Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Home , Aimee Semple McPherson, Angelus Temple

Source 1

“Fundamentalism expressed itself in several ways. In the South and West, preachers led religious revivals based on the authority of the Scriptures. One of the most powerful revivalists was Billy Sunday, a baseball player the South. In Los Angeles, Aimee Semple McPherson, a theatrical woman who dressed in flowing white satin robes, used Hollywood showmanship to preach the word to homesick Midwestern migrants and devoted followers of her radio broadcasts. In the 1920s, fundamentalism gained followers who began to call for laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution.”

Define: revivals, revivalists, fundamentalism

Text from: The Americans, McDougal Littell, a division of Houghton Mifflin Co. 2005, p. 644. Image from: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/npcc.16474/

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 2

Aimee Semple McPherson, 1918

For other images, see, for example: https://www.loc.gov/search?new=true&q=aimee%20semple%20mcpherson and http://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/stories/991126.photos.html

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 3

The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson

1890 Born in Salford, Ontario, Canada to a young Salvation Army mother and an older Methodist farmer and craftsman

1902 Wins gold medal in public speaking contest sponsored by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union

1905 Enters high school and one year later publishes a letter in a Canadian newspaper challenging the inclusion of evolution in textbooks; often invited to speak and entertain at events in various churches

1907 Meets Pentecostal evangelist Robert Semple, immigrant from Ireland

1908 Is converted and baptized into Semple’s Pentecostal religious movement; marries Robert Semple

1910 Travels to Europe with Semple; gives her first sermon at nineteen years of age, to 15,000 in Victoria and Albert Hall, London; travels to Hong Kong as Protestant missionary. Robert Semple dies from malaria and dysentery two months after arrival; daughter Roberta Star Semple born two months later; returns to New York where her mother is working again for the Salvation Army. Her father remains on the farm in Canada.

1912 Marries Harold McPherson, an accountant; moves to Providence, Rhode Island

1913 Rolf McPherson born in Providence, R. I.; Aimee suffers from a severe post partum depression and is near death after a hysterectomy; hears God’s call to preach the gospel

1915 Moves with the children to Canada; holds first independent revival meeting in Mount Forest, Ontario; Harold (Mack) McPherson joins her in her ministry

1916 – 1917 Preaches for a time in Corona, NY; first preaching tour of Florida; becomes obsessed with the horrors of the war and the poverty she sees in the South; visits black homes and fields; preaches to all black and integrated camp meetings

1917 Begins publishing magazine, The Bridal Call; preaches on Long Island and Boston

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Source 3 (continued)

1917-1918 Second Florida tour: Miami & Key West; in Orlando fills a 1500-seat tent for two weeks; regularly preaches from the text: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” (Hebrews 13); Mack & Aimee separate; Aimee’s mother, Minnie Kennedy joins Aimee and the children, becomes her daughters business manager

1918 Nationwide camp meeting, Philadelphia; Roberta gets influenza in the Great Influenza Epidemic; Aimee promises her a settled home; moves to Los Angeles with mother and children; believed to be first women-only cross-country automobile trip; first woman to lead a revival movement

1919 Begins the first of her nine, cross-country, revival trips; Baltimore revival fills the Lyric Theater for fifteen days; short of money, develops her signature dress: white maid’s dress with a secondhand military navy blue cape; begins to be noticed and interviewed by the press

1920 Revivals in Washington, D. C. and Dayton, Ohio

1921 San Diego revival, includes one of her largest healing services filling Balboa Park with 30,000; groundbreaking for Angelus Temple; ordained by First Baptist Church of San Jose, CA; in St. Louis preaches to 16,000 attendees three times a day; divorced from Mack McPherson; publishes This is That, an autobiographical work plus sermons

1922 Greatest revival campaign in Denver holds meetings of 20,000 or more; heals a Gypsy chief and his dying mother who donate the stained glass Calvary window and the stage curtain for Angelus Temple; briefly kidnapped by and preaches to the Ku Klux Klan

1923 Dedication of Angelus Temple, seats 5,000 with a large stage and serves as a learning center for evangelism, sewing circles, job-placement for men released from prison, nurseries, haven for unwed mothers, a prayer tower, counseling center; illustrated sermons draw thousands every Sunday night; preaches to 325,000 in Fresno, CA; Los Angeles welcomes McPherson and promotes Angelus Temple as a great tourist attraction

