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Keys to the Kingdom (Part II)

The second installment of our two-part series examines the fate of Gladwyne’s historic Woodmont estate—and the Peace Mission’s hold on it. What will happen to both after the controversial movement’s figurehead, Mother Divine, passes? And will anyone care?

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[Part 2 of 2. Click here for Part 1 from Main Line Today's September issue.]

Assessments of the aging Mrs. M.J. (Mother) Divine’s health vary—though few are positive. One source claims he’s known the symbolic leader of Rev. M.J. (Father) Divine’s International Peace Mission Movement for 15 years. She didn’t recognize him the last time they met. A participant in this year’s annual “Winter Trek” at the Peace Mission’s historic Woodmont estate recounts an odd conversation with Mother that February day: “She asked me four times if I went on the walk.”

Some believe Mother suffered a mild stroke two years ago—or that she may have the onset of dementia or Alzheimer’s. Tired and passive, with less energy and focus, Mother no longer attends meetings and functions for the Lower Merion Historical Society or the Gladwyne Civic Association. “She isn’t what she was two years ago,” says one insider.

Now in her mid-80s, Mother Divine appears to be getting the same sort of protection inside the secretive sect’s Gladwyne headquarters that enveloped her husband in his final years. And it’s likely her retreat from public view will continue as she shows further signs of mortality.

“Life is eternal, so [followers] defy biological retardation,” says Jill Watts, a history professor at California State University San Marcos and author of God Harlem, USA: The Father Divine Story. “Within the theology, I see what they’re doing. If you’re a true follower, you can’t extinguish yourself and die. They see it as continuing on a different plane.”

With its matriarch largely sequestered, the Peace Mission continues to conduct its ceremonial business in plain view. It hosted its annual “Holy Days” open house Sept. 10-12. The event recognizes Father Divine’s death on Sept. 10, 1965, along with the September 1953 dedication of Woodmont as the “Mount of the House of the Lord” and the September 1968 dedication of Father’s “Shrine to Life” mausoleum. Those Peace Mission followers who remain continue to worship their Father as God in what is now a dwindling interracial, celibate religious and social movement long past its 1930s prime.

The Peace Mission’s core beliefs will not allow its followers—no matter how few in number—to concede defeat. “Cult-minded selectivity is an interpretative process that’s always morphing with failed predictions,” says Swarthmore’s David Clark, a founding and current board member of the Recovering Former Cultists’ Support Network.

Swept up in all this uncertainty is the fate of Woodmont. Its 1998 National Historic Landmark designation amounts to little unless the Peace Mission followers named on the active deed allow Lower Merion Township to list the old Alan Wood Jr. mansion as a Class I building. Otherwise, it can be sold and subdivided—or demolished. There’s fear that increased preservation pressure will put followers on the defensive, perhaps even prompting a scenario along the lines of the controversial destruction of the La Ronda mansion in Bryn Mawr. And other than a philosophical agreement, no conservation easement has been signed to protect the grounds, says Mike Weilbacher, former executive director of the Lower Merion Conservancy.

Few think the Peace Mission movement will disappear tomorrow. But if not tomorrow, then when? A year? Ten years?

Gladwyne’s Alan Wood, whose great-grandfather’s brother built the French Gothic, 32-room manor home in 1892 for $1 million, recounts the first time he visited his ancestral edifice. It was in the mid-1950s. He was 11 years old. “It was quiet,” says Wood, who has attended banquets there and remained friendly with Mother Divine and the followers. “The guys sitting around wanted to know who I was. I told them, then they said, ‘Your ancestor was sent by God to build this place for Father Divine.’ I sort of smiled.”

Wood says his ancestors bought the land at a sheriff’s sale for less than $20,000 in 1881. A decade after building, Alan Wood Jr. sold the house and 300 acres to a nephew in 1902 for $250,000. Fifty years later, Peace Mission followers chiefly led by Warner Hunt (John DeVoute in the mission) paid J. Hector McNeal’s widow $75,000 cash, saving it from demolition. Much of the acreage had already been sold—a large chunk of it to build Philadelphia Country Club, which declined interviews.
 

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