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Today's Christian, May/June 2001
Aimee Semple McPherson
Pentecostal preaching sensation
In 1913, a 23-year-old Salvation Army worker was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening appendicitis. But physical health wasn't her greatest concern. She felt her spiritual life was also in peril.
Struggling to breathe, she heard a nurse say, "She's going."
Then she heard another voice: "Now will you go?" She believed she was being given a choice to enter eternity right then, or go into ministry. She yielded to ministry. Instantly, she said, the pain was gone, her breathing eased, and she regained her strength.
Within a decade, the young woman would become an American phenomenon. During the 1920s her name, Aimee Semple McPherson, appeared on the front page of America's leading newspapers three times a week. Today, as her International Church of the Foursquare Gospel carries on her legacy, historians consider her (along with Billy Sunday) the most significant revivalist in the early twentieth century.
Aimee was born in 1890, to James and Minnie Kennedy, a Methodist and a Salvation Army devotee respectively, in Ontario, Canada. As a teenager, Aimee was introduced to Pentecostalism through the preaching of Robert Semple, whom she eventually married. When he died two years later, she married young businessman Harold McPherson.
For a few years, they shared a hand-to-mouth existence. They lived in a "gospel" car plastered with Bible verses and slogans and loaded with religious tracts.
Spellbinding Sister
From Los Angeles in 1919, McPherson launched a series of meetings that catapulted her to national fame. Within a year, America's largest auditoriums could not hold the crowds.
Reporters marveled at her oratorical skills: "Never did I hear such language from a human being. Without intermission, she would talk from an hour to an hour and a half, holding her audience spellbound."
On January 1, 1923, "Sister" (as she was known) dedicated Angelus Temple, which held up to 5,300 worshipers. A church-owned radio station was launched in 1924.
While she continued to preach "the four-square Gospel" (Jesus as the Only Savior, the Great Physician, the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit, and the Coming Bridegroom), she become one of Los Angeles' best known citizens. Angelus Temple floats won prizes in Rose Bowl parades, and the Temple itself became a tourist attraction.
Her motherly qualities were winsome. During midnight forays into Denver's red light districts, she promised the outcasts that there was hope for them in Christ. In San Francisco, she walked into a "dive," sat down at the piano, and got the crowd's attention by playing "Jesus, Lover of My Soul."
Unsolved mystery
Then in May 1926 she mysteriously disappeared. Angelus Temple announced that Sister had gone for a swim, failed to return, and was presumed drowned. An elaborate memorial service was held for her.
Three days later, she reappeared in Douglas, Arizona, claiming she had been kidnapped, held captive in a cabin until she finally was able to escape. The crowds that had mourned her loss prepared a lavish welcome.
Some law enforcement officials challenged her kidnapping story, but the Los Angeles district attorney acknowledged that he had no case against McPherson. When the scandal died down, Aimee began a national evangelistic tour. Her support base remained strong, but press coverage was more skeptical.
Her ministry continued. During the Depression, the Angelus Temple provided food, clothing, and other necessities to needy families. In the 1940s, Sister began barnstorming again, and in September 1944, she addressed 10,000 people in the Oakland Auditorium. She died the next day of kidney failure and the effects of mixed prescription drugs she had been taking.
The denomination she founded, the International Church of the Four-square Gospel, now numbers some 2 million members in nearly 30,000 churches worldwide.
Adapted from the book, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know, by the editors of Christian History magazine. Available at the Christian History store.
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