Aimee McPherson
DESCRIPTION: Aimee McPherson, radio evangelist, vanishes after a camp meeting; later claiming she was kidnapped. A grand jury investigation uncovers a "love-nest" at Carmel-by-the-Sea. She's jailed and bailed out; her paramour vanishes.
AUTHOR: Words: Unknown/Music: probably derived from Cab Calloway
EARLIEST DATE: 1961 (recording, Pete Seeger)
LONG DESCRIPTION: Aimee McPherson, radio evangelist, vanishes after a camp meeting; upon returning, she claims she was kidnapped. A grand jury investigation uncovers a "love-nest" at Carmel-by-the-Sea, where "the dents in the mattress fitted Aimee's caboose." She's jailed and bailed out; her paramour vanishes. Last lines: "If you don't get the moral then you're the gal for me/'Cause there's still a lot of cottages down at Carmel-by-the-Sea"
KEYWORDS: sex abduction bawdy humorous clergy
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1926 - The "disappearance" of Aimee Semple MacPherson
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 189, "Aimee McPherson" (1 text)
DT, AIMEEMC*
Roud #10296
RECORDINGS:
Pete Seeger, "Aimee McPherson" (on PeteSeeger39)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Hi-De-Ho Man" (tune)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Aimee Semple McPherson
The Ballad of Aimee McPherson
NOTES [20937 words]: The song tells the story pretty accurately. - PJS
Well, according to one interpretation of events, anyway. No one really knows what happened to Aimee Semple McPherson, because every one of the important witnesses was unreliable and the physical evidence slight.
Everyone seems to have learned the song from the singing of Pete Seeger, who began singing the song some time in the 1950s, according to Ed Cray. Seeger got it from John A. Lomax, who picked it up (he thought) in the 1930s but never published it or, seemingly, documented it. The tune is based on "Willie the Weeper" or the Cab Calloway variants "Minnie the Moocher" and "The Hi-De-Ho Man."
In folk circles, people will probably know Aimee Kennedy Semple McPherson (1890-1944) primarily, or only, from this song. This unquestionably gives a very wrong impression, both of her fame and of her personality. She was truly larger than life. Without having any sympathy at all for her religious opinions (which are pretty far toward the psychotic end of Christianity), there was much to like about her: At a time when society and most churches were still quite patriarchal, she was a female preacher, she was open to new methods of preaching the gospel (she invented radio ministry), and she did not judge people.
Plus she pretty clearly enjoyed sex. (Epstein, p. 356, observes that she had hundreds of pages of sermon notes on the Song of Solomon, which often gets explained away as Christ's love for the church, but is frankly erotic poetry -- often rather grotesque in its explicit detail.) If she had been in some other business, we might have spoken highly of her today. Frankly, her story makes me think of Chaucer's Wife of Bath: she is criticized not because of what she did but because she was a woman. A man who did the same would not receive nearly as much criticism.
Bahr, p. 3, calls her "one of the most powerful and influential women in American history -- and certainly the most controversial."
One of her statements had scary echoes three-quarters of a century after her death. Speaking of her popularity, she said, "I have the passionate devotion of thousands. If the papers tomorrow morning proved that I had committed eleven murders, those thousands would still believe in me" (Bahr, p. 3). But unlike the later presidential candidate who later said something similar, I don't think Aimee would voluntarily have caused another person harm, nor ignored the suffering of an innocent whom she could help. Few people have devoted as much energy to good works as she did.
An initial thought. I have a feeling Aimee was neurodivergent. She was always moving, and working on all sorts of things at the same time. By 1922, she had developed long-term insomnia (Epstein, p. 234). Sutton, p. 142, says "there is the also the issue of her mental health. At times she behaved immaturely, she often lacked foresight, and she occasionally struggled with lethargy and depression." She clearly engaged in magical thinking. She had trouble making and maintaining close relationships. And she heard voices.
Maybe she had attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder; it would explain all the distractions in her life. Maybe schizotypal personality disorder (which is marked by magical thinking and problems with relationships). She frequently seemed manic, and there was at least once bout of depressive symptoms when her first husband died (Bahr, p. 287). Epstein, p. 201, hints at another in about 1920, and perhaps others later; maybe she had bipolar disorder. That would explain a lot. I can't know; I don't think anyone can know at this time, since her life was so stage-managed and her personal feelings concealed. But I do think she was different, and not just because she had a vision or two -- though we can't omit that fact.
Almost all accounts describe her as attractive. Rogers, p. 58, calls her a "buxom beauty." Epstein, p. 4, says that at 24 she was "quite beautiful by any standards" and compares her to a hummingbird standing still. Personally, having looked at many photos of her, do not find her attractive at all. But there is no question but that she was both proud of and careful with her looks. In particular, she seems to have paid great attention to her hair. Sometimes it is in curls, or even in ringlets, sometimes cut short like a flapper, but it is always very carefully done. And though she didn't worry much about her clothing in her early years, in the last couple of decades of her life she wore very fancy, expensive outfits.
So let's try to figure out as much as we can about her early life.
AIMEE'S EARLY LIFE
She was born Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy in Salford, near Ingersoll, Ontario on October 9, 1890 (Sutton, p. 9; Epstein, p. 473), Her family was unpromising. Her father, James Morgan Kennedy, was born in 1836. Her mother, who outlived her, was Mildred "Minnie" Pierce, who was more than thirty years younger than Aimee's father, being born between 1870 and 1872; by 1886, she was an orphan who was looking for work (her mother had, in effect, farmed her out to the Salvation Army; Epstein, p 7).
Kennedy had had three children by his first wife, Elizabeth Hoag, but they were young adults by the time Aimee was born (Aimee had a niece who was eight years older than she!), and they played no part in Aimee's life or ministry (Epstein, p. 6. Interestingly, although little is known of Aimee's half-siblings, one of them is said to have had a "mental defect" -- neurodivergence?). Minnie had been hired as Kennedy's housekeeper (Epstein, p. 5) when Elizabeth Hoag Kennedy was in her final illness, helping the older woman until she died, But Minnie stayed on after her mistress's death (Epstein, p. 6).
In 1886, only a few months after Elizabeth Hoag died, Minnie Pearce agreed to marry her boss. The notion was scandalous enough that they did not marry at home; they crossed over into Michigan to marry. The marriage record shows that both of them lied about their ages, giving them as 42 and 22 rather than 50 and roughly 15 (Epstein, pp. 6-7).
Although her husband was a Methodist, Minnie Kennedy became an active participant in Salvation Army activities, fundraising, teaching, and speaking (Epstein, p. 8). At a time when men still ruled the roost, her husband clearly gave her a lot of control over her life. So it is curious that she later described her husband as her "jailer" (Epstein, p. 9); it seems clear that she was trying to create a narrative of martyrdom. For whose benefit she created it is not so obvious. Possibly her own. Possibly she never loved James Kennedy, but married him because it would let her have someplace to live that did not burden her Salvation Army family (cf, Epstein, p. 14).
The Salvation Army was unusual in that it did not really distinguish between men and women. Minnie could be, and was, just as truly a member as any man. One night, perhaps dissatisfied with her marriage, she recalled the story of Hannah at the beginning of 1 Samuel. Hannah, who was barren and was teased by her husband's other wife for it, prayed the famous Song of Hannah (at the beginning of chapter 2 of 1 Samuel) promising that, if she had a son, she would devote him to God. Minnie, by her own account, went into a private room to pray for many hours, praying that she conceive and bear a *girl*, not a boy, and if she had a girl, the child would be devoted to God, as Samuel was (Epstein, p. 10). And, yes, a girl was born, with her teenage mother carrying her to Salvation Army services, in all sorts of weather, within a few weeks after her birth (Epstein, pp. 10-11). Minnie, despite her youth, would never have another child.
Aimee had a relatively quiet life on her family's lonely farm, with a close affinity with the animals (Epstein, p. 16). There are hints that, before her conversion, she liked her solitude (Bahr, p. 23). Such information as we have about her school days indicates that she was a showoff: "Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy was willful, bright, and devastatingly funny. She went to school because she was supposed to, and she did her lessons, mostly. But when the program got dull in the classroom, Aimee would rise to the occasion and do whatever needed to be done to liven things up" (Epstein, p. 22). Epstein, p. 23, refers to her "unyielding strangeness."
After elementary school, in 1905 she attended Ingersoll Collegiate Institute, which was apparently somewhat selective (her class size was just eleven students) and took students from all around the area (Epstein, p. 26) -- significant, in that the school was some distance from her home. She had apparently already established a local reputation as a performer and actress, being given good roles in pageants and such because of her effective control of her voice (Epstein, p. 27). She won a public speaking contest and became known for her ability to speak about religious topics (Epstein, p. 28).
The school seems to have been a good one: It taught real science. She talked to one of her teachers about evolution and related topics (Epstein, p. 30). It sounds like the professor didn't quite know how to deal with the question, but he pointed out some things to read. And read she did (Epstein, p 31).
Minnie was so religiously committed that she sang Salvation Army hymns about the house (Bahr, p. 6). So it must have come as a shock when the teenage Aimee supposedly came home and told her mother (or maybe it was her father; Aimee's versions differ; Epstein, p. pp. 31-32) that she didn't believe in God; physics and Darwinism were sufficient to explain the world (Bahr, p. 7; Rogers, p. 57; Epstein, p. 31). Obviously she would change her mind on this point, but it shows that, from an early age, she was willing to think for herself. (I have to admit to a few doubts about this story, given the way both Minnie and Aimee seem to have constructed their own history; was Aimee trying to imitate Paul, who went from enemy of the church to its greatest apostle? Also, who were the non-Christians in North America c. 1915? They weren't Muslims or Buddhists or the like; they were skeptics. So, perhaps, Amy portrayed herself as a skeptic -- like Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:11, she was becoming all things to all people, that she might by all things save some. The only actual evidence that she had religious questions is a letter she wrote to a newspaper, which talked about Darwinism -- but rejected it; Epstein, p. 33. But even if I'm right about her improving her story, she was still thinking outside the Salvation Army-esque box. In any case, this is one of the reasons why I think she was neurodivergent. Most people of her intelligence would have tried to take the best of both world views. But Aimee was a black-and-white thinker. She went all-in on religion, then came to doubt -- and then flipped back to the other side, not giving any consideration to anything in between. And the side she picked was the one based on ecstatic experience and magical thinking, both of which she started to experience at about the age when most psychotic illnesses start to take hold.)
