Aimee Semple McPherson

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Aimee Semple McPherson (October 9, 1890 – September 27, 1944), also known as "Sister Aimee" or simply "Sister", was an evangelist and media sensation in the 1920s and 1930s; she was also the founder of the Foursquare Church.

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[edit] Early life

Born Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy in Salford, Ontario, Canada, she was the daughter of James Morgan Kennedy, a widower and devout Methodist, and Mildred Ona Pearce, 36 years his junior, who had been hired to nurse his first wife during her terminal illness. The age difference had caused a scandal in their small Southwestern Ontario community, prompting the couple to elope to the nearby U.S. state of Michigan.)

Her mother had been orphaned at an early age, and raised by a couple who worked with the Salvation Army. As a result, Aimee was raised in an atmosphere of strong Christian beliefs. As a teenager, however, she became an avowed agnostic, and began her public speaking career at the age of 13 in this context, writing letters to the newspaper defending evolution, debating local clergy, etc.

Robert and Aimee Semple, 1910
Robert and Aimee Semple, 1910

She met her first husband Robert James Semple, a Pentecostal missionary from Ireland, in December 1907 while attending a revival meeting at the urging of her father. After her conversion and a short courtship, they were married on August 12, 1908. Shortly thereafter, the two embarked on an evangelistic tour, first to Europe and then to China, where they arrived in June 1910. Shortly after they disembarked in Hong Kong, however, they both contracted malaria. Robert Semple died of the disease on August 19, 1910. Aimee recovered and gave birth to a daughter, Roberta Star Semple, on September 17, after which she returned to the United States.

Her mother "Minnie" had, in the footsteps of her foster parents, remained active with the Salvation Army, and after a short recuperation, Aimee joined her in this work. While so occupied in New York, she met her second husband, Harold Stewart McPherson, an accountant. They were married on May 5, 1912, and they had a son, Rolf Potter Kennedy McPherson, born March 23, 1913.

[edit] Evangelism and Foursquare Gospel

After the birth of her son, McPherson suffered from postpartum depression and several serious health issues. She tried to settle down to a "normal" home-life, but the call to Christian service remained constant. God continually knocked at the door of her heart and said, "Now will you go?" Growing weaker and weaker from sickness, Aimee, while on her deathbed after her second operation within two years, answered "yes" to God's call. Almost immediately thereafter, she was healed. After this near-death experience in 1913, she embarked upon a preaching career in Canada and the U.S.

Knowing that she had to keep her promise to the Lord, she had left home by June of 1915 and began evangelizing and holding tent revivals, first by traveling up and down the eastern part of the United States, then expanding to other parts of the country. She eventually held meetings in all parts of the world. People began coming in ever-increasing numbers to hear this remarkable lady evangelist. When not in a tent, she would need to find the largest auditorium in town in order to hold the record number of people that would come to her meetings. Oftentimes she would have to share the time with whatever "event" was happening in the town. On one occasion she met in a boxing ring, but had to hold her meetings before and after the boxing match. Once in San Diego, the National Guard had to be brought in to control the crowd of over 30,000 people. People would often stand in line and wait many hours for the next service to begin in order to be assured a seat.

The "Gospel Car", 1918
The "Gospel Car", 1918

In 1916 she made a tour through the southern U.S. in her "Gospel Car", a 1912 Packard touring car with religious slogans painted on the side; standing in the back seat of the convertible, she would give sermons through a bullhorn. On the road between sermons, she would sit in the back seat typing sermons and other religious materials. By 1917 she had started her own newspaper, named The Bridal Call, for which she wrote many of the articles.

Although her husband initially made efforts to join her on her religious travels, he soon became frustrated with the situation, and by 1918 had filed for separation. His petition for divorce, citing abandonment, was granted in 1921.

Aimee McPherson spent the four years of 1918 to 1922 as itinerant Pentecostal preacher. Weary of constant traveling and having no place to raise a family, Aimee rejoiced when in 1918, God called her to Los Angeles. This was to be her base of operation. God told her He would build her a house in Los Angeles and He did--one for her family and one for His people. For several years she continued to travel and raise money for the construction of a large, domed church building in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles, named Angelus Temple. On January 1, 1923, Angelus Temple was dedicated. The church had a seating capacity of 5,300 people and was filled to capacity three times each day, seven days a week. In the beginning, Aimee preached every service. It became the spiritual home for thousands of her followers and a base for her evangelistic ministry. What grew out of a desire to have a base of operation to preach the Gospel, quickly evolved into a church organization called the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel ---supporting and sending out missionaries, providing commissary and community services that were more reliable than the city's own relief programs, as well as a full program of church ministries.