1924 Starts radio station KFSG [Kall Four Square Gospel], first FCC license granted to a woman; 30,000 to 50,000 people attend Angelus Temple services each week; although all are welcome at Angelus Temple, she opens a “colored” Foursquare temple nearby

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 3 (continued)

1925 Opened L. I. F. E. [Lighthouse for International Foursquare * Evangelism] Bible College with 1,000 students; dedicated to empowering female church members as leaders; supports William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes Trial in Tennessee; enrages local clergy by marrying twenty couples on the beach clad in swim suits and lifeguard uniforms; flies to San Francisco (risky before Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh), the first plane breaks apart on takeoff

1926 Reported missing after a swim at Ocean Park; appears thirty-two days later; reportedly kidnapped and held in Mexico; accused of faking the kidnapping and having a secret affair with her radio station manager; charged and tried in court for “corruption of morals and obstruction of justice”; newspapers follow the trial with sensational headlines

1927 Court dismisses charges after highly publicized trial; goes on a three-month speaking tour; changes her hair style to the fashionable “bobbed” hair; begins to dress fashionably; begins to use make-up; speaks in speakeasies, boxing arenas, city halls, vaudeville theaters; opens Angelus Temple Commissary to feed the poor; father dies; publishes a book, In the Service of the King

1928 Filmed for Fox Movietone and Hearst Metrotone newsreels; broke with her mother and hired a business manager; series of financial disasters follows; preaching twenty times a week; goes on tour to England

1930 Tour of the Holy Land; nervous breakdown that summer; son, Rolf, begins to work in the ministry; travels to Hong Kong with Roberta as her secretary, who marries the ship’s purser in Singapore

1931 Returns to Los Angeles greeted by a crowd of 20,000; marries singer David Hutton; experiences periods of poor health; opens first soup kitchen for the hungry of Los Angeles, open to all; preaches in Mexican neighborhoods; employs fourteen-year-old Anthony Quinn as translator

1932 Contracts tropical fever contributing to periods of poor health; Angelus Temple sets up a multi-use resource center with a soup kitchen, employment office, free medical and dental clinic staffed by a dozen doctors and dentists, and a “practical nursing school” where temple volunteers learned to care for the sick; serves twenty-one hundred meals a day

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

1933 Produces her first religious opera, The Crimson Road; she wrote and produced other religious operas in years following Source 3 (continued)

1933 – 1934 Last national tour; travels 15,000 miles, preaches in 46 cities in 21 states—336 sermons to more than two million people; preaches in the Boston Garden, filling the arena

1934 Divorces David Hutton

1935 Begins a world tour; preaches in Asia and Africa; visits Mahatma Gandhi in Bombay

1936 Book, Give Me My Own God, published; produces her religious opera, Regem Adorate; denounces Hitler and Mussolini; supports a Jewish homeland in Palestine

1937 Angelus Temple poorly managed and deep in debt; breaks with daughter; her attorney sued for slander by Roberta Star Semple

1941 Tours Tennessee, Missouri, Ohio; supports the war effort with war bond drive, blood drives, rubber drives

1942 Sells War Bonds; uses her Radio station KFSG to teach about rationing, air raids, blackouts; made honorary colonel by the Army

1943 Supports the continued internment of Japanese-Americans; sells $15,000 in war bonds and stamps in one rally, autographing stamp books

1944 Leads another war bond rally at the request of the U. S. Treasury Department; Dies at age 53 in Oakland, CA of accidental overdose of sleeping pills; buried in Los Angeles after 60,000 mourners filed past; Time, Life, Newsweek and Variety all do feature stories on McPherson’s life and death; Rolf takes over the family business

* Foursquare Gospel’s Four Cornerstones: Regeneration, Baptism in the Spirit, Divine Healing and the Second Coming. The Foursquare Church is the largest Christian denomination founded by a woman.

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 4

What Do Historians Say About Aimee Semple McPherson?

“…as the summer of 1926 arrived, [public attention shifted] to the disappearance from a bathing beach of Aimee Semple McPherson, evangelist of a Four-Square Gospel made in California—a disappearance that was to prove the first of a series of opera-bouffe[comic opera] episodes which for years attracted wide- eyes tourists in droves to Mrs. McPherson’s Angelus Temple.” Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday, Bantam Book, Harper & Brothers, 1931, p. 150.

“Prosperity fostered a shallow view of the universe, a desiccated [passionless] religion typified by the vulgar [rude, coarse, offensive] Aimee Semple McPherson, billed as “the world’s most pulchritudinous [beautiful] evangelist.” It undermined facets [parts] of the American character which had developed under an economy of scarcity; in particular, it encouraged an anxious concern for social approbation [approval].” William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914 – 1932, The University of Chicago Press, 1958, p. 9.