Being a very temporary skeptic didn't keep Aimee from being active. In late 1907, she was frenetically busy, between school, church pageants, and the farm. Somewhere in there, she also learned to play the piano. Then a group of Pentecostals rented a space in town (Bahr, p. 10). And Aimee visited, and saw them appear to be touched by the Holy Spirit (e.g. one of them spoke in tongues; Bahr, pp. 11-13). She felt a deep consciousness of her own sin. She was on the brink of conversion. A few days later, she cut school to visit one of the Pentecostal families. There she met the leader of the group, Robert James Semple. Who just happened to be young, extremely tall, and very handsome, with brown hair and blue eyes (Epstein, p.. 41-42). He was also about nine years her senior (born 1881), raised Presbyterian in Ulster; he had emigrated to the United States in 1898 and had amounted to very little (Epstein, p. 42). He had been working at the Marshall Fields department store in Chicago (Epstein, p. 45) when he was struck by the urge to give up productive work and start promoting mass stupidity. (To be fair, for a while around the time of their marriage, he did work for a while at a real job, cleaning out locomotive boilers; Epstein, p. 56. For Aimee, who had had a not-too-difficult life until then, it must have been a shock.)
He was probably the worst prospect in the entire area even if you ignore the fact that he was cuckoo. But it was in his presence that Aimee testified to her new faith (Bahr, pp. 18-19; Epstein has a slightly different sequence of events, but since it all has to be Aimee's version of the story anyway, the minor differences hardly matter). Bawled out by her mother for skipping school, Aimee nonetheless dropped as many other activities as she could to spend more time in prayer meetings (Bahr, p. 20) -- in the process getting her mother very angry indeed; Minnie threatened to confine her to the farm (Bahr, p. 23).
What followed would probably be regarded as a crime today. Aimee cut school yet again to go visit the Pentecostals, and spent several hours on her knees praying -- long enough that her legs stiffened. Robert Semple unlaced her shoes and started massaging her feet (Bahr, p. 24). And it just so happened that there was a blizzard that night, so she could neither go home nor even call (Bahr, p. 25). There being no train to take, she left the train station and spent more hours talking to Semple. (According to Epstein, p. 52, the storm lasted from Monday to Friday, much of which Aimee spent in prayer.) One night, on the couch, she stared moaning with her passion. What came next was perhaps indicative of the rest of her life: When she saw Semple standing over her, she kissed him (Bahr, p. 27). As Epstein, p. 47, comments, "Aimee's conversion was one part religion and nine parts falling in lost... Her ministry would forever be infused with the spirit of eros."
It was ridiculous. Semple was a penniless Irish immigrant with no prospects and no skills except the ability to go into a religious frenzy. Can you blame him for deciding to marry a younger woman who was, at least, the child of a respectable Ontario landowner? Eventually Minnie showed up demanding that Amee come home (Bahr, p. 28). It hardly slowed the young couple down. Soon she was burning her secular novels, her secular music, her dancing shoes (Epstein, p. 48). She also clearly gave up on school, since her attendance came to be irregular (Epstein, p. 55). Women weren't supposed to be evangelists, but she was determined to prove that wrong.
The wedding took place on August 12, 1908, after a six month courtship, with a Salvation Army officer presiding (Epstein, p. 54). Instead of a true honeymoon, they packed up and started on their way west. They reached Chicago in late 1908, and Semple was ordained in the Full Gospel Assembly on January 2, 1909. They went from there to Findlay, Ohio (Epstein, p. 57).
While there, an incident took place that is so controversial that Bahr doesn't even relate it, and Epstein is cautious. Supposedly Aimee fell down some stairs and broke her ankle (Epstein, p. 57). A doctor set it but told her that the ligaments would never heal (Epstein, p. 58). Sitting there in pain, a voice in her head told her to go to a mission and have a Brother Durham lay hands on her foot. She went, and he laid on his hands, and she regained the ability to walk (Epstein, p. 59). The problem is, the whole story is basically Aimee's word. Did a miracle happen? Did she make it all up? Or was the doctor wrong about the problem? As with so many things about Aimee's history, we are reliant upon her telling (Epstein, p. 60), and there is no other historic or scientific evidence -- e.g. no X-rays. All that is clear is that Aimee used the story as evidence of God's power.
Early in 1910, Semple decided to head for China (something he had apparently been thinking about for some time). The Semples said farewell to their congregation and sailed to Liverpool, then Belfast (where they visited Robert's family (Epstein, pp. 59-60), then London (where, according to Epstein, p. 472, Aimee preached at Victoria and Albert Hall), then sailed via the Suez Canal and the island that was then called Ceylon.
The Semples made it to Hong Kong in June 1910, where they spent a few weeks at a mission (Bahr, p 36) learning just enough about China to, I suspect, make even worse fools of themselves than they already were. On at least one occasion, while there, Aimee suffered a delusion of the neighbors burning an old man alive (Epstein, p. 66).
But Robert didn't like preaching in Hong Kong. There were plenty of missionaries there. He decided to head up-river to some place called Macoa (Bahr, p. 41). By then, Aimee was about three months pregnant (Bahr, pp. 41-42). But they had only been there for a few weeks before Robert contracted dysentery (Bahr, p. 43). A few days later, he became feverish as well (Bahr, p. 47) -- the doctors suspected malaria. He died in August -- August 4 according to Bahr, p. 48; August 17 according to Epstein, p. 67.
Aimee didn't even have money to bury him; by sheer coincidence, friends in Chicago had sent her some money which arrived in time to pay for the funeral (Epstein, p. 67).
They had been married for two years that month.. Aimee was alone, six months pregnant, in a land where she knew almost no one and didn't even speak the language. Her baby, Roberta Star Semple, was born in Hong Kong on September 17, 1910 (Epstein, p. 68).
Aimee was able to sail for San Francisco using money Minnie sent her, then proceed to New York using money from family and fellow passengers (Epstein, p. 68; Barr, pp. 52-53), with a stop in Chicago along the way (Epstein, p. 69). She was overwhelmed with grief and struggled to care for her not-very-healthy baby, though she did occasionally play piano for her church friends' services.
At this time something very peculiar happened with Aimee's family. Minnie found an extremely complicated way to walk out on her husband, first convincing him to sign over his land to her (as a sort of tax dodge to avoid inheritance taxes), then she went on a sort of vacation to New York, to work for the Salvation Army (Bahr, pp. 50-51; Epstein, p. 68). Bahr says that, while there, she divorced him -- supposedly without telling him! (Bahr, p. 52). He wrote to her often, and invited her back; she rarely wrote in return, and her visits were few. Maybe abandoning an old man on a farm he could hardly work and which she had tricked him out of was Minnie's idea of charity; it certainly isn't mine. James Kennedy did not die until the 1920s, alone and having to pay neighbors to care for him (Bahr, p. 179, says it was in 1925; Epstein gives the date as October 20, 1927). Aimee did not attend his funeral (Epstein, p. 327). There are hints that Minnie might have remarried (Bahr, p. 289; Epstein, p. 325), but if so, the actual relationship was brief.
It was in New York that Aimee finally made it back to her mother (Bahr, pp. 52-53). For the one and only time in her life, Aimee seems to have been really and truly depressed. She sat and moped, hardly even caring for the baby (Bahr, pp. 56-60). One day, she argued with her mother and stormed out into the rain, where she bumped into a man who didn't even have an umbrella (Bahr, pp. 60-61). His name was Harold, or Harry, "Mack" McPherson (Bahr, p. 61) -- and, once again, Aimee's hormones seem to have done her thinking for her. At least this time she went after someone her own age; he was just six months her senior (Epstein, p. 70).
Epstein, p.70, says that we don't know how she met him. Bahr says she stayed out late with him and she frenetically explored New York in -- or perhaps despite -- his company (Bahr, pp. 64-65).
It may have brought Aimee, or at least her hormones, back to life, but it wasn't so good for McPherson. He spent so much time with her that he lost his job and was forced to go back to his family home to work (Bahr, p. 70). He offered to marry her if she would come with him (Bahr, p. 71). She went (Bahr, p. 73).
We don't even know the date they married. Epstein, p. 70, says she listed three different days; he thinks February 28, 1912 the most likely of the three. Roberta Semple -- who stayed closer to McPherson than her mother -- says he loved her until the day he died. Aimee would not prove so constant (Epstein, p. 71). Perhaps it's not surprising; she could never sit still, but Epstein regards him as much more conservative in the good sense of the word; their son Rolf "inherited a level-headedness and self-possession he would never have gotten from Robert Semple" (Epstein, p 72)
Ainee became pregnant very quickly, about two months after getting married. Once again she became depressed (if, indeed, she had ever gotten over the previous bout). Even her daughter didn't lift her spirits much (Bahr, pp. 76-77). But this pregnancy was much worse. She went into labor on March 23, 1913 (Bahr, p. 77). It went so badly that, after the baby was born, she lost consciousness (Bahr, p. 78). The baby, Rolf Potter McPherson, would be her last. (The middle name "Potter" was the name of the doctor who delivered the baby.)
Aimee's depression did not lift after the boy was born (Epstein, p. 72), and she quarreled with McPherson, admitting that she didn't love him (Bahr, pp. 80-81). One night, she started hearing God talking to her: "Preach the word!" (Epstein, p. 73). she decided that she was going to go back to the sort of missionary work she had done with Robert Semple (Bahr, p. 83).
