Through his 39 years of earthly reign Father Divine has hurled many a curse at the conspicuously unbelieving.* Last week he leveled his biggest blast in years. The main target: Sociologist Sara Harris, 34, whose recent book, Father Divine: Holy Husband (Doubleday: $3.95), is a sprightly study of Father and his cult.
To get her material, Author Harris and her collaborator, Harriet Crittenden, spent ten weeks at Father's 32-room "Country Seat of the World'' near Philadelphia, interviewing Father Divine, Mother Divine and a cross section of the followers. The book is written with considerable sympathy for the followers, and notes the laudable by-products of Father's teachings, e.g., his "angels" are exceptionally law-abiding citizens. But the book was too much for Father.
His malediction, pronounced in a sermon and letters to indignant followers, was reported in last week's issue of the New Day, his movement's newspaper. It ranges sweepingly over the book's "Writers, Publishers, Republishers, and those concerned. All Publications, Readers, Sympathizers, Harmonizers, Believers, Critics, Followers, Preachers and Priests, as well as Nations and others that coincide with those lies published in that book . . . They are cursed with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with the sword . . . They shall be smitten with botch of Egypt, with fire, with burning, with emerods, with madness and blindness and heart trouble . . .
"I am a dynamo of salvation and yet destruction to those who contact me inharmoniously . . . I have cursed them down to the bottomless pit on earth . . . I curse them without mercy. I curse them without pity. I curse without compassion or any sympatheticness . . . Aren't you glad?"
Echoed Father's applauding congregation: "Yes, so glad."
*One notable cursee: Judge Lewis J. Smith of Mineola, L.I., who, as Father Divine's followers are fond of noting portentously, died (at 50) some four days after he sentenced Father to jail (for constituting a public nuisance) in 1932. Said Father from his cell: "I hated to do it."