“Aimee understood radio thoroughly and knew that she could make it work as a dramatic medium for her message and her personality. . . . Her radio spectaculars were miraculous. Hundreds of thousands of people were electrified with the certainty that the broadcasts represented God’s invasion into their personal lives. Thousands believed they were miraculously healed when, at Aimee’s urging, they placed their hands on the radio receiver.” Harold Ellens, Models of Religious Broadcasting, 1974.

“. . . California held a disproportionate share of the frontier’s usual assortment of rootless, restless souls, including sun-seekers from the Midwest, refugees from the Dust Bowl, immigrants from Mexico and the far shores of the Pacific, and drifters of every purpose and credo. As on all previous frontiers, these fluid and questing masses were ready recruits for promoters of material prosperity and merchants of spiritual solace. In the 1920s they had flocked by the tens of thousands to Los Angeles to hear the Four-Square Gospel of the melodramatic revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson.” David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, Oxford University Press, 1999.

“Religious fervor spread wherever people struggling with economic insecurity became nervous about modernism’s attack on old-time religion. Cities housed countless Pentecostal churches, which attracted blacks and whites who were swayed by their pageantry and depiction of a personal Savior. Using modern advertising techniques and elaborately staged broadcasts on radio, magnetic “revivalist” preachers— such as the flamboyant Aimee Semple McPherson of Los Angeles; former baseball player Billy Sunday, who preached on nationwide travels; and Father Divine, an African American who amassed an interracial following from his base on Long Island—stirred revivalist fervor.” Mary Beth Norton, A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, Volume II: Since 1865, 2015. Born Again Page 9 Copyright 2016, NCHE

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 5

The Words of Aimee Semple McPherson

“If Christ were alive today, I think he’d preach modern parables about oil wells and airplanes, the things that you and I understand. Things like being arrested for speeding.” [Explaining a sermon preached with a motorcycle on stage, and dressed as a traffic cop, after she had been stopped for speeding, 1920s, Los Angeles]

”The methods so often used to impart religion were too archaic, too sedate and too lifeless ever to capture the interest of the throngs. . . . .I developed methods which have brought hundreds of thousands to meetings who otherwise would never have come. . . . Religion, to thrive in the present day, must utilize present-day methods. The methods change with the years, but the religion remains always the same.” (1927 autobiography)

“Sex has nothing to do with the pulpit, and pants don’t make preachers.” [1936]

In a lengthy poem she wrote in 1925 to introduce her radio station, taking on the identity of the radio, she explained: The church with no boundary line. And under my broad, canopied expanse I house the sons of men— The black, the white, the yellow; The brown and red man, too. Brothers all sit side by side In the church with no color line.

The Cathedral of the Air am I, The rich and the poor, the old and the young, The sad and the gay of heart, the strong and the weak, The sick and the well, All worship at my shrine.

“It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” [Aimee’s comment after repeated questions about her kidnapping in 1926]

“O Hope! dazzling, radiant Hope! – What a change thou bringest to the hopeless; brightening the darkened paths, and cheering the lonely way.”

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 5 (continued)

“And my task, as I see it, is to interest you folks to help me, to help them, to join the line right around the whole world! Not only to help the heathen abroad, but to help the heathen in Los Angeles. In America, too. By God’s grace, if we can see our task and join hands and get together, we can spread the gospel around the world.”

“The fields were waiting for the gospel” [Revival tour of the South, winter of 1916-1917]

“The battle to the death now going on in the worldly realm (World War I) is analogous with that now going on in the spiritual realm.” [1916-1917]

“My soul was so burdened for the dear colored people that I announced from the public platform that I had done my duty in the Lord toward the white population of the Island, and must risk their displeasure and disapproval now by going to the poor colored folk.” [1918, Key West]

“It was about impossible for me to pass one of them (African American workers in the South) on the street without such floods of love welling up in my heart. . . I think they must have felt my love for them, for they flocked about me while distributing tracts in their neighborhoods.” [1919, touring the South]

“You men who pride yourselves on patriotism, you men who have pledged yourselves to make America free for white Christianity, listen to me! Ask yourselves how is it possible to pretend to worship one of the greatest Jews who ever lived, Jesus Christ, and then to despise all living Jews? I say unto you as our Master said, Judge not, that ye be not judged!” (Preaching to an assemblage of Ku Klux Klan members at Angelus Temple, mid-1920s)

“Whether we be Republican or Democrat, Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant, we are made of the same clay, worship the same God and swear allegiance to the same country.”

