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Partly from falling in love, and partly from religion, Aimee's conversion began close to Christmas. After hearing Robert Semple's ministry for a third time, Aimee experienced a darkness, which passed and then an entrance of a light. This occurred on her way home from school one day. She first felt the coldness of the elements of nature and then everything became bright and welcoming. She decided Robert Semple and his ministry had more worth than the beliefs under which she had been raised (Epstein 48). Aimee discounted her parents' beliefs even more and was driven away from the traditional churches in her area. Semple's preachings were attractive to the determined young woman. The two were married on August 12,1908, but Robert died two years later.
Four years later, Aimee Semple would remarry to Harold McPherson. He wanted the traditional wife and home life, but Aimee cound not devote herself completely because of her commitment to her religious beliefs. During these years, she went through periods of depression, as well as surgeries for various ailments, some thought to be psychosymatic. Finally, when she could remain confined no longer, Aimee left her husband (Epstein 75).
In the years following her divorce from Harold McPherson, Aimee Semple McPherson achieved great success. She opened her own Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, started a radio station, opened a Bible college, and laid the foundation for what would become the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.
Preaching in Oakland, California in 1922, McPherson had a vision based upon the prophet Ezekiel's vision of Man, Lion, Ox and Eagle. She saw four symbols: the cross, the crown, the dove and the cup. These, she believed, represented Regeneration of the Church, the Second Coming, Baptism in the Spirit and Divine Healing, respectively. The four symbols created a name for to call her religion, the Foursquare Gospel (Epstein 264). At the same time, McPherson affirmed the beliefs of an evangelistic association called the Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance, founded by George Jeffrys in Ireland in 1915. She had worked with Jeffrys previously. The Elim Foursquare Gospel was headed by Jeffreys and his brother, two of England's greatest evangelists. The Gospel Alliance embraced the same central beliefs that Aimee upheld in her own Foursquare Church.
In 1923, McPherson founded her own Angelus Temple in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, California. It was a magnificent structure which she saw as a learning center for evangelism. Her chief objective was the conversion experience. Beyond conversion, McPherson wanted visitors to become evangelists themselves and return to their parishes with the renewed power of the Holy Spirit. The only problem was that people became attached to Angelus Temple and did not want to leave.
Later that year, McPherson opened the L.I.F.E. Bible College. By 1926, the College had nearly one-thousand students enrolled and dozens of teachers. In February of 1924, she established KFSG (Kall Four Square Gospel), a radio station, with the help of Kenneth Gladstone Ormiston. Before she founded KFSG, radio producers were reportedly eager to broadcast her "canned sermonettes." Her commercial license was the first license the FCC granted to any woman (Epstein 264).
The Foursquare Gospel today is international in focus, Like many other Pentecostal sects, its goal is to spread the Bible's message of salvation, reaching as many people as possible in an effort to spread its evangelism to the world. When Aimee Semple McPherson died, there were 410 churches in North America, 200 mission stations and approximately 29,000 members. The church's assets were valued at $2,800,000. In 1993, the Church's annual budget was $357,335,562. There were 25,577 churches in 74 countries with more than one and a half million members. President John Holland leads the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and Harold and Winona Helms are the pastors of the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles.
The Holy Scriptures The Bible is God-inspired (2 Timothy 3:16, 17).
Baptism and the Holy Spirit The Baptism with the Holy Spirit is to endue the believer with power; and that His incoming is after the same manner as in Bible days (Act 2:4).
Divine Healing Divine healing is the power of Christ to heal the physically sick in answer to the prayer of faith (James 5:14-16).
The Second Coming of Christ The second coming of Christ is personal and imminent (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17).
The very fact that she was a female preacher was sufficient to create great debate, but McPherson played the role of woman evangelist with flair and flamboyance. She constantly did things that drew attention to herself. On one occasion she drove through the southern part of the United States in her "Gospel Car." On one side in six-inch-high letters were the words "JESUS IS COMING SOON-GET READY" and on the other side "WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?" She preached with a megaphone so she could be heard by large crowds (Epstein, 126).
When radio came, McPherson was the first female evangelist to use the medium, and the first woman to obtain a broadcast license from the FCC. When radio was still not a regular household possession, McPherson set up tents in cities around the Los Angeles metropolian area where people could listen to her programs. She communicated with converts by telephone, receiving them into membership of Angelus Temple (Hadden and Swann, 75-76).
When her radio station was closed by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in 1925, she sent him an angry telegram as follows:
"Please order your minions of Satan to leave my station
alone. You cannot expect the Almighty to abide by your
wavelength nonsense. When I offer my prayers to Him I must fit
into His wave reception. Open this station at once" (Hadden and
Swann, 188-89).
Hoover, soon to become President of the United States, complied.
