Background

Aimee Semple McPherson was born on October 9, 1890, near Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. Christened Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy, she was the only child of James Morgan Kennedy, a Methodist farmer, and Minnie (Pearce) Kennedy, the foster daughter of a Salvation Army captain and herself active in Salvation Army work.

Career

In 1907, after a temporary "loss of faith, " Aimee Semple underwent a conversion experience prompted by the preaching of her first husband, an itinerant Pentecostal evangelist, Robert James Semple, a Scotch-Irish immigrant. Together they conducted revival meetings in Canada and the United States and in 1910 went as missionaries to Asia.

They settled briefly in Hong Kong to await entry into China, but there, in August 1910, Robert Semple died of typhoid fever a month before the birth of their daughter, Roberta Star Semple. Early in 1911 the young widow, with her infant daughter, joined her mother in New York City, where Mrs. Kennedy was working for the Salvation Army.

During the following months, Aimee Semple devoted herself to revival activity in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere. Mrs. McPherson soon felt called to continue revival work, and, beginning in 1916, she traveled extensively up and down the Eastern seaboard in her "gospel automobile, " on which were painted evangelistic slogans.

In 1917, she started a small monthly paper, the Bridal Call, and through it began to build up a following. In 1918, she and her mother and the two children, after an itinerant transcontinental gospel tour, settled in Los Angeles, California. From this headquarters, over the next five years, Mrs. McPherson and her mother set out on repeated cross-country tours, conducting revivals in tents, churches, and public auditoriums in most major American cities and visiting Canada and even Australia.

From donations received on tour, from her Los Angeles followers, and from magazine subscriptions, Aimee Semple McPherson was able to realize her dream of establishing a permanent home for what she now called the "Foursquare Gospel" movement. On January 1, 1923, Angelus Temple, with a seating capacity of more than 5, 000, was opened on a site adjacent to Echo Park in Los Angeles.

The following year a radio station the third in the Los Angeles area began broadcasting from facilities in the Temple. The conservative theology of the Foursquare Gospel movement, as formulated by its founder, was built around the four roles of Jesus Christ Savior, Baptizer, Healer, and Coming King which Mrs.

McPherson found foreshadowed in a vision of the Prophet Ezekiel. Although "speaking in tongues" was gradually deemphasized, faith healing, a part of Mrs. McPherson's work almost from the beginning, grew in importance.

Many came to Angelus Temple seeking healing, their faith strengthened by a permanent display of discarded canes, crutches, and braces. Mrs. McPherson owed much of her success to her mastery of the arts of publicity and her willingness to use flamboyant techniques in a decade and a city congenial to her style.

Her services included the use of orchestras and choirs, vivid portrayals of Bible stories, and elaborate costumes and pageantry. To illustrate a sermon dealing with the consequences of breaking God's laws she donned a traffic officer's uniform and rode a motorcycle down the aisle of Angelus Temple.

On May 18, 1926, Mrs. McPherson disappeared while swimming in the Pacific Ocean near Venice, Calif. , not far from Los Angeles. While many of the faithful searched frantically along the coast for traces of the missing evangelist, Mrs. Kennedy sorrowfully announced at the Temple that her daughter had drowned. A month later, however, on June 23, Aimee McPherson appeared at Agua Prieta, a town on the Mexico-Arizona border, and told a story of having been kidnapped.

Public interest ran high, and in the succeeding months, many accounts of the disappearance were reported. Her conflicting testimony before a grand jury investigating the occurrence resulted in a perjury charge, but early in 1927, for unstated reasons, the case was dismissed.

There is some evidence to indicate that she spent at least part of the month in Carmel, California, with Kenneth G. Ormiston, the radio operator at Angelus Temple, who had disappeared at the same time. This episode and the subsequent controversy resulted in serious disaffection within the top leadership at Angelus Temple and contributed to a break between Mrs. McPherson and her mother.

Despite some defections, however, it did not dampen the spirits of most of her followers. She continued to manage the affairs of the Temple and engaged in further evangelistic work in the United States, England, and France. A tour of the Holy Land in 1930 and an Asian tour in 1931 (including a pilgrimage to Robert Semple's grave in Hong Kong) helped build an international following, and Foursquare Gospel churches were established in many countries by graduates of the Bible school.

In the depression-ridden 1930's, an Angelus Temple "commissary, " established some years before, provided food and clothing for the needy. The years 1935-37 were marked by serious financial difficulties at the Temple and a leadership dispute which pitted Mrs. McPherson in a court struggle simultaneously against her mother, her daughter, and her associate pastor, Rheba Crawford. But with the subsidence of journalistic interest in this controversy, the era of sensationalism was largely over.