“If you curse the Jew, God will curse you, and if you bless him, God will bless you . . . No country can afford to trample on God’s people. . . . No person who persecuted the Jew has lived.” [Criticizing Russia and Germany, late 1930s]

“I wish to register a protest to our Government against the releasing of Japanese from relocation camps. We know positively that these Japs will carry on extensive and organized sabotage. . . We know the treachery of the Japanese. . . . The greatest possible mistake that could be made at this time by our Government would be to force these Japs back upon the people of the Pacific Coast. It will incense the people and create riots and even bloodshed. We earnestly pray that they will not be freed.” [1943]

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 5 (continued)

“I’d like them to know my meetings are ninety-nine percent soul-saving and one percent healing. . . . God heals that they may go out to save others. He does not heal that the sick may take up worldliness and travel in sin again. The central thought they must have when they come to me is first and last and all the time—save their souls.” [In an interview, California, 1920s]

“I bring consolation to the great middle class, leaving those below to the Salvation Army, and those above to themselves.” [Interview, 1928, New York City]

“I believe in the Fall of Man and his Redemption through the blood of the Savior; I believe in immortality, in a very real Heaven and a very real Hell. I believe that ‘the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,’ that we are all sinners and may gain salvation only through Divine Grace, through the boundless, merciful love of the Saviour who died for us.”

“True Christianity is not only to be good but to do good. . . to draw out one’s soul to the needy, to lend, hoping not for return again, to visit the widow and the fatherless in their distress, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and do the works of Him who dwells within.” [During The Great Depression, 1930s Los Angeles]

“The Lord is calling the handmaidens today as well as the servants; the daughters as well as the sons. . . . There are some who believe that a woman should never witness for Jesus Christ—that her lips should be sealed. This is not according to the Word of God. . . . I would bring a message to my sisters just now: ‘Go on with the Word of God!’ God has used the womenfolks!”

“There shall be no discrimination between men and women in relationship to their duties, activities, ecclesiastical and spiritual standings and recognitions in the Foursquare Gospel Organization. All executive offices shall be open to both men and women in good standing in the organization.” [1936, Los Angeles at a “Back to Pentecost” meeting]

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 6

What Have Others Said About Aimee Semple McPherson?

Biographers

“Such spectacular sermons captured the attention of the press and the nation, drawing thousands of men and women through the Angelus Temple doors, where visitors and members alike encountered a preacher unlike anything their generation had witnessed before. Building on a long evangelical tradition, McPherson employed drama and the latest technology to market herself and her message to the public. She embodied faith before her constituency’s very eyes in these illustrated sermons, which were the key to her success mere blocks from Hollywood. Importantly, the content of her messages never varied from classic revivalist themes. Hollywood spectacle blended seamlessly with traditional Protestantism on the Angelus Temple stage.” – Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America, Matthew Avery Sutton

“In American culture of her time, higher criticism was undermining the authority of the Bible. Darwinism had removed man from the center of the universe (and God’s eye) making him just another animal. Modernism sought to remove the standards of decent society and replace it with the jazz age of “anything goes.” And communism (and its liberal cronies) was trying to overthrow the United States itself. Suddenly the media and college professors were saying that the Bible was untrue, that man was not a special creation, and if they were correct, then it was alright to live as one pleased. McPherson’s America suffered immorality in the 20s, economic collapse in the 30s, and world war in the 40s. These were turbulent times and conservative God-fearing people were afraid. They felt helpless, overwhelmed by the onslaught of evil and the events surrounding them. . . . . Suddenly, here comes a movement that does say this is the last days and in the “latter rains” of the last day comes supernatural power from God to stand and even just maybe conquer. If offered just what the conservative believer needed; it offered hope. And Aimee Semple McPherson offered the most hope of all. She saw Pentecostalism not merely as a rescue mission but as God had promised Joel, a pouring out of power in the last days to restore.” The Great Revivalists in American Religion, William H. Cooper, Jr.

