Edna Rose Ritchings

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Edna Rose Ritchings, was the symbolic maintainer of the International Peace Mission movement. She was also known as Sweet Angel in the movement, or as Mrs. S. A. Divine or Mother Divine because she is the widow of the movement's leader, Father Divine. She assisted Father Divine, who claimed to be God, in his declining years.

A Canadian convert from Vancouver, Ritchings was drawn to the movement in its decline in early 1940s while she was still in high school. As many adherents of Father Divine did, she broke ties with her parents, and adopted a new name, "Sweet Angel". Moving to the then-headquarters of the movement in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she became one of Father Divine's personal secretaries. She proposed to him one day in the office by saying, "I want to marry you because I know you are God."

They were married in secret on April 26, 1946 in Washington D.C.. Ritchings was 21, and Father Divine about 65. The marriage was secret from even most followers until Ritchings' visa expired in the summer of 1946 and Father Divine had to disclose it. The wedding date, April 26, thereafter became a celebrated anniversary in the movement.

Father Divine claimed to his flock that Ritchings was the spirit of his first wife reborn. His first wife, Peninniah (d. 1943), was also commonly called "Mother Divine". Interestingly, reincarnation had not previously been part of Father Divine's doctrine, indeed he had said that the notion of an afterlife was absurd.

To prove that it was a chaste marriage in accordance with his teachings, Father Divine assigned a female disciple to be Ritching's constant companion.

Due to Father Divine's declining health, she presided over an increasing number of Peace Mission banquets. Upon his death in 1965, she became the official leader of the movement and continues to hold this position. The Movement has nearly dwindled to extinction because few new converts have joined, and Peace Mission doctrine forbids sex.

Notably, Mother S. A. Divine fought an attempt by cult leader Jim Jones to take over the movement in 1971. Jones based some of his doctrines on the International Peace Mission movement, and claimed to be the reincarnation of Father Divine. He was only able to persuade one member to join his cult, the Peoples Temple. The convert wrote Mother Divine trying to convince her that Jones was Father Divine until the infamous mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978.