God's Income

Richest and most inexplicable cultist in the U. S. is Major J. ("Father") Divine, "God" to many a blackamoor and moody white in New York's Harlem and elsewhere. Slick little Father Divine lives well, maintains a Rolls-Royce, flies about in an airplane, provides abundant low-price meals to his followers. But he keeps no books, has never paid an income tax. Leaving it to his followers to assert blandly, that he "manifests" money out of nothing, the black "God" has seemed to take poker-faced delight in evading questions about his income. Since he has a good Negro lawyer, Arthur Madison, Father Divine knows well that he would be in serious trouble with the U. S. Government were he to admit, after denying it for years, that he collects cash from his followers, handles receipts from restaurants and small businesses operated in his name in Harlem. Last week a Manhattan lawyer who had been after Father Divine for months seemed about to prove him a man of property, fair game for the Law.

Two years ago near Baltimore a bus bearing Divine "angels" bound for Manhattan collided with the automobile of a Mrs. Nina I. Bayless of Aberdeen, Md. She brought suit against Father Divine and his lieutenant in whose name the bus was registered. A Maryland court awarded her a judgment of $6,000. Seeking to collect the money for Mrs. Bayless, Lawyer William W. Lesselbaum of Manhattan examined Father Divine and several "angels," could get none to admit that the cultist had any funds. Lawyer Lesselbaum began sleuthing. Last week in Manhattan he obtained an order to show cause why Father Divine should not be punished for contempt of court for his evasiveness and "false statements." To prove his point Lawyer Lesselbaum offered testimony in the form of affidavits from disillusioned onetime Divinites.

A mechanic in Father Divine's "Peace" Garages swore that the Harlem "God" paid him his weekly $30 in cash from a fat roll of bills. An Ulster county realtor said that Father Divine paid him $8,000 in bills from a satchel for a tract of the cult's "Promised Land" (TIME, Aug. 31), although title to the property was conveyed to a Divine disciple. One of 30 cashiers in Divine restaurants, a girl who had taken the name of "Humility Consolation," reported that all receipts were paid to Father Divine, that on many a night the clinking of coin could be heard in the black man's bedroom. Best documented affidavit was that of "Rebecca Grace" (Mrs. Verinda Brown), who with her husband gave the cause $5,317, of which $4,051 was paid direct to the Father. Affirmed Mrs. Brown in Lawyer Lesselbaum's language:

"If these facts seem improbable in this enlightened age, I can only explain my submission to Father Divine's influence by indicating that I am a colored woman of middle age, with unlimited faith in Divine Providence and a quickness and readiness, through a highly impressionable and emotional mentality, to believe in human perfection and the brotherhood of man. My husband, also colored and of my own age, regards himself as well read in the Bible, and has always sought relief from an inferiority complex resulting from the color of his skin, in the consoling thought of a blessed hereafter. These mental attitudes no doubt caused us to become easy subjects for Father Divine's preachments."

Mrs. Brown declared that she gave Father Divine $70 of her $80-per-month wages from 1930 to 1935, that her husband surrendered all his earnings as a handyman as well as their jewelry, furniture and savings. Mrs. Brown's explanation: "I paid all this money in the belief that unless I did so I was doomed to everlasting misery and that by giving money to Father Divine I was depositing it in his Heavenly Treasury and was in that way assured of eternal life and peace." But the Browns began getting leery of Father Divine when, as is his invariable custom, he commanded them to cease sleeping together.

To the contentions set forth in Lawyer Lesselbaum's moving papers, Father Divine reserved reply until this week.

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