Aimee was famous inside and outside the church. Every city where services were held usually had in attendance civic leaders, as well as pastors representing the local churches of every denomination. She made sure that Angelus Temple was represented in local parades and entered floats into the famous Rose Parade in Pasadena. Her illustrated sermons attracted even those from the entertainment industry, looking to see a "show" that rivaled what Hollywood had to offer. These famous stage productions drew people who would never have thought to enter a church, and then presented them with the message of salvation. Aimee believed that the Gospel was to be presented at every opportunity and used worldly means at her disposal to present the Gospel to as many people as possible.

At the time, women in the pulpit ministry were rare—those who wore makeup and jewelry in the pulpit, nonexistent. Her uniqueness was in this respect: she was flamboyant and showy. But Aimee's charismatic personality was really a God-given gift used to draw people to hear her. Her sermons, unlike other contemporaries, e.g. Billy Sunday, were not the usual fire-and-brimstone messages, but ones which showed the face of a loving God, with continual outstretched arms. It was a message about heaven, as a place you wanted to be, and serving Jesus, as the only life that offered true fulfilment. At times her use of many unconventional methods to attract people to hear her message would be called "her unashamed use of low-key sex appeal to attract converts". And Amiee would at many times appear before parishioners in a white gown, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

Since Pentecostalism was not popular in the U.S. during the 1920s she avoided the label, but she was heavily influenced by this faith, incorporating demonstrations of speaking-in-tongues and faith healing into her sermons, and keeping a museum of crutches, wheelchairs and so forth. She was also strongly influenced by the Salvation Army: in a campaign to spread the church nationwide, she adopted a theme of "lighthouses" for the satellite churches, referring to the parent church as the "Salvation Navy."

Always seeking publicity in the name of gaining converts, McPherson continued publishing with the weekly Foursquare Crusader and a monthly magazine dubbed Bible Call. She also began broadcasting on radio in its infancy of the early '20s. McPherson was first woman in history to preach a radio sermon, and with the opening of Foursquare Gospel-owned KFSG on February 6, 1924, she also became the first woman to be granted a broadcast license by the Federal Radio Commission (which became the Federal Communications Commission in 1934).

McPherson made the most of the show-business atmosphere of Los Angeles to incorporate entertainment into her religious meetings, using stage props, contemporary music, and morality plays (which she called "illustrations"), with elaborate costumes and scenery, to their best advantage to draw listeners. She even wrote and produced a couple of operas, and at one meeting made a dramatic entrance riding a motorcycle down the aisle of Angelus Temple.

Angelus Temple in Echo Park. Notice the radio towers.
Angelus Temple in Echo Park. Notice the radio towers.

She was also very skillful at fundraising. Collections were taken at every meeting, usually with the admonishment of "no coins, please". When the $1.5 million Angelus Temple opened its doors, construction was already entirely paid for through private donations.

With Aimee, all were called and all were welcomed. God was no respecter of persons and neither was Aimee. She evangelized when segregation was rampant in the South. Although she invited all to come to her meetings, oftentimes she would go to the "black" parts of town and hold meetings after the main meeting was over. She broke down racial barriers such that one time at Angelus Temple, some Ku Klux Klan members were in attendance, but after the service, many of their hoods and robes were found thrown on the ground in nearby Echo Park. She is also credited with helping many of the Hispanic ministries in Los Angeles get started, and there was even a great Gypsy following, after the wife of a Gypsy chief and the chief himself had been healed in a Denver revival meeting. With Aimee Semple McPherson there was no color, ethnic, or status separation line.

In 1925, the license for KFSG was suspended by the Commerce Department for deviating from its assigned frequency. Many broadcast histories claim McPherson sent an angry telegram to then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover ordering his "minions of Satan" to release her station at once. This may be an urban legend.

McPherson also received several death threats in 1925, and a plot to kidnap her was foiled in September of that year, thus setting the stage for the episode for which she is best known.

[edit] "Kidnapping"

On May 18, 1926, McPherson went to Ocean Park Beach, California, north of Venice Beach with her secretary, to go swimming. Soon after arrival, McPherson disappeared.