Mrs. McPherson now concentrated her energies on the varied activities she once summarized as "teaching in the Bible School, giving radio talks, publishing our weekly paper, preaching on the platform, praying for the sick, and being president of about four hundred branch churches".

By the early 1940's, Angelus Temple had overcome its financial difficulties and had entered a period of sustained, if less spectacular, growth. In 1944, while in Oakland, California, to dedicate a new Foursquare church, Aimee Semple McPherson died from what was ruled an accidental overdose of barbital sedatives complicated by a kidney ailment. After services at Angelus Temple, she was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.

Achievements

• Aimee Semple McPherson is known as the founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. In 1923, Mrs. McPherson (who had herself never completed high school) opened a Bible school which in 1926, became the Lighthouse of International Foursquare Evangelism and moved to its own five-story facilities adjacent to the Temple. The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel was formally incorporated in 1927. All these enterprises remained under the personal ownership and control of Mrs. McPherson and her mother.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Divine Healing Sermons

    (Messages delivered during healing meetings In 1915, Aime...)

  • The Collected Sermons and Writings of Aimee Semple McPherson: Volume 1

    ( Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the International Ch...)

  • This Is That; Personal Experiences, Sermons and Writings of Aimee Semple McPherson, Evangelist

    (This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)

  • This Is That: Personal Experiences, Sermons and Writings

    ("But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel......)

  • The Holy Spirit

    ( The life of Jesus was wrapped up in the Holy Spirit. He...)

  • The Second Coming of Christ

    ( The Lord will come again; He promised us that. But is H...)

  • Aimee: Life Story of Aimee Semple McPherson

    (Life story of Aimee Semple McPherson.)

  • Give me my own God,

    (A book by Aimee Simple Mcpherson)

  • book

  • The story of my life

Views

To thousands disturbed and confused by the disputes over theological "modernism" and the broader transformations of American life, McPherson offered an appealing, updated version of Protestant fundamentalism.

Quotations: "What is my task? First of all, my task is to be pleasing to Christ. To be empty of self and be filled with Himself. To be filled with the Holy Spirit; to be led by the Holy Spirit. "

"We are all making a crown for Jesus out of these daily lives of ours, either a crown of golden, divine love, studded with gems of sacrifice and adoration, or a thorny crown, filled with the cruel briars of unbelief, or selfishness, and sin. "

"Awake! thou that sleepest, arise from the dead! The Lord still lives today. His power has never abated. His Word has never changed. The things He did in Bible days, He still lives to do today. Not a burden is there He cannot bear nor a fetter He cannot break. "

"What is my task? To get the gospel around the world in the shortest possible time to every man and woman and boy and girl!"

"With God, I can do all things! But with God and you, and the people who you can interest, by the grace of God, we're gonna cover the world!"

"O Hope! Dazzling, radiant Hope! What a change thou bringest to the hopeless; brightening the darkened paths, and cheering the lonely way. "

"I have never been brought up a Catholic - I mean, a Roman Catholic - we're all Catholics, aren't we? We're Protestant Catholics, whether we're from Methodist or Baptist or what. "

"Let's keep that our little secret, shall we. "

Personality

Aimee was exposed throughout her early life to the Army's distinctive blend of theological conservatism, humanitarianism, and quasi-military structure. To this, she added her own intuitive flair for the dramatic, which was to become characteristic of her revival work.

In an era of colorful revivalistic preachers, Aimee Semple McPherson stands out as the most widely known female evangelist.

Although she won attention largely by her unorthodox techniques and occasional notoriety, she was a woman of genuine leadership and managerial ability, boundless energy, and a fundamental sincerity of purpose.

Connections

On August 12, 1908, at the age of seventeen, Aimee Semple married Robert James Semple, a Scotch-Irish immigrant. On February 28, 1912, she married Harold Stewart McPherson, a young Providence, Rhode Island, grocery salesman. A son, Rolf Kennedy McPherson, was born in March 1913. Her husband, though for a time in favor of her evangelism, quarreled with her, and in 1921 they were divorced.

A third marriage, on September 13, 1931, to David Hutton, a thirty-year-old choir member at Angelus Temple, proved unhappy. Hutton filed for divorce in 1933, and the decree was awarded on March 2, 1934.

Father:

James Morgan Kennedy

Mother:

Minnie (Pearce) Kennedy

Daughter:

Roberta Semple Salter

September 17, 1910 – January 25, 2007

Son:

Rolf Potter Kennedy McPherson

March 23, 1913 – May 21, 2009 Was the pastor of Angelus Temple and president of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, serving in that capacity from 1944 to 1988.

husband:

Harold Stewart McPherson

husband:

David Hutton

husband:

Robert James Semple

References

• Sister Aimee