Harold was not amused. He told her that there was no demand for evangelists (which was basically true, but Aimee had ideas about that one) and that women couldn't be evangelists (pure prejudice, obviously). He told her that she was his wife, and she was going to be a housewife, and that was that (Bahr, p. 87). I suspect that, for practical purposes, that was the end of their marriage. McPherson kept trying to hold her back; Aimee became so upset that she became ill again. Doctors performed several more surgeries, leaving her with several scars and damage to her abdomen (Epstein, p. 74, though Bahr seems to think that the surgeries were performed at the time of her pregnancy rather than later); one of these operations was almost certainly a hysterectomy (Bahr, pp. 78, 287). Supposedly she was actually dying when she heard a voice asking, "Now will you go?" (i.e. go evangelize) -- and she answered it that she would (Epstein, p. 75). She started to recover, and as soon as she was well enough, she packed up her things and walked out; she and the children headed for her father's home in Canada (Epstein, p. 75; Bahr, p. 88).
She spent only a little while in Ingersoll -- Bahr, p 90, says she was shocked by the changes, plus she didn't want the people she used to know to see how badly things had gone for her. She did at least get to look over the old property, plus Roberta was able to learn a bit about horses.
She also was able to engage in some minor ministry, at home and in Kitchener, Ontario. She also had the minor triumph of inducing glossolalia in someone there (Epstein, p. 77. Epstein quips on p. 78 that she had become a "sorceress for the faith." Much as I am inclined to agree, glossolalia is a state which certain people can genuinely assume volitionally, and even in the lab. However, linguistic analysis of the results shows that they are not speaking in unknown languages; there is not enough morphological complexity. They are making sounds that are not consciously directed. Presumably this explains why the early Corinthians are said to have experienced much glossolalia -- and why Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 basically told them to knock it off, or at least do it at home. But whatever you or I think of glossolalia, word got around....) Harold McPherson at this time made an attempt to win her back (Epstein, p. 76), but he still wasn't willing to accept her aspirations -- he wanted her to "act like other women" and do housework (Epstein, p. 78).
AIMEE'S EARLY MINISTRY
Aimee did what she could around Ingersoll and Kitchener, but it wasn't much of a ministry by her lofty standards, even though she was preaching, playing piano, and displaying charismatic gifts. She wanted bigger things. Her chance came in 1915 when an Elizabeth Sharp/Sharpe (Bahr calls her "Sharp," Epstein calls her "Sharpe") contacted her. "Sister Sharpe" heard Aimee preaching and asked her to come to Mount Forest, Ontario (Epstein, p. 78; Bahr, pp. 92-93).
It was at Mount Forest that Aimee really came into her own. She came to their chapel, the Victory Mission, and learned that they typically drew about ten to twelve people (Bahr, p. 93; according to Epstein, p. 80, Aimee preached to an empty room for two days and decided to do something about it). There were far more than that out in the street. So Aimee took a chair, went out in the street, and stood still on it for an hour or so (Epstein, p. 4, comments that she had probably "not stood still this long since she began to walk, and she will not stand still this long again while she is breathing"). People gathered around to try to figure out what she was doing -- and she called them to the chapel (Bahr, p. 94), and many came. And she gave a great thumping sermon, alive with enthusiasm, and the crowd was hooked (Bahr, p. 95).
Within days, there were so many people that they needed to move services outside (Bahr, p. 97). They were raucous, but that just brought in more people (and jolted the establishment; as Epstein says on p. 82, "To Episcopalians of the time, Aimee's meetings appeared like orgies scripted by the Witch of Endor.")
Shortly after that, Aimee acquired a big tent. There are different stories of how; Epstein, p. 83, says that Aimee had only $65, and the man who sold it demanded $150 -- then said she could have it for $65 on condition that she take it sight unseen. Bahr's version (p. 97) is that it belonged to Mrs. Sharp's mission, and they told Aimee it was useless, but Aimee bought it for $60 anyway. Wherever Aimee got it, she took it to Providence, where it proved to need major work before it could be used (Bahr, p. 101. I find it curious that Aimee's God could allegedly cure human beings, which are incredibly complex, but couldn't manage to fix a simple tent. To be sure, when it started to collapse during one of her gatherings, she *ordered* the tent to hold up -- and it did; Epstein, p. 86. Over the years, she would develop both expertise and muscles in dealing with all the tents she had to set up; Epstein, p. 84.)
She accepted calls from various places to preach, sometimes with almost no help from the locals -- sometimes, indeed, without them even arranging a location (Bahr, p. 104). Nor did she even necessarily ask for payment; sometimes she didn't know where her next meal would come from (Bahr, pp. 108-109) -- there were times when she would raid an orchard or farm field (Bahr, p. 115). In the course of this, she went from inducing glossolalia in people to her first healings -- a crippled girl giving up her crutches (Bahr, pp. 105-106), a man having an infection go away (Epstein, pp, 87-88. Oddly, neither of these two healings involved a person with an actual name; one is un-named, the other known only be a derogatory nickname).
At a time when racism was rampant, she didn't discriminate based on race -- indeed, she actively reached out to those of other races and classes. She refused to separate Whites and Blacks, and in a few places even brought about integration (Epstein, p. 128). When a semi-literate black woman asked her to come and preach, and gave her no support at all, Aimee still showed up, arranging everything on her own (Epstein, pp. 97-99). On one occasion, she gave the last few cents she had to a black beggar (Epstein, p. 115). When her own mother told her to stop wasting her time preaching to all-Black audiences who had no money, Aimee refused (Bahr, p. 125). She also preached in prisons, where the audiences were small and penniless (Bahr, p. 151).
Her daughter Roberta retold a parable that Aimee supposedly told, years later, when she felt there were Klansmen in her audience: An old Black farmer saw a beautiful church and attempted to enter. An usher stopped him and told him instead to go to a little Black church at a distance. The weary Black man sat on the steps and wept. A stranger came up to him and put his hands on him, and said, 'I too have been trying to get into that church for many, many years." Then Black man looked up -- and realized that the man he was talking to Jesus (Sutton, pp. 33-34; Epstein, pp. 261-263).
Supposedly, the next day, people cleaning the park found many white robes and hoods abandoned in Echo Park (Epstein, p. 263). I very much doubt that -- one sermon won't change a bigot's mind! -- but give Aimee credit for her attitude, anyway.
Harold McPherson rejoined her in this period (Epstein, p. 91), though she was always coming up with new ideas that he had a hard time wrapping his head around.
Epstein, pp. 95-96, calls this period, the years from 1916 to 1923 when the built her Temple, the period of her rise to fame: "Aimee's prodigious gifts flourished under optimal conditions.... For seven years she had maximum freedom to develop her potential as an evangelist and healer, and the results were astonishing if not miraculous. By train and automobile the young preacher crosscrossed the United States, coast to coast, six times, and made the round-trip journey from New England for Florida twice. We believe Aimee was the first woman (with her mother and children) to cross America in an automobile without a man's help [cf. Barr, pp. 134-135]. Between 1917 and 1923 she preached in more than a hundred cities and towns.... [S]he probably faced four thousand different audiences."
At one of them, she healed an actual, named person, Louise Messnick, a young woman afflicted with arthritis that limited her ability to move. Aimee laid hands on her, and she put aside her crutches and stood up straight (Epstein, pp. 107-111 -- though on pp. 111-113 he points out that much of what we know of this came from Aimee herself). There are a number of accounts of similar healings -- enough, in enough circumstances, that it seems clear that they weren't simply fakes or put-up jobs. Epstein thinks that Aimee's healings followed rules of a sort: She didn't heal, say, missing limbs or damaged organs or wounds or birth defects, and she certainly didn't raise the dead. Indeed, she doesn't seem to have made attempts to cure the dying. There are a few instances of broken bones healing surprisingly quickly (e.g. Epstein, p. 117), and one of a woman whose cataract-afflicted eyes became clearer (Epstein, pp. 166-167). Most of her healings had something of a mental aspect -- an ability to ignore pain until a limb moved again or the like. On p. 112 Epstein comments "Her effects were never preposterous [that is, they were all the sort of spontaneous improvements occasionally attested in clinical settings too]. The thing that was so wonderful about the healings was their number and their startling suddenness."
Sutton, pp. 19-20, reports on a survey carried out by William Keeney Towner, a Baptist minister who wanted to show that miraculous healings were possible. He identified 3300 people who had claimed to be healed at one of Aimee's Bay Area meetings. 2500 people responded to his survey. Only 6% claimed to have been "immediately and completely healed." 85% said they were "immediately and partially healed and have continued to improve." Less than 1% claimed no change.
These are intriguing numbers. Clearly most of those who had said at the time that they were healed continued to say so. And the response rate was surprisingly high -- about two-thirds. Of course, we don't know what happened to the other third; many of them might have died or might have relapsed. We have no data. But the fact that only a very few were fully healed is interesting. There is no recorded instance of Jesus failing to heal someone he tried to cure, although in one instance (Mark 8:22-25) Jesus needed two tries to get the healing exactly right. Partial healing would make a lot of sense for something like a painful condition that caused someone to stop moving around, and then be inspired to move under Aimee's prodding -- and, once they started moving, the mere act of moving would cause muscles and bones to regain strength because they were being used.
To put it in other terms: Aimee does not appear to have actually miraculously cured many people; she simply convinced them that they were cured. But what is amazing and has little precedent is her ability to *convince* people that they were cured. Was it as useful a gift as being a doctor who could actually treat a condition? No. But there are a lot of doctors in psych wards who would surely give, if not an arm and a leg, at least a couple of toes to convince depressed people to so believe in themselves.)
Despite her success, she is said to have disliked performing healing events, and even been frightened by the phenomenon (Epstein, pp. 170-171), because she had no control -- whether a healing "worked" depended either (depending on who you believed) God or the patient's own mind, with nothing Aimee could do about it. And, indeed, at one meeting, a woman who was certified psychotic stood up, claimed to be healed -- and attacked those around her (Epstein, p. 171; Aimee's explanation was that it was the Devil's action.)