It was generally assumed at the time that she had drowned; mourners crowded Venice Beach, and the commotion sparked a days-long media coverage of the event, fueled in part by William Randolph Hearst's Examiner, and even including a poem by Upton Sinclair commemorating the "tragedy." Daily updates appeared in newspapers across the country; parishioners held day-and-night seaside vigils. A futile search for the body resulted in one parishioner drowning, and another diver dying from exposure.

At about the same time, Kenneth G. Ormiston, engineer for KFSG, also disappeared. The two incidents were seen as unrelated.

About a month after the disappearance, McPherson's mother, Minnie Kennedy, received a ransom note, signed by "The Avengers", which demanded a half million dollars to ensure kidnappers would not sell McPherson into "white slavery". Kennedy later said she tossed the letter away, believing her daughter to be dead.

After 35 days (on June 23), McPherson stumbled out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a Mexican town just across the border from Douglas, Arizona. She claimed that she had been kidnapped, drugged, tortured, and held for ransom in a shack in Mexico, then had escaped and walked through the desert for about 13 hours to freedom.

Several problems were found with McPherson's story. Her shoes showed no evidence of a 13-hour walk; indeed, they had grass stains on them after a supposed walk through the desert. The shack could not be found. McPherson showed up fully dressed while having disappeared wearing a bathing suit, and was wearing a watch given to her by her mother, which she had not taken on her swimming trip.

A grand jury convened on July 8 to investigate the matter, but adjourned 12 days later citing lack of evidence to proceed. However, several witnesses then came forward stating that they had seen McPherson and Ormiston at various hotels over the 32-day period.

The grand jury re-convened on August 3 and received further testimony, corroborated by documents from hotels in McPherson's handwriting. McPherson steadfastly stuck to her story that she was approached by a young couple at the beach who had asked her to come over and pray for their sick child, and that she was then shoved into a car and drugged with chloroform. However, when she was not forthcoming with answers regarding her relationship with Ormiston (who was recently estranged from his wife), Judge Samuel Blake charged McPherson and her mother with obstruction of justice on November 3.

Theories and innuendo abounded: she had run off with a lover; she had had an abortion; she was recovering from plastic surgery; she had staged the whole thing as a publicity stunt. No satisfactory answer, though, was ever reached, and soon after the Examiner erroneously reported that Los Angeles district attorney Asa Keyes had dropped all charges, Keyes decided to do exactly that on January 10, 1927, citing lack of evidence.

[edit] Later career

McPherson continued preaching but fell out of favor with the press; she and her ministry still received a good deal of publicity, but most of it was bad. Additionally, she became involved in power struggles for the church with her mother and daughter. McPherson suffered a nervous breakdown in 1930.

On September 13, 1931, McPherson married again, this time to an actor and musician, David Hutton. The marriage got off to a rocky start: two days after the wedding, Hutton was sued for alienation of affection by another woman, whom he claimed to have never met. He eventually settled the case by paying $5,000. While McPherson was away in Europe, she was incensed to discover Hutton was billing himself as "Aimee's man" in his cabaret singing act.

The marriage also caused an uproar within the church. The tenets of Foursquare Gospel, which were set up by McPherson herself, stated that no one should remarry while their previous spouse was still alive (which Harold McPherson was at the time). McPherson and Hutton separated in 1933, and divorced on March 1, 1934.

During the Great Depression, McPherson was active in creating soup kitchens, free clinics and other charitable activities; with the outbreak of World War II, she became involved in war bond rallies.

On September 27, 1944 she was found dead of an overdose of prescription barbiturates. Once again, rumors flew, this time conjecturing suicide; it is generally agreed though that the overdose was accidental, as is stated on the coroner's report.

McPherson is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. According to The Preachers by James Morris, she was buried with a live telephone in her casket to ensure her survival in the event of bodily resurrection, although other biographers do not mention this and groundskeepers at Forest Lawn deny it. The Foursquare Gospel church, whose leadership was assumed by McPherson's son Rolf for 44 years after her death, continues worldwide with over two million members, over 90% of whom are outside the United States.

[edit] Landmarks

Aimee Semple McPherson leaves behind many accomplishments, including architectural attributes. "Aimee's Castle", a Middle-Eastern inspired castle, is still standing in Lake Elsinore, CA. McPherson once resided in the small lake and mountain town, and is known in the community for a variety of reasons, including a time when she swam across the entire lake.

[edit] Film

A television film about the events surrounding her 1926 disappearance, The Disappearance of Aimee was made in 1976, with Faye Dunaway as McPherson. A film adaptation of the story of her life, entitled Aimee Semple McPherson, is due to be released in 2006.

[edit] References

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