“Many women were drawn to McPherson as a role model and leader and were involved in almost every aspect of her ministry—including, initially, the leadership of the organization. McPherson ordained women as ministers, appointed them to pastorates and the L. I. F. E. Bible College faculty, and sent them out as missionaries and church planters. Three-fourths of the first students in the Foursquare Training Institute were women and fourteen of the first sixteen graduates were women. It provided a laboratory for them to practice their preaching skills.” Limited Liberty: The Legacy of Four Pentecostal Women Pioneers, Estrelda Y Alexander

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 6 (continued)

Newspapers

“The obviously genuine belief which she holds that she is acting under divine guidance impresses one favorably. . . “ Baltimore Newspaper, 1919

“The written word can convey but the merest phantom of the dramatic scene that followed. . . . What followed beneath the tent on San Jose field will probably sound like the veriest hocus-pocus to many. But nevertheless it did happen. It happened not in the misty, nebulous long ago, to white-robed men and women in a time we cannot quite visualize as ever having had reality, but to children and men and women who had street addresses and telephone numbers, who came in automobiles and not on camel- back by caravan, as it was said they did long ago. The blind saw again; the deaf heard. Cripples left their crutches and hung them on the rafter.” (Louise Weick, reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle after interviewing MacPherson and observing her services, 1921)

“In ten minutes” at Angelus Temple, we learned that P. T. Barnum was not “the greatest showman of the age. Color, pageantry, vivid contrast, symbolism, and broad human appeal mark everything Sister Aimee does or directs.” A Los Angeles Times columnist

“So my ultimate conclusion about Aimee Semple McPherson is that she is not only sumptuously sincere, but a peculiarly kindly, affectionate Christian, and unquestionably, if multitudinous and devoted audiences are evidence, a great preacher.” Los Angeles Times, reporter Alma Whitaker, 1924

“McPherson helped Angelenos’ deal with their loneliness by providing a multifaceted organization giving migrants a sense of belonging in an environment that stressed local action, tradition, patriotism, and family. The temple provided a space where newcomers could simultaneously hear the glories of the old- time religion, experience the emotional thrill of a revival in the old tent tradition, and participate in a distinctive Hollywood-style church that was in touch with the latest California trends.” Carey McWillliams, reporter, Los Angeles Times

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 6 (continued)

“It was a phenomenon peculiar to the times. . . . Medical science lacked the techniques of today, so more patients naturally were open to the possibilities of faith healing. They had more faith in God because they had less faith in science. You see, it was a matter of faith. No, I cannot imagine this sort of thing happening ever again.” Aimee’s Son, Rolf MacPherson

“The God of the Gospels is being replaced at Angelus Temple by the God of materialism. When Mrs. McPherson bobbed her hair, she hurt her followers terribly. Bobbing of the hair is not according to the Scriptures.” Angelus Temple Choirmaster

“Mrs. McPherson’s attitude to her husband and home, if sanctioned by Christianity, would strike a death blow at the marriage relation.” Robert Shuler, Los Angeles critic and competitor

“I remember one Thanksgiving Day, actually and literally fainting on the street from hunger. . . and in those days if you called the government agency, you felt you could never recover your dignity from it. And the one human being that never asked what your nationality was, what you believed in and so forth, was Aimee Semple McPherson. All you had to do was pick up the phone and say ‘I’m hungry.’ And within an hour there’d be a food basket there for you. She literally kept most of that Mexican community alive for many years. And for that I’m eternally grateful.” Actor Anthony Quinn in an interview with NBC

“Oh, yes, whether you like it or not, you’re an actress.” – Charlie Chaplin, speaking to his friend, Aimee Semple McPherson

Select quotations on Aimee Semple McPherson.

Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

Source 7

“A Certain Man Went Down” Excerpts from a Sermon by Aimee Semple McPherson

“The road to destruction and eternal sorrow of hell is just one long, swift toboggan slide. There is nothing to boast about in being a sinner or a backslider. Anybody could go down, any coward could become a sinner, but it takes the real courage and grace of God, and every spark of manhood and womanhood there is in you to go up the steep incline to heaven. A dead fish can float down the stream, but it takes a live one to swim up against the current.”

“. . .you who have been wandering away from God, how easy it is to go down . . . Let Jerusalem, on the chart, stand for all that is holy and pure . . . and Jericho for all that is sinful and profane and ungodly.”

From Aimee Semple McPherson, This Is That: Personal Experiences, Sermons, and Writings (Los Angeles: The Bridal Call Publishing House, 1919).

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Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

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Born Again: Religious Renewal in the United States

From Aimee Semple McPherson, This Is That: Personal Experiences, Sermons, and Writings (Los Angeles: The Bridal Call Publishing House, 1919).