Her first automobile -- a 1912 Packard she apparently picked up used in Florida, according to Epstein, p. 117, -- was festooned with the slogans "Jesus Is Coming Soon!" and "Where Will You Spend Eternity?" (Bahr, p. 116). or perhaps "I Am Going to the Pentecostal Camp Meeting" (Epstein, p. 120), She also had a portable organ -- at least once, she illegally snuck the car into a parade for which she had no permit and played the organ while the car drove along (Epstein, p. 130). She seems to have driven very recklessly (Epstein, p. 218, says she "had a habit of speeding"; Sutton, p. 71-72, says that one of her later illustrated sermons was "Arrested for Speeding," inspired by a time when she was indeed arrested for speeding. She in fact sat on a motorcycle for that sermon, though she didn't actually drive it inside the church; Sutton's photo section has a photo of her on the motorcycle, though in it she is the arresting officer, not the person being pulled over. Based on Epstein, p. 258, this was actually used as a picture postcard).
World War I likely helped her, because it let her add a (thoroughly non-Biblical) patriotic theme to her preaching (Bahr, p. 113); she actively worked to sell war bonds (Epstein, p. 130). On June 1, 1917, she started a newsletter, the Bridal Call, with thousands of readers (It was named for the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13, also known as the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, some of whom were better prepared for the delayed wedding procession than others). But even as late as 1917 she still didn't have a home or a regular income (Epstein, p. 127). Her marriage was truly on the rocks; she was working eighteen hours a day and ignoring her husband, who didn't like it; she claimed the Devil was talking in her head in Harry's voice (Epstein, p.127). Eventually, on a rainy day in the middle of nowhere, Harry McPherson complained enough that she ordered him out of the car and left him behind (Bahr, pp. 117-120, who says she left him stranded and penniless until she gathered up fifty dollars to send him. Epstein, p. 129, merely says that she left him behind and he returned to Providence. If I read this correctly, she left him in Key West, Florida).
With that, Harry was gone for good. He would file for divorce a couple of years later on the grounds of extreme cruelty and desertion (Bahr, p. 165). He supposedly had witnesses claiming Aimee engaged in histrionic and suicidal gestures (Bahr, p. 166). It sounds as if Aimee never even showed up to contest the claim. Harry got the divorce, and won partial custody of Rolf (Bahr, p. 166; Epstein, p. 217), although the boy in fact remained with Aimee. (We probably don't know all there is to know about the settlement; the records of the divorce have mysteriously disappeared, according to Epstein, p. 218. Epstein does record McPherson as saying, "I would rather give up the pleasure of seeing my own son that put up with even the slightest connection with my former wife").
Lest it be thought that Aimee is entirely at fault here, in 1925 Harold married a younger woman, then divorced her too and married a third time. He lived until 1978 (Bahr, pp. 288-289), working as a lowly hotel clerk, helped by gifts that Aimee sent him every month (Epstein, p. 362).
Aimee sent a telegram to her mother begging for help in her work; Minnie packed up her things, and Roberta's, and left home (Bahr, pp. 124-125). Mother and daughter still didn't always agree, but they would work together for the next decade and more. Minnie became, in effect, Aimee's manager, arranging bookings and such -- much to Aimee's benefit, since it brought her some discipline and actually allowed her to see more people (Epstein, p. 143).
Epstein, pp. 202, gives an interesting analysis of the relationship: "While Aimee's wide gaze is usually lifted toward Heaven, Minnie's vigilant eyes, fiercely intelligent, are watching the side door. Much of AImee's charm comes from her air of vulnerability; no such vulnerability affects Minnie's level gaze. She was, in her granddaughter's words, a tough customer, grilling every agent and hustler who approached her famous daughter." He concludes that Aimee was impetuous, naive, impractical, and that Minnie guarded her from that: "If Minnie had not come to her rescue in Florida in 1918, Aimee might have lived and died as a tent-show queen, consumed by the fanatics and deadbeats who were beginning to follow her." Nonetheless Epstein calls them more like sisters or close friends than mother and daughter. Aimee mostly got her way, but Minnie mostly kept her from going too far; "her position was basically defensive," guarding her daughter (Epstein, p. 203). And Minnie managed the money, kept the riff-raff under control, let Aimee rest (Epstein, p. 215). Although Aimee was the draw, Minnie was the ground upon which the whole structure stood.
In 1918 Aimee transferred from the Packard to a large Oldsmobile that could carry seven -- Aimee, Minnie, the children, and some helpers (Bahr, p. 134; Epstein, p. 146, says the fifth passenger was Louise Baer, "a bespectacled middle-aged Christian," who became Aimee's stenographer; Ber helped navigate and took down Aimee's comments as Aimee drove). This was the car and crew with which she drove across the country to California. Having Baer along allowed Aimee to dictate her autobiography even as she drove, and having the big car meant that all five of them could sleep in the vehicle (Epstein, p. 147).
The trip to California was a bigger achievement than we are likely to recognize today. The biggest problem was that automobiles just weren't very reliable yet, and service stations far between. Even if a car didn't run out of gas, tires went flat frequently, forcing Aimee to fix them (Epstein, p. 146). In the east, this was only a minor problem. Out west, the risks were greater; there was no national road system at the time, and in many places, in particular in the west, the roads themselves were little more than dirt tracks that washed out in the rain. More than once, they had to do things like lighten the car after it got stuck; in one instance, according to Bahr at least, they were in actual danger of death when they got stuck in the middle of nowhere with no help nearby (Bahr, pp. 138-131). On another occasion Aimee drove straight through a roadless desert, navigating by compass (Bahr, p. 142). Caution just wasn't part of her makeup.
IN CALIFORNIA
For all the dangers along the way, Aimee made it to California, which, for her, was certainly the Land of Opportunity, on December 23, 1918 *Epstein, p. 474). In October 1919, she published the first edition of her autobiography, This Is That; there would be later, revised editions, but they mostly added clippings rather than her own prose (Epstein, p. 157).
The Bridal Call was being upgraded during this period. In early 1917 it was just four pages. By the end of the War it was a small magazine, sixteen pages on seven-by-ten paper, costing 25 cents a year (Epstein, p. 121). The masthead had a quote from the Song of Songs, that most erotic of Biblical books, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away" (Epstein, p. 122. Despite this, according to Epstein, p. 107, her favorite Bible verse by this time was Hebrews 13:8, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" ).
The denomination she belonged to was... complicated. In 1919, she joined the Assemblies of God, the biggest Pentecostal denomination, but they were radical enough that she eventually moved away from them and stopped using the word Pentecostal (Sutton, p. 42). A certain Baptist congregation, the First Baptist Church of San Jose, ordained her, but the Baptists as a whole rejected that (even in the twenty-first century, many Baptists refuse to ordain women). She accepted an "exhorter's" license from the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1920 (Epstein, p. 216; Sutton, p. 42) -- but that isn't actually ordination. So was she a Baptist minister? A Pentecostal minister? Self-ordained? Different people might give different answers; I think "self-ordained" probably fits best. She said that she was trying to walk a line between two extremes: "On the left hand -- Formalism. On the right hand -- Fanaticism. The Refrigerator or the Wild-fire" (Sutton, p. 44).
Her knowledge remained limited. "Her narrative powers, turned loose upon a live audience, would be staggering but resolutely archaic, for her literary education (until her middle age) began and ended with the King James version of the Bible, Shakespeare, Voltaiire, and Thomas Paine" (Epstein, p. 21). Thus she used a highly inaccurate Bible, even though by 1907 both the English Revised Version and the American Standard Version were available, and James Moffatt's New Testament rolled out in 1913, and Goodspeed's New Testament, based on an excellent Greek text, was available in 1923. She even persisted in stating that the name of God was "Jehovah" (e.g. Sutton, p. 232) rather than the correct YHWH.
Her theology was interesting. She had a fundamentalist belief in the literal accuracy of the Bible, and a pentecostal belief in the direct action of the Holy Spirit in promoting healings and glossolalia. She also came to talk in terms of the millennial belief in the immanence of the second coming (Epstein, p. 136; on p. 164 Epstein mentions Aimee telling a sort of parable to a reporter about a stenographer disappearing during the Rapture). But despite the sorts of beliefs that tend to be found only among the most radically judgmental of Christian sects, she refused to threaten punishment or pass jugment on people (on at least one occasion she bawled out one of her hosts for talking about judgment; Epstein, p. 117. As a journalist quipped, "Aimee believed in hell -- but not for advertising purposes"; Sutton, p 47). And when she encountered the sorts of people who believed that they were "sanctified," or had achieved moral perfection, she rejected these beliefs utterly (Epstein, pp. 134-135).
Once, after hearing that many of the people she had "healed" were in fact still ill, she preached "I'm not Baptist or Methodist or Pentecostal or anything but Christian. I believe in the infallible inspiration of the Scriptures, And I believe in the Foursquare Gospel -- Jesus Christ as Savior, Baptizer, Healer, and Coming King!" (Bahr, p. 168). Out of that moment of inspiration came the name of her movement, the Foursquare Gospel.
Apparently it eventually became her opinion that the Reformation was a sort of ongoing process, moving gradually away from Catholicism toward the early church, with people like Luther and Calvin and Knox starting the move, then Wesley and his contemporaries, then Pentecostals moving even more toward primitive Christianity (Sutton, p. 41). She was somewhat open even to non-Protestants; she would not attempt to heal a Catholic or a Jew, but she would not bar them from witnessing what she did (Epstein, p. 223).
Yes, there was a lot of silliness, like the glossolalia that even Paul advised against (and that Aimee de-emphasized but later returned to; Sutton, p. 42). But the only thing that is really, truly beyond the mainstream is her insistence on absolute Biblical inerrancy -- e.g. she arranged prayer services for William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes trial (Sutton, p. 37). (Me, I'd have prayed for Bryan to stop being a knucklehead. But a knucklehead he remained till he died.) Indeed, Bryan preached at her church (Sutton, p. 52), even though he was not a clergyman but a second-rate lawyer given to making political pronouncements about things he didn't understand.
