Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer

Religion, Race, and Ethnicity Series

by Marie W. Dallam

Charles Manuel "Sweet Daddy" Grace founded the United House of Prayer for All People in Wareham, Massachusetts, in 1919. This charismatic church has been regarded as one of the most extreme Pentecostal sects in the country. In addition to attention-getting maneuvers such as wearing purple suits with glitzy jewelry, purchasing high profile real estate, and conducting baptisms in city streets with a fire hose, the flamboyant Grace reputedly accepted massive donations from his poverty-stricken followers and used the money to live lavishly. It was assumed by many that Grace was the charismatic glue that held his church together, and that once he was gone the institution would disintegrate. Instead, following his 1960 death there was a period of confusion, restructuring, and streamlining. Today the House of Prayer remains an active church with a national membership in the tens of thousands.

Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer seriously examines the religious nature of the House of Prayer, the dimensions of Grace's leadership strategies, and the connections between his often ostentatious acts and the intentional infrastructure of the House of Prayer. Furthermore, woven through the text are analyses of the race, class, and gender issues manifest in the House of Prayer structure under Grace's aegis.

Marie W. Dallam here offers both a religious history of the House of Prayer as an institution and an intellectual history of its colorful and enigmatic leader.

Genres: Religion

276 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2007

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

worth reading because Daddy Grace’s story is worth telling/knowing, but argumentatively and theoretically, this read like a dissertation. also really misses the mark a few times in a) her desire to be respectful, which I appreciate since Daddy Grace is rarely taken seriously as starting a major religious movement, but is instead ridiculed. but despite giving ample evidence of wild greed including profiting off of a kind of life insurance off of his own parishioners, for instance, she basically just concludes “eh, he was just a businessman.” lots of other examples where she seems to really want to hang on to an idea of this dude as benevolent in the face of a laundry list of highly sketchy decisions. and then b) her insistence on using a particular sociological lens in the study of religion—theories of religious economy—adds next to nothing to her analysis, and obscures some potential routes she could have taken. Her invocation of that theory is almost tautological, and she has a very minimal appreciation for the radical claims to divine presence that Grace and his followers made, even if he didn’t 100% claim to be God. The result is a simultaneous widening of our understanding of Daddy Grace + his House of Prayer and a flattening of the supernatural core of his and his organization’s practice. She’d rather adjudicate academic categories that are already dated and stale, such as whether the House of Prayer is a “sect” or an “established sect” (vs a “cult” or a “mainstream church”). Redeeming bit: drives a wedge between Daddy Grace and Father Divine, who get lumped together and conflated all over American religious history scholarship.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Religious Cult or Sect? Mainline or Mainstream religion?
This book includes a study of religion and how religious leaders and social times influence religious practices. It leaves me wondering how God feels about all of this. Respectfully written and researched, this book leaves me with a lot to think about.

[A.J. Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and thoroughly researched. Very informative. Includes a chapter detailing the important differences between Daddy Grace and Father Divine.