Embodiment and Black Religion - Rethinking the Body in African American Religious Experience - CERCL Writing Collective
1. "Heaven Knows No Color": Hybrid Bodies in Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement
Embodiment and Black Religion - Rethinking the Body in African American Religious Experience - CERCL Writing Collective
Anthony Pinn [+]
Rice University
Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religion
Description
The first chapter, “Heaven Knows No Color: Hybrid Bodies in Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement,” suggests several pictures of Mother and Father Divine, shot during their wedding day and artificially altered in such a way that both seem to have a similar, off-white skin color, should be understood as a performance that aims at creating a new racialized identity of hybridity. This argument puts bodies at the center of Divine’s post-racial imaginaries, and demonstrates a turn towards bodies – through these images – permits a new understanding of Father Divine’s post-racial imaginaries.