That fits with her political aspect -- unlike early Pentecostals, who did not try to distinguish based on where one came from, she was an early Christian Nationalist, declaring that the country was founded by the "Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans" and that church and state should "join hands" (Sutton, p. 91, who notes rather forlornly that this violates the First Amendment). This is of course pure balderdash -- Lord Baltimore had set up Maryland as a refuge for Catholics, Roger Williams had endowed Rhode Island with true freedom of religion, and William Penn had organized Pennsylvania with true religious liberty for the purpose of protecting Quakers. Maybe one can defend Aimee on the grounds that she was Canadian and didn't know what she was talking about. But there is no question that she was wrong.
Sutton, pp. 1-3, describes how, to oppose Upton Sinclair's campaign for governor of California, she created a pageant of American history that tried to claim the United States as not merely a Christian but a Protestant nation. Apparently she thought that, because America had given birth to Pentecostalism, it was specially chosen (Sutton, p. 238). World War II, in particular, stoked her patriotism. A world tour in 1936, which resulted in her book Give Me My Own God, had made her fear the coming of war, but when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Angelus Temple became a hub of war support (Sutton, p. 258). Despite all these conservative ideas, she campaigned for Prohibition candidates but also supported civic projects (Sutton, p.64); she truly did not align on today's political categories.
Even though the early church, as described in Acts 4, was entirely communal, she vigorously opposed Communism in the 1930s. She was also a nativist (Sutton, p. 253-254, says she "struggled throughout her life with nativism. When things were going well for her, she welcomed all people. But as soon as things got rocky, for her personally or for the nation as a whole, she placed the blame on 'outsiders,' whether they were Catholics, immigrants, or Jews."). During World War II, she supported the internment of Japanese (Sutton, p. 260). At least, unlike some Pentecostals, she also opposed fascism (Sutton, pp. 220-221), though she vacillated on issues like war, pacifism, and disarmament (Sutton, pp. 254-255). She really wasn't partisan, and would support either party when it did something she approved of -- but she really did want an anti-science, fundamentalist-Christian nation. She even tried to portray Gandhi as a sort of crypto-Christian to avoid admitting that a good man could come from another tradition (Sutton, pp. 232-233).
There were complaints that she made light of earthly marriage -- and not just because she was divorced. There was, for instance, the time in 1925 when she married twenty couples on a beach, with the women dressed in bathing suits and the men in lifeguard outfits (Sutton, p. 59).
Somber she was not. Even early in her ministry, she liked bringing in full bands rather than just the standard organ or piano (Bahr, pp. 146-147).
After her death, according to Bahr, p. 283, the well-respected Christian Century commented, "Mrs. McPherson made her programs cheerful rather than solemn. Her scheme of things was an adaptation of Salvation Army techniques to the tastes of those who were, culturally and economically, of the middle class. On the other side of the ledge were her fallacious and dogmatic simplification of Christian teaching, her glorification of ignorance, her mouthing of pious slogans and catch phrases, her fraudulent faith cures, her reliance upon the spectacular and the sentimental. An audit of Sister Aimee's account would have to go much farther into both the credits and debits." I think that a pretty fair summary.
It seems like a pretty goofy set of attitudes. But I would much rather have been around Aimee Semple McPherson than, say, Jerry Fallwell.
Stories gathered around her in all sorts of ways. One of her rowdy meetings in Boston gathered Catholic opposition. She appealed to the police chief for protection. None was forthcoming. She warned the chief that he needed to get saved. Within hours, he died of a heart attack. After that, she got her police help. (Epstein, pp. 123-124).
At about this time, she started presenting "illustrated sermons," in which people acted out parts of the stories she told (Epstein, p. 125).
When she arrived in California, she received enough help and support that she could have settled down; at one of her meetings, people donated all the land and materials and labor to build her a home (Epstein, p. 153). Though it wasn't exactly Aimee's own home; it was intended for her family, but Aimee started taking in unwed mothers, so the place quickly became crowded despite having four bedrooms (Bahr, p. 171).
This was another relatively progressive aspect of her ministry. She did not spend her time applying scarlet letters to unwed mothers. She worked to teach them job skills, found them good doctors, and where possible, moved them into homes -- often with widows who needed help and could in turn help care for the children (Sutton, p. 63). She also worked hard to try to reconcile the girls with their parents (Epstein, p. 279).
Many babies were also dropped at her doorstep by girls who knew that she would find them a home (Epstein, p. 280).
She was described as "the only woman alive whose first name alone was sufficient to carry a headline on the front page of any North American newspaper" (Rogers, p. 57). "A McPherson church service was no ordinary revival meeting but an extravaganza filled with music, pageantry, and -- perhaps most important -- sex appeal. While salvation was her message, Aimee, not the Almighty, was the central attraction" (Rogers, p. 58). I'm not sure I buy that sex appeal bit -- who could tell what she looked like from the back row of a revival meeting? -- but her ready discussion of the church as the Bride of Christ does seem to have been somewhat sexually charged -- and to have evoked criticism (Sutton, p. 55).
Eventually Minnie set her foot down, and demanded to settle with the children. Minnie had concluded that Aimee needed a permanent spot -- a "temple" or "tabernacle" (Bahr, pp. 154-155). They set out to design what Aimee originally wanted to call the Echo Park Revival Tabernacle (Bahr, p. 156, Sutton, p. 7, it was so called because it was in Los Angeles's Echo Park neighborhood -- a beautiful park with a lake as well as much equipment). It's a fairly fancy neighborhood, near the junction of Sunset and Glendale Boulevards (Sutton, p. 20). -- streets that most Americans will have heard of. A later inspiration caused her to call it the "Angelus Temple" (Bahr, p. 169). It's still there, too, and still used by Aimee's sect. Despite all the talk about its architecture and its beautiful white dome, when I look at it, I can't help but think that it looks like a parking ramp as designed by a classical architect, or maybe a sports stadium designed by someone who had wanted to design a stable instead. Epstein, p. 203, calls it "not only a monument but a fortress." The interior sanctuary is by all accounts beautiful -- if somewhat more like a Broadway theater than a church sanctuary -- but the interior of the building can't attract passing motorists!
The sanctuary, in addition to things like an orchestra gallery, a $22,000 organ, and ceiling decorated to resemble the sky, had a baptismal font intended to look like a flowing stream (Sutton, p. 21. Supposedly Marilyn Monroe was baptized there by Aimee, according to Sutton, p. 88; Bahr, p. 298, attributes this information to Norman Mailer's biography of Monroe). Monroe wasn't the only big name involved with Aimee; she rescued Anthony Quinn from poverty, hiring him as a musician and translator, and helping him get started on his performing career (Epstein, pp. 377-378).
(On the other hand, Langston Hughes had no reason to be grateful. Bitter at the way Blacks were treated in America, he wrote a poem "Goodbye Christ" which sarcastically referred to "Saint Aimee McPherson," and her followers harassed him into canceling a Los Angeles appearance; Sutton, pp. 244-247).
The construction estimate said it would cost a quarter of a million dollars to build (though no one knows what was actually spent; the records are lost; Epstein, p. 236). To afford it, Aimee took the first really bad turn of her career: Wearing a nurse's uniform, and bringing in attendants similarly garbed, she staged a deliberate healing ceremony (Bahr, pp. 162-163. Yes, she had been credited with healings before that, but they were more or less spontaneous. To be fair, it seems that she had adopted the nurse's uniform because she had gone to a clothing store and found that stylish clothes were about six times as expensive as dresses meant for servants, so she started wearing servants' dresses; Epstein, p. 144) There were hundreds present, and apparently hundreds who claimed to be healed -- although, as expected, most of these "healings" did not hold up when investigated by doctors and members of other sects (Bahr, p. 167). She drew back from healings after that (Bahr, p. 168). Instead, she continued to travel the country, staging "Great Revivals" in 1920, 1921, and 1922 to raise money for the Angelus Temple (Epstein, p. 155). It marked a great change: "Aimee would never regain control of her religious career. Henceforth she must adjust to being the artistic director of a glorious pageant" (Epstein, p. 237). This even though Minnie, the no-nonsense half of the team, did all the practical management (Epstein, p. 273) -- and was so tight-fisted and tight-lipped that there were complaints by contributors about her management style (Epstein, pp. 273-274. Minnie's response? Once she figured out who was complaining, she tore up their membership cards and kicked them out of the organization. Later, she in effect evicted a whole congregation; Epstein, pp. 284-285. Captain Bligh had nothing on Minnie Kennedy).
Grounbreaking was in February 1921 (Epstein, p. 474). They carefully set things up so that each part of the building was done only after she raised money to build it, so Aimee never went to a bank for credit (Sutton, p. 15). She didn't like the healings -- e.g. she didn't do them on a vacation/fundraising trip to Australia (Epstein, pp. 243-244), but she was so well-known that all her appearances were performances of some sort.
She was already using technological gimmicks: She supposedly preached a sermon from an airplane to bring in visitors (Epstein, p. 209 -- though her next plane trip would involve her in a minor crash; Sutton pp. 66-67). I have no idea how many people could hear her, but no doubt some read the handbills she tossed from the plane. She also apparently released recordings of some of her sermons (Sutton, p. 78), and would later work on an autobiographical movie (Epstein, p. 251).
The Angelus Temple was dedicated on New Year's Day, 1923 (Bahr, p. 169). Aimee wasn't the only spiritual leader there; she invited clergy from many denominations to try to show her ecumenicalism (Sutton, p. 45) -- and I suspect they came because they wanted a piece of her popularity. One of the slogans she carved on the building said, "Dedicated until the Cause of Inter-Denominational and World Wide Evangelism" (Sutton, p. 45). She did not try to lure followers away from their home churches, instead offering "associate" memberships to those already part of some other congregation (Sutton, p. 46). And she would give roles to people with lesser credentials, too -- e.g. her Sunday School classes often had children teaching other children (Sutton, p. 62).
