religion and the complementary creation of a provocative twentieth-century religious "shrine" within that space. This "shrine" can be found near the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The edifice is the tomb holding the body of the African American minister and religious innovator named the Reverend M. J. Divine, better known as Father Divine, the founder of the International Peace Mission Movement. The creation of a North American indigenous religion, the tomb and shrine it represents a union of devotionalism and creativity, of tradition and innovation. This essay is centered on the birth of the shrine, as well as the memorial building, and the forces that gave birth to it within a religion whose doctrine generally resisted "shrinified" spaces.