National Post (National Edition)
The death of Sweet Angel Divine
Famed cult leader’s Canadian wife was called the ‘Spotless Virgin Bride’
Sweet Angel Divine, who was the “Spotless Virgin Bride” and for five decades the widow of Father Divine, a self-styled religious figure who proclaimed himself God in the 1930s and led one of the most unusual cults of personality in U.S. history, has died.
She was about 91 (one of the tenets of her religious movement was a disregard for chronological age) when she died March 4 in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania. The cause was not disclosed.
Mother Divine, as she was generally known, was a tall, blond 21-year-old Canadian when she married Father Divine, the aging, rotund, 5-foot-2 African-American founder of a religious movement called the International Peace Mission.
Father Divine — or the Rev. Major Jealous Divine, to give him his full title — declared in 1932 that he was God and attracted legions of devotees drawn by his message of racial equality, clean living, communal living and cash-only financial transactions.
Among other strictures, his supporters could not drink, smoke or curse and were required to be celibate. Married couples who joined the flock were separated and given new names — including Edna Rose Ritchings, who legally changed her name to Sweet Angel Divine after she and her husband were married in 1946.
Father Divine was living in Baltimore in about 1900 when he began to preach. He was often accused of blasphemy and was jailed on occasion, but at the height of his glory in the 1930s he claimed to have millions of followers of all races.
His supporters, many of whom were women, were expected to turn most of their earnings over to him. He opened a network of religious centres and cafeterias around the country, offering free meals to anyone who wanted them.
Through hard-to-trace cash arrangements, Father Divine controlled dozens of businesses, including hotels, barbershops, drycleaning establishments, apartment buildings and restaurants. He was surrounded by an adoring entourage and was driven around in a Rolls-Royce.
His future wife first heard him speak in her native Vancouver when she was 15.
She and Father Divine were married on April 29, 1946, which became a sacred day in the movement’s history. (The first Mother Divine died in 1943.)
At the time of the marriage, her father, a florist in Vancouver, said, “Everyone liked her. She was a fine, healthy girl ... perfectly normal.”
She lost touch with her Canadian family.
In 1950, Mother Divine wrote about her marriage in Ebony magazine, answering the question about whether she and her husband led “lives of purity and chastity.”
“I am as virtuous today as the day Father took me unto himself as his spotless bride,” she wrote. “I am a sample and example for all to copy if they desire to be supernaturally and eternally blessed.”
Edna Rose Ritchings was born in Vancouver in April 1925, according to public records. She may have worked in Montreal before moving to the U.S.
Father Divine died in 1965, although his adherents disavow the concept of earthly death.
“He has just gone away for a spell and he will come back to earth in bodily form,” Mother Divine said soon after.