Her goal may have been to found a conduit to Christianity rather than a proper church, but the problem was, if people liked her, they generally preferred to stick with her rather than go to some more staid church with a boring pastor and, at best, a slightly wheezy old organ. They wanted to say with Aimee -- and, given the 5300 seats in her Temple, there was room for many of them to do so! (Epstein, pp. 247-248). And even if she wanted otherwise, she had to keep them coming, because the Temple had to be kept up, and a building that big needed expensive maintenance (Epstein, p. 252).
Building the edifice seems to have caused her to compromise her principles a bit; she put up with a lot of unofficial segregation of Blacks and Hispanics, pushing them off into separate locations. She did create a Spanish-speaking subsidiary at a time when most other churches wouldn't -- but she put Anglo leaders in charge (Sutton, pp. 197-198). The time would come when she would accept the support of the Ku Klux Klan (Sutton, pp. 32-33), Sutton, p. 203, concludes that she was genuinely un-prejudiced but occasionally gave up her principles in order to achieve other goals. Also, she went from someone who lived on a bare pittance and often didn't ask for offerings to someone who was a big-time fundraiser (Epstein. p. 205). The accounting for these donations was sloppy, but the tax system of the time was much less meticulous than it is now.
In one of her typical forward-looking moves, she decided to be the very first radio evangelist, and she wanted to be sure that her station could be heard as far away as possible. The station cost $25,000, though apparently its signal had only 500 watts of power (Sutton, p. 79).
It was at her home that she met Kenneth Gladstone Ormiston to discuss how to set up the radio station she wanted to launch in 1924 (Bahr, pp. 170-171). His experience was extensive; he had run KHJ radio for the Los Angeles Times Her other leading engineer, George Neill, had also run a station before this (Sutton, p. 80),
Ormiston was not even Christian; he admitted to being an agnostic (Bahr, p. 172). But he was good, and there were no Christian broadcasters available; Aimee hired him even though he reportedly demanded $3000 a year (Bahr, pp. 172-174). The result was radio station KFSG, with the last three call letters being derived from "FourSquare Gospel" (Rogers, p. 58). It was the first religious radio station in the United States -- and the first commercial license granted to a woman (Epstein, p. 264). The station formally started broadcasting in February 1924 (Epstein, p. 474). Soon Aimee was able to start "The Sunshine Hour," a morning religious broadcast (Bahr, p. 175). This put her in Ormiston's company on most days (Bahr, p. 177).
She also started work on what became L.I.F.E. Bible College ("the Lighhouse of International Foursquare Evangelism"), and started founding "Lighthouses" around the country (Bahr, p. 178). It was a seminary of sorts, but as well as teaching the Bible it taught how to manage a church and evangelize -- and ignore "higher criticism" (Sutton, p. 53) -- which, I feel obliged to point out, actually tries to discover the things that Aimee claimed to teach (but refused to actually learn) such as the original text of the Bible and the actual history of the church. As an academic institution, it doesn't seem to have produced much, but Aimee did manage to attract one fairly big name: Frank Thompson (Sutton, p. 54), whose Thompson Chain Reference Bible had already gone through two editions and is still available today in somewhat-updated form; it is a very learned although very tendentious work.
There was also a "Tower of Prayer," where volunteers met to pray for people who requested it. On a more practical level, there were groups to sew clothes and staff a kitchen -- this "commissary" was opened in 1927, and according to Epstein, p. 249, the Temple would become the largest relief organization in Los Angeles during the Great Depression. She didn't just accept donations; she coaxed and cajoled anyone and everyone, including many major businesses, to contribute to the operation (Epstein, pp. 369-371). When Los Angeles police or social services couldn't help someone, it was to the Angelus Temple they turned (Epstein, p. 371). And Sutton, pp. 192-195, reports that it tried to serve everyone -- migrants, minorities, bums, it didn't matter -- at a time when most relief organizations discriminated in one way or another. (There was, however, a major scandal when workers there were found to be funneling off food; Sutton, p. 194).
She ran floats in the Tournament of Roses parade, and even won awards with them (Bahr, p. 178; according to Sutton, p. 64, it was the most expensive float in the parade. Epstein, p. 248, says it was a model of her Temple). She started buying more expensive clothes, too (Epstein, p. 219), and fancier cars, and even hired a publicity director and agents, plus she courted newspaper reporters (Sutton, p. 82).
It was a strain. A reporter at this time described "a fairly average day" for Aimee as featuring three church services, a theology class, two weddings, and a funeral, plus conferences and advisory councils (Epstein, p. 275). She was sleeping only five hours a night (Sutton, p. 83). Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that she gradually lost her self-control.
It was Ormiston who caught most of her private attention, at least according to Bahr (whose account, however, is clearly very imaginative at this point). Minnie eventually convinced Aimee to dispense with his services (Bahr, pp. 185-186). By then Aimee (who had been told she was in danger of a nervous breakdown because of how hard she was pushing herself; Epstein, p. 288) decided to take a vacation to Europe and the Holy Land starting in January 1926 (Bahr, p. 187). She and Roberta visited Robert Semple's family in Ireland (Bahr, p. 188-189) -- and then, at least according to Bahr, p. 188, Aimee met Ormiston in Rome. And a newspaper heard about it (Bahr, p. 191; Sutton, p. 89). Aimee and Ormiston had to take action to hide the liaison (Bahr, pp. 191-192). For the moment, it worked. Aimee visited the Holy Land and Egypt with Roberta, and she preached in England (Epstein, pp. 289-291), with no sign of Ormiston.
AIMEE'S DISAPPEARANCE
Then came the Great Mystery of 1926 that is the subject of this song: Where did McPherson disappear, and what did she do while missing? All our sources are secondary; the Foursquare Gospel organization, according to Bahr's un-paginated foreword, refuses to allow outsiders to see their records unless they officially accept McPherson's account of what happened. But, as Sutton says on p. 94, the event "permanently tranform[ed] her image."
If Aimee had simply decided to take another vacation, all would likely have been well. She in fact did take time off, going to Venice Beach (Sutton, p. 92, who notes the irony that Aimee had opposed a referendum to loosen the blue laws there) with her faithful secretary Emma Schaffer -- swimming being a passion of hers (Bahr, p. 195; Epstein, p. 280). She went out to swim (if it matters, Epstien, p. 292, says she wore a "pea-green bathing suit") -- and vanished around 3:30 (Rogers, p. 59; Sutton, p. 93). When Shaffer noticed her absence, she called the hotel staff; eventually the police joined in. She was not found. Aimee had left her purse and most of her clothes (Bahr, p. 195.) The obvious assumption was that Aimee had drowned -- though there were a few voices, from the first, who suggested a publicity stunt (Sutton, pp. 95-96). No one seems to have thought she was hiding a tryst.
The headlines hit the streets on May 18, 1926: "Evangelist McPherson Believed Drowned!" (Bahr, p. 194). Soon the word was broadcast on KFSG
Did Schaffer know anything? The universal sense seems to be that she didn't; that Aimee tricked her, too; she was too overwrought about Aimee's disappearance to know that Aimee was safe.
People all over prayed for Aimee, and many went to the beach to search for her body (Bahr, p. 196) -- so many that it actually interfered with people's ability to get illegal liquor off rumrunning boats (Bahr, p. 200). There were vigils every day at the beach. Two searchers drowned (Sutton, p. 97; Epstein, p. 294, says that one woman "detemined to join the evangelist in death," threw herself into the sea and drowned). Others started having visions about her. There were fistfights as people argued about what might have happened to her. Suggestions included things like murder or kidnapping for profit (Bahr, pp. 198-199) -- she had plenty of enemies, both political and religious. Her mother repeatedly insisted that she was dead (Rogers, p. 60), but nonetheless offered a $25,000 reward for her recovery (Epstein, p. 295).
But Aimee was not drowned or murdered. Kidnapped... remember that thought.
The reconstruction offered by non-adherents is that she was with Ken Ormiston, who drove them to the town of Carmel (a good Biblical name; Elijah had had his great contest with the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18). One of the newspapers -- all of which were giving the case front-page coverage -- eventually noticed that Ormiston had disappeared at about the same time as Aimee (Sutton, p. 97).
One has to wonder what she saw in Ormiston. He doesn't seem to have been handsome, based on the photo in Bahr's photo insert; he was losing his hair (Sutton, p. 110, calls him "bald," which is an exaggeration but a slight one); he is reported to have limped (Epstein, p. 264, mentions a report that he had a wooden leg), he wore expensive clothes, and he didn't share Aimee's religion. The only explanation anyone seems to have is that Ormiston was around Aimee at a time when she really had no other friends (so, e.g., Epstein, pp. 282-283). He was apparently good at making her laugh, even joking with her on the church intercom system during church services -- unfortunate, since the acoustics of the Temple were so good that people in one of the balconies could hear her giggling (Epstein, p. 287).
Ormiston was married at the time, though his wife was working on divorce proceedings -- and citing his relationship with Aimee (Rogers, p. 61. Ruth Ormiston would eventually give up on the divorce, but she did walk out on him; Epstein, p. 289). Aimee, legally, was not married, having been divorced from McPherson. But conservatives denominations generally would not have accepted that -- she didn't have to cohabit with McPherson, but she couldn't marry anyone else.
The place Ormiston was staying at Carmel was secluded, but not absolutely secluded. A few people claimed to have seen Aimee there (Bahr, pp. 202-203) -- though it is noteworthy that none of them said anything until the authorities started investigating Aimee. Bahr, pp. 202.-205, suggests Ken and Aimee headed south, perhaps to visit a friend, along the way fending off a nosy reporter who thought he recognized them..
A little after this Ormiston made an appearance, without Aimee, supposedly just to be seen without her (Bahr, pp. 201, 206; Rogers, p. 61). The District Attorney cleared him of wrongdoing; he disappeared again (Sutton, p. 97).
It's worth noting that, up to this point, Aimee and Ormiston had committed no crime. Swimming away from a beach and going into hiding is legal, and while it wasn't very nice of Aimee to drive her followers crazy, she could claim that, in seclusion, she hadn't known of their grief. But Ormiston claimed the reporter who had seen them together had lied (Bahr, p. 206). Technically that's not perjury, because he wasn't under oath, but he was skating on thin ice.
