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Reflections on the Source of

Aimee Semple McPherson's Voice

Edith L. Blumhofer

On New Year's Day in 1925, the Grand Prize in the Tournament of Roses went to Aimee Semple McPherson and Temple for a float reported to be the costliest ever entered in the pageant. Accompanied by fifteen mounted outriders, the $4,000 floral replica of , McPherson's ministry hub, was viewed by more than 500,000 people lining the parade route. Meanwhile, a few miles away, McPherson and nearly ten thousand loyal followers celebrated the Temple's second anniversary with energy-packed day-long services at Angelus Temple and an enormous cake replica of the Temple made, McPherson proudly pointed out, entirely of 1 ingredients (wheat, figs, raisins, milk, etc.).' Seventy years ago, Aimee Semple McPherson was at the height of her career, just as much a celebrity in the world of popular as sports and Hollywood stars were in theirs. My recent biography of Aimee Semple McPherson explores her appeal and the institutions that gave it form. My work on McPherson led me to conclude that gender is not a particularly helpful category in accounting for McPherson's public appeal. Put more broadly, I propose that McPherson's life questions assumptions about the adequacy of gender categories for explaining the meaning of women's experience of American . Since the 1970s, Aimee Semple McPherson has gradually been noticed in the academy-an arena that has often disdained the heroes of popular religion. In the past, the condescension of scholars has often made it difficult to entertain the thought that -much less Pentecostal evangelists-should be taken seriously. For a long time, McPherson remained outside the pale of respectability, an artifact from the dim past of camp meetings and sawdust trail revivalism whose memory carried a hint of notoriety. But McPherson has come into her own because of gender. She seems made to order for scholars interested in the roles of women in American Christianity-a female preacher with enormous popular appeal; the founder of a denomination; an editor, social worker, pioneer broadcaster and author; a twice-divorced woman who (in a Protestant context that frowned on divorce) rose to leadership, raised her children on her own and turned her life into an American success story. In general, scholars assume that McPherson was a trailblazer for women in ministry. McPherson, then,

' The references to McPherson's story are all drawn from my biography, Aimee Semple }VlcPherson:E'verybody's Sister (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993). 22 has come to be seen as a pioneer woman in ministry, a sort of proto-feminist intent on forging ahead to find fulfillment despite cultural obstacles. McPherson's voice has been valued, then, by modem women-especially Pentecostals-seeking to locate their own voices as well as by feminist historians rereading the past. McPherson is sometimes proposed as model and mentor, at least for some aspects of the task. A closer look, however, suggests that while gender is certainly one component to the meaning of McPherson's story, gender alone is not the best lens through which to explore McPherson's voice. It seems to me that other categories may yield richer insights into McPherson's s contributions to American life. While I agree that women's lives often differ profoundly from men's, I do not think that it necessarily follows that "when the subject is female, gender moves to the center of the analysis."' It is certainly vital to acknowledge the ways in which gender influences a woman's experience of life. At the same time, it is important to note that McPherson did not intend to pave the way for women in ministry or religious leadership, and whether or not she did (even in her own organization) is open to question. Nor did she intentionally speak as a woman on behalf of women. Another voice from the 1920s, F. Scott Fitzgerald, suggests another way to render the story that may be a helpful adjunct to gender for exploring McPherson's appeal in the American religious culture. It may be that the most basic differentiation between people is not between male and female or between rich and poor but between the ill and the well. I propose that McPherson spoke primarily for the ill-the physically, mentally, spiritually broken. Gender categories alone do not sufficiently illumine the spiritual dimensions of her career. What are the implications of suggesting that for McPherson the most profound differences were rooted in brokenness and wholeness rather than in gender? It is important to remember that McPherson's religious outlook was shaped by three streams: the "cultural Protestantism" of southern Ontario; ; and early Pentecostalism. In the Pentecostal setting, she moved with people who were particularly intent on achieving pure, intense religious experience-full possession by God. Early Pentecostalism offered wholeness through the infusion of divine life: it proffered answers to every human problem, often using a reassuring text from Hebrews 13:8"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever." McPherson adopted these words as her lifelong theme. What Jesus had once done, he could be expected to do again-anytime, anywhere. Wholeness was available through

2 Sarah Alpern, ed., The Challenge of Feminist Biography (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 7.