Religion: Swiss Heaven

“I spared Switzerland from war and famine because I am there.”—Father Divine.

As usual, the little Father needed to be translated. He meant his spiritual body, not his own plump, proper person. And in Divine lingo, spiritual body included the 2,000 white “angels” who live in Swiss “heavens” and believe Father’s word that he is God.

Last week in Zurich some 80 angels, mostly female, flocked to a heaven (in a “restaurant sans alcool”), to hear a German translation of Father Divine’s latest “office talk.” Reader Alfred Riesen, Father’s governor in Switzerland, kept asking: “Aren’t you glad?” Many angels wept for joy. “We thank thee, Father,” they sang. “Oh, how wonderful is our Father Divine. . . . We belong to him with every atom of our body and soul.”

Most of the angels were shabby, tired and obviously unhappy—a sort of bespattered mudguard of the lower middle class. Their beliefs were probably best expressed by Joseph Jacob Greutmann, 57-year-old pastry cook, onetime hypnotist, who founded the first Swiss heaven. Says Greutmann:

“We worship Father Divine because he is the second incarnation of God. . . . We are all white but we think there should be no difference between human races. .. . It is just a symbol to mankind that God chose the body of a Negro when He came to earth this time. It is another symbol that the black Mrs. Divine vanished and rose again, but as a young white girl.”