Allegedly Aimee and Ormiston spent another two weeks together, then prepared to cover her actions by sending out a letter saying she had been kidnapped and demanding a ransom of $500,000 (Bahr, p. 209).
The ransom attempt was a flop. The papers, and Minnie, ignored it (Bahr, p. 210). With no other choice, Aimee decided to "escape." Ken let her off by a road in Arizona (Bahr, p. 211).
Of course things had not sat still since she had vanished. Nine days after Aimee's disappearance, Los Angeles District Attorney Asa Keyes declared that he would start an investigation if Aimee's body did not appear within 24 hours (Rogers, p. 60). A city detective named Herman Kline (Bahr's spelling) or Cline (Epstein's and Rogers's spelling) was investigating the case. Cline's first act was to hunt for Ken Ormiston (Rogers, pp. 61-62). Cline didn't find him, and said for a while that he thought Aimee had indeed drowned (Rogers, p. 62). He would not stick to that opinion.
Minnie Kennedy petitioned for a death certificate. She didn't get it (Rogers, p. 63); there were so many nationwide reports of Aimee's appearances here, there, and everywhere that the coroner didn't consider it justified (Epstein, p. 295)..
And then Aimee turned up in the Arizona desert on the night of June 22/23 (Sutton, p. 99). It was as if she had appeared magically and set out to find her way to find civilization. The first shack she found was abandoned; the next has no telephone. Finally, her feet aching, she reached a home in Agua Prieta, Mexico, just south of the US border (Sutton, p. 99). From there she was taken to the nearest hospital, in Douglas, Arizona (Bahr, pp. 212-213; Rogers, p. 64). She needed some treatment fo her feet, but the nurse reported that she was otherwise in good condition, with no signs of dehydration or a long time in the sun (Bahr, p. 214).
There were people in the area who had seen her and were able to identify her. She needed the help; the hospital didn't want to take her in without proof she could pay, and one of the officers who brought her in had to promise to cover her bills if she could not (Rogers, p. 65). But, once she was found, the newspapers went crazy again, sending reporters by private plane to try to get scoops (Sutton, p. 101).
Her story was that she had been drugged and kidnapped, and had escaped on her own, then walked some twenty miles to rescue (Rogers, p. 63). Interviewed from her hospital bed, Aimee partly contradicted Emma Schaffer's account, saying that she had sent Emma on an errand. She had been lured way from the beach by a woman named "Rose" (or "Mexicali Rose") who asked for prayers for a dying child. The "child" turned out to be just a bundle of clothes containing choloroform, which knocked her out until the next day. There had been three people involved, "Rose," a man named "Steve," and a third whose name was "Jake" (Epstein, p. 301). "Steve" had ordered her to send a ransom note. She claimed he had burned her hand to try to force her. Then Steve and Rose moved her to a shack in the Sonora desert. They cut off some of her hair and sent a ransom note. Once, they left her bound while going out for supplies. She managed to cut her bonds with a tin can lid and escape, fleeing until she found someone to help her (Bahr, p. 215; Rogers, pp. 66-67).
(As Sutton, p. 100, points out, kidnapping was not an entirely implausible tale. There were kidnappings in Los Angeles at this time: young women were taken into "white slavery," and high-profile people were kidnapped for political reasons. And Aimee's campaigns to maintain the various blue laws had made her enemies. Indeed, Aimee's story of a kidnapping may have been inspired by experience, because it had happened once before -- conveniently, when there was a newswoman with her to verify the story. On June 17, 1922, following a service, Aimee was preaching in Denver and was called to an automobile outside. Frances Wayne of the Denver Post accompanied her. They came to the car -- and were seized by members of the Ku Kux Klan. They were taken to a meeting of many hooded Klansmen. She managed to talk her way out of it; they even gave her a contribution a week later; Epstein, pp. 241-243.)
Her story sounded plausible until you realized that her clothes and even her shoes were intact, and the roads in the area meant that her alleged shack had to be within a certain limited area -- and the sheriff reported that there was no shack there (Bahr, p. 216). So did the chief of the Mexican border patrol (Rogers, p. 69). Aimee's suggestion was that the shack was portable, but the overwhelming evidence is that it simply did not exist (Bahr, p. 217).
But even if you ignore the fact that Aimee was not dehydrated after supposedly wandering in the desert, and the fact that her hiding place could not be found, there were other contradictions.
Although the newspapers had flown reporters to Douglas to get scoops, Aimee decided to return to Los Angeles by train. She returned to the city 38 days after her disappearance (Rogers, p. 71). On June 27, she preached her story to a packed crowd at the Angelus Temple. But the local authorities, and most of the papers, apparently wanted to go after her because she was an "embarrassment" (Epstein, p. 301).
Bahr, p. 224, thinks that District Attorney Keyes didn't want to tackle the McPherson case; it just wasn't a politically smart thing to dig into. But another pastor, Robert Shuler, who despised Aimee's success and who made a career of digging up scandals, made so much noise that Keyes finally had to investigate (Bahr, pp. 222-225).
Keyes organized a grand jury and called upon Aimee to testify. Minnie didn't want her to, and her lawyer argued against it, but Aimee went (Bahr, pp. 225-227; Epstein, p. 303). Supposedly the questioning went on for so long that Keyes and an assistant had to take turns (Bahr, p. 228; Sutton, p. 104, says it took two days). The song is correct: "in spite of a lot of questions, she stuck to her tale." There seem to have been minor inconsistencies in her testimony, but that's pretty normal. Although a lot of people thought she was being persecuted, she certainly came prepared, with no fewer than three high-powered lawyers (Sutton, p. 104).
One of the grand jurors pointed out to her that two people had died searching for her. Apparently she was very shaken, but she didn't change her story (Bahr, p. 230).
The grand jury failed to issue a warrant for any alleged kidnappers (Bahr, p. 231); Sutton, p, 103, comments that "investigators show[ed] little interest in unearthing kidnapping rings." Apparently 14 of 17 grand jurors had disbelieved her testimony (Sutton, p. 107). Aimee herself, after it was over, accused Keys of wanting to "sacrifice a woman pastor" (Sutton, p. 106).
But people were coming forward who claimed to have seen Aimee and Ormiston at Carmel, and one who had seen her on the way to Arizona. Such evidence isn't worth much, but a couple who had rented the Carmel cottage, who had used the name "McIntire," had left a few things behind when they left. Most were generic items, but one was a grocery list that, according to Detective Cline, was written in Aimee's handwriting (Bahr, pp. 231-232. I am amazed that no one seems to have taken fingerprints off the items. (Rogers, p. 75, says Aimee refused to give fingerprints, but no one else ever even mentions the idea.) A handwriting expert would agree that the handwriting was Aimee's; Bahr, p. 248). Attorney Keyes had little choice; he was going to have to investigate Aimee.
Also, a nut case named Lorraine Wiseman, or Wiseman-Sielaff (Wiseman was apparently her maiden name), turned up claiming that her sister, rather than Aimee, was the woman at Carmel (Sutton, p. 117). She proved to be a crackpot who had been guilty of writing bad checks (Bahr, pp. 233-236). Eventually it would come out that her estranged husband was trying to get her committed to an insane asylum for all the crazy things she said (Bahr, p. 238). Wiseman did nothing to advance the case, but she kept it alive for a while (Sutton, pp. 117-118).
After Wiseman seemed to give evidence of lying on Aimee's part, DA Keyes finally moved, filing felony charges against Aimee, Minnie, Ken Ormiston, and Lorainne Wiseman, plus a John Doe on September 16, 1926 (Rogers, p. 77; Epstein, p. 475). In the cases of Aimee and Minnie, the charges were perjury and manufacturing false evidence (Bahr, p. 238) -- absurd, in Minnie's case, since everyone agrees that she had no part in the whole thing. This led H. L. Mencken to quip that, in his native Maryland, no judge would hear a charge of lying brought against a woman who was defending her chastity, "But in California... the process of justice is full of unpleasant novelties" (Bahr, p. 241).
Aimee, who at about this time had minor surgery for a nasal cyst, was never formally placed under arrest but did post bond (Rogers, p. 77). She struck back by trying to force Detective Cline off the case, managing to force him into an auto accident (Bahr, pp. 243-244). He was never found guilty of anything, but he was removed from the case. She also went after DA Keyes (Bahr, p. 244-245), though he could hardly be reassigned. She insinuated that, as a Catholic, the lead investigators could not be trusted (Sutton, p. 114-116, who says that she even accepted the support of the Klan at this time, since they hated immigrants and Catholics as well as Blacks).
Aimee had also talked about suing... someone... for libel, but no such suits were filed (Rogers, p. 72).
On September 27, there was a preliminary hearing to determine whether Aimee should be tried for criminal conspiracy (Sutton, p. 122). The trial attracted large numbers of reporters -- and also a lot of young women, many of them young women with short hair whom the newpapers disparaged as flappers (Sutton, p. 125. It would seem that Aimee ironically gained support both from conservatives who saw that she had not yet adopted the new styles and from young women who were more open to someone who had had a tryst.).
There were several witnesses who testified that they had seen Aimee at Carmel with Ormiston. But the defense, after pointing out that none of those witnesses had come forward at the time, called others who said that the Miss X who was with Ormiston was not Aimee (Sutton, p. 124).
Keyes clearly didn't study the accounts of his witnesses very closely. Some of them said that Miss X had bobbed hair. Aimee at this time still had long hair -- as pentecostals of the time expected of their women -- so there was talk that she must be wearing a wig. She made Keyes look like a fool by letting down her hair in court pulling on it a little, and tying it up again (Sutton, p. 126; Epstein, p 309. Ironically, not too long after, she would bob her hair). From there, they got into her underwear (Sutton, p. 128) -- which sounds disgusting (and was), but was actually relevant -- apparently she had been found wearing a corset that she hadn't had when kidnapped.
Minnie was arrested and released on bail. Aimee collapsed (Epstein, p. 307; Sutton, p. 118). It sounds to me like depression, although people at the time called it hysteria. Her insomnia was so bad that she reported hardly sleeping (Epstein, p. 309).
