Father's Kingdom 2017
Highly Recommended
Distributed by Good Docs
Produced by Claire Chandler, Nancy Cutler, Lenny Feinberg, Chris Foster, and Kevin Koltz
Directed by Lenny Feinberg
Streaming, 94 mins
General Adult
History; Race Relations; Religion
Date Entered: 03/18/2020
Reviewed by Alexander Rolfe, Technical Services Librarian, George Fox University, Newberg, OR
This is a fascinating and thorough look at the International Peace Mission and its leader Father Divine. He promoted peace, desegregation, work, and celibacy. He also declared himself the second coming of Christ, God on earth. Father’s Kingdom aims to correct his omission from the history of the civil rights movement, since he and his followers did much for racial equality in the 1930's and 40's. The portrayal is fair yet sympathetic; we're shown the good the Peace Mission did in the lives of its followers, and the few surviving members speak quite a bit in the film: we even get to know a budding convert. But we also learn about Father Divine's suppression of his past and his callousness toward his wife, and a former member who suffered as a child in the group tells her story. The film treats their doctrinal peculiarity very gently and ends by suggesting their beliefs are no crazier than any religion's.