McPherson's healing services attracted the attention of a large press as well as many skeptics. Epstein reports that the AMA of San Francisco once approved her healing services, describing them as "genuine, beneficial and wonderful." Nevertheless, he quotes a reporter who stated:
"So great has become the controversy over the divine healing meetings...that as the believers descend the steps from the altar, they are seized by critics under the guise of scientific inverstgations and cross-examined as to the genuineness of the cure" (Epstein, 233).
Aimee Semple McPherson embodied a charisma and religious strength that no one thought possible in a woman. While her flamboyant style captured the hearts of millions in America, she also was skilled at grabbing a piece of their wallets as well. She found novel gimmicks and ways of engaging her audiences that would be the admiration of contemporary televangelists (Epstein, 236).
Epstein says that McPherson broke "the boundary that lay between a revival with an intensely personal center and a chorus-and-mob scene out of Cecil B. DeMille" (237). He goes on to descibe McPherson as "the artistic director of a glorious pageant" (237).
So effective was she in enthralling her audiences, critics accused her of "kidnapping" individuals and filling their minds with a bogus religion. But it was her own kidnapping, at the peek of her popularity, that would shroud the memory of Aimee Semple McPherson forever.
In May, 1926 McPherson suddenly disappeared. It was rumored that she had drowned while swimming off Venice Beach, but there was no evidence. When she was found a month later in Mexico, she claimed that she had been kidnapped. Rumors of all sorts abounded, including the tale that she was with Kenneth Ormiston, a former employee and alleged lover.
What followed was a controversy that was not to be repeated in American religious history until the late 1980s when the sexual indiscretions of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart plunged religious broadcasting into a crisis of public confidence. In a word, many found McPherson's tale of kidnapping to lack credibility. The press which had once treated her like a movie star, had a feeding frenzy. She would eventually be indicted for "criminal conspiracy to commit acts injurous to public morals..." The charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence, but the incident would change her life.
In 1930 McPherson suffered a nervous breakdown. It was a year later that she entered her third ill-fated marrage. In 1931 Aimee Semple McPherson married an actor named David Hutton. Again, great controversy arose when she declared her intention to marry because her Church prohibited remarriage while a former spouse was still alive. McPherson married Hutton for two reasons. First, she was lonely and second, Hutton was the one to ask her. Unfortunately, Hutton was consumed with his theatrical career and the marriage lasted only a couple of months (Epstein 362-83).
After the divorce, McPherson traveled from coast to coast preaching her views of the Lord's word. She felt it was her duty and she wanted to fight "the enemy," domestic responsibilities, which tested her faith. Ministers warned their congregations about McPherson's "hypnotism," yet the determined woman participated in numerous miraculous healings, mostly of diseases of the immune system or those attributed to hysteria.
In spite of all the controversy and personal tragedy, McPherson continued to preach and engage in activities that would leave the Foursquare Gospel legacy.
Rolf McPherson, Aimee's only son, assumed leadership of Angelus Temple and the Foursquare Gospel organization when she died in 1944. Under his leadership for the next 44 years, International Church of the Foursquare Gospel emerged as a significant Pentecostal denomination. Today, the church continues to grow. In the United States, much of the tension that once characterized the group's relationship with the broader culture is gone.
Aimee Semple McPherson
This wonderfully crafted page is the creation of Anna Robertson, an undergraduate American Studies student at the University of Virginia. With a touch of humor, but always respect, Ms Robertson's page explores the many dimensions of this remarkable woman and the impact she had on American culture.
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~asr4c/asm/front.html
L.I.F.E. Bible
College
This is the home page for the L.I.F.E. Bible College, which
Aimee Semple McPherson founded soon after founding her own
Angelus Temple for the Foursquare religion. The site provides a
brief description of the College's teachings and a link to the
College's e-mail.
http://www.lifebible.edu/
Welcome
to the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel
This is one of the better home pages for a specific Foursquare
Church. It provides adequate information on the international
information as well as the specific Church's own missions and
relations to the International Church.
http://www.freeyellow.com/members/bcw/page1.html
Foursquare
Gospel's Symbols
For specific definitons of the Church's symbols, this page
provides adequate information.
http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/wroberts/fflcdefn.htm#cross
New
Life Christian Center Home Page
Provides more general information about the International
Church of the Foursquare Gospel and gives some specifics about
the New Life Christian organization.
http://www.efn.org/~christ_w/newlife/4square.html
Biographical
Information on Aimee Semple McPherson
A detailed, yet concise biography of Foursquare's founder,
Aimee Semple McPherson. This site also provides general
information concerning the Church's growth internationally.
While concentrating on the life of Aimee Semple McPherson, the
site also incorporates the Church's proclaimed missions around
the world.
http://www.foursquare.org/whatweare/foursquare_heritage.htm
The
Foursquare Gospel
This site gives information about the Foursquare Gospel's
beliefs and provides various other links to Foursquare related
pages, including specific churches and doctrines.
http://www.cisnet.com/jbrunet/foursq.htm
Created by Jane M.
Lawrence
For Sociology 257, Fall, 1997
Last modified: 07/18/01