The preliminary hearing is said to have been the longest on record -- 23 court days, not ending until October 28 (Sutton, p. 133). On November 3, the judge ruled the case against Aimee and Minnie could go forward, with the trial scheduled for January 10, 1927 (Bahr, p. 248; Epstein, p. 312). The prosecutors had never managed to locate Ken Ormiston, but he made another brief appearance in California on December 9, was charged, and was released on bail (Bahr, p. 249; Rogers, p. 78, says he was located in Pennsylvania living under an alias, but most accounts seem to say he came to California voluntarily). This was another embarrassment for DA Keyes, since he had filed his case without ever having talked to Ormiston! (Sutton, pp. 135-136). But it wasn't good for Aimee, either, since there were daily headlines about it in the newspapers (Epstein, p. 307)
The trial never took place. On January 10, just before the trial was to begin, DA Keyes dropped charges: "The fact that this defendant fabricated a kidnapping story or that she spent time at Carmel are not, in themselves, offenses of which this court can entertain jurisdiction" (Bahr, p. 249). He claimed that the conspiracy charge depended on Lorainne Wiseman and could not be sustained because of her inconsistent testimony (Sutton, p. 136; Rogers, p. 78). He did not say he thought the charges false, but he had concluded he could not prove them. Aimee nevertheless claimed vindication (Sutton, p. 138)
Some thought that politicians such as the mayor of Los Angeles had pressured him (Sutton, p. 117). There were suggestions that Keyes had been bribed. No evidence of corruption could be found in the McPherson case, but he would be convicted and imprisoned for taking bribes in another case (Bahr, p. 249). Amazingly, Aimee would later visit him in prison (Epstein, p. 367). Sutton, pp. 138-139, points to evidence that McPherson manipulated -- perhaps even blackmailed -- the press into helping her get off the hook.
The arguments over the case grew so heated that at least one anti-Aimee leader had shots fired into his house, and two people were killed in disagreements over her story (Sutton, p. 111). But, once DA Keyes dropped his charges, the legal side of the case was over. All that was left was the media arguments.
Could Keyes have won a conviction? It's worth asking what reliable evidence we have about the case.
- We know that Aimee disappeared for more than a month. (But she had long had a tendency to take weekends off, and to disappear; she rarely went to the same place twice, according to Epstein, p. 288).
- We know that Ormiston appeared publicly once, but only once, in this time.
- We know that Ormiston was at Carmel; he admitted to it -- but he said he was with a nurse from Seattle (Rogers, p. 79). We can probably accept his presence there as fact. It's just that we don't know who was with him. Ormiston had at least one, and possibly two, mistresses (Epstein, p. 301), so he could have been with one or the other of them at Carmel.
- Minnie Kennedy would later say that AImee was fascinated by Ormiston. However, Minnie said this after her relationship with Aimee had soured (Sutton, pp. 141-142; more on this below)
- We have almost certain proof that Aimee's story was false, since the shack she claimed to have been kept in did not exist. She never offered any verifiable evidence of anything pertaining to the kidnapping, and no kidnappers were identified. Her physical condition when she was found also contradicts her story.
- We know that a lot of people claimed to have seen her at Carmel -- but that none of them came forward at the time she was there, even though there was a $25,000 reward for part of that time. They passed over $25,000, only to talk about it later? And you're telling me all these people came to a vacation spot -- and *none* of them brought a camera and took a picture? As Epstein says on p. 314, "Hardly anyone... following the details of the testimony could believe the snarled evidence that suggested Aimee was the woman hiding with Ormiston in Carmel."
- On the other hand, no one who actually knew her ever stated where she was during this period.
- We should probably say, for the record, that neither Aimee nor Omiston ever said anything about a romantic relationship (Bahr, p. 292).
- There was no forensic evidence that could be brought to trial. None. None of the investigators had made any serious attempts to locate anything. All they had was that grocery list that Aimee had supposedly made. But that had disappeared during the grand jury hearing -- supposedly one of the jurors flushed it down the toilet! (Epstein, p. 306). Which meant that Keyes couldn't use it in court. We can't prove it was Aimee's handwriting, either, since only one expert examined it. Why Keyes didn't photograph the thing I don't know, except that no one in his department seemed to understand what counts as genuine evidence.
My conclusion: Keyes possibly could have gotten her on a perjury charge, for lying to investigators about her whereabouts. But conspiracy? Frankly, the evidence for her spending time at Carmel is so weak that I'm not absolutely convinced she went there. Yes, it's the easiest explanation. But it's not proof beyond a reasonable doubt; it's barely proof by preponderance of evidence.
Sutton's conclusion on pp. 142-143: "as damning as the circumstantial evidence linking McPherson to Ormiston appears to be, the mystery will probably never be totally solved. To this day those who were closest to Aimee stand by her kidnapping story; and Ormiston always denied that McPherson was his secret mistress.... [n]either a politically savvy district attorney... nor two very well financed newspapers ever uncovered a single shred of evidence that conclusively linked Aimee Semple McPherson with Kenneth Ormiston during the spring of 1926."
A big part of me that wants to believe that Aimee, in some sense or other, actually believed her story. Maybe the voices in her head told it to her. If she had dissociative amnesia during the disappearance, she could perhaps have filled in the gaps in her memory with... something else. As Epstein, p. 314, notes, this is not a case where one must either believe Aimee's story of kidnapping or the account of her being with Ormiston. The only verifiable facts are that she disappeared while swimming and reappeared in Arizona; there is no reliable information about anything that happened in between. Epstein, p. 314, also notes that people who experience trauma can have severely distorted memories.
Epstein, p. 313, reached the same conclusion as I do: "That Aimee herself believed in the kidnapping, as poetry or as history, we are in no position to question. It had become a tenet of faith.... Everyone who has studied the case, from its shocking beginning to its pathetic end, has remarked on this significant fact: Aimee's kidnapping story, with its goofy characters Rose, Steve, and Jake, and its melodramatic plot, is the only story that did not change." She occasionally added new elaborations, but she never contradicted herself.
Epstein's summary on p. 289 is rather sad: "Hundreds of journalists, Robert Shuler, and two courts of law spent five years and half a million dollars trying to prove that the evangelist and her radio operator had been lovers. The courts' magnificent failure might be seen as comic if it had not ruined Kenneth Ormiston's life and defamed the evangelist in her prime. Somewhere in the heap of evidence dismissed by the jurors is a check for $1,500 paid to Ormiston on March 15, 1926 from an agent alleged to be Aimee's. Maybe she had sent him money. But as far as anyone knows Kenneth Ormiston's resignation from KFSG that December was the pathetic ending of Aimee's last experiment in friendship."
It certainly wasn't the end of her time under legal scrutiny. There would be future lawsuits (some former employee named Harver Gates won $10,000; Epstein, pp. 373-374), but perhaps the worst time for her emotionally was when her associate and legal advisor, Judge Carlos Hardy, was impeached for, in effect, working with her. He was put on trial in 1928-1929, and although Hardy was the one in jeopardy, almost everyone seems to agree that the real purpose was to embarrass McPherson. Which it did, though Hardy was inevitably acquitted (Epstein, pp. 331-332).
None of which slowed down the Foursquare Gospel, to be sure. Indeed, it would climb to greater and greater heights after the trial. Aimee might be crazy, she might be a secret sex addict -- but she was undeniably a mesmerizing preacher.
AIMEE'S LATER LIFE
From the standpoint of evaluating the truth of this song, we could stop here, but I think that to understand Aimee's behavior in 1926, we need a broader view of what was going in in -- and with -- her mind. The strong impression I get of the remainder of Aimee's life is a woman who became more and more erratic, less and less in control of her emotions, and frankly more and more loopy. She allowed herself more indulgences, without doing much planning, and found more and more excuses for what she did. It really does feel to me as if something was not quite right about her. Given that she had a history of visions, this is why I think that her story of the 1926 "kidnapping" might have seemed real to her: She disappeared all right, perhaps to seek a break from her busy life, then arranged a story in her head as to what she would have liked to have happen. A sort of a romantic dream of events rather than an actual record. But, practically, it doesn't matter. Legally, she was in the clear, but she needed to rebuild her reputation. Aimee's plan to put the disappearance behind her started with a national tour (Bahr, p. 252; Epstein, pp. 315-316). And her publicity agent in all this was a fellow named Ralph Jordan, a card-player, drinker, and cigar smoker -- hardly someone Aimee would have worked with before! (Epstein, p. 316).
She also started hobnobbing with Hollywood elite (Sutton, pp. 152-153). Indeed, she was getting offers to star in her own movie (Sutton, pp. 153-154). She didn't accept those, but she did file the paperwork to form her own movie company (Sutton, pp. 154-155). She happily appeared in newsreels -- including stunts with a lion in a zoo, but also promoting the "dry" position in politics (Sutton, p. 157).
It got so bad that the rest of the Temple organization sent The Rev. Gladwyn Nichols, one of her chief assistants, to try to bring her back into the fold (Epstein, pp. 316-317). This showed how much her style had changed: she was wearing expensive clothes rather than her white servant's uniform. She cut her hair short and wore makeup (Bahr, p. 254; Sutton, p. 158, calls her hair a "titan" bob, a style invented in 1927). She hadn't changed her religious views, but in other ways she had gone modern. (Epstein, p. 320, thinks she was trying a new missionary tactic -- the Apostle to the Secular Moderns, so to speak. I don't think so; she might have offered that as a justification, but she clearly enjoyed the Parisian fashions and the fancy cars and all.) It got to the point where Minnie gave it out that Aimee might be leaving the Temple (Bahr, p. 255; Epstein, p. 322). Aimee's response was, in effect, to fire her mother (Bahr, p. 259. Epstein, p. 323, describes a Board meeting in which Minnie, at a time when Aimee was preaching, tried to get the Board to clip Aimee's wings. Aimee arrived in the meeting, recognized what was happening, and demanded a vote of confidence: Approve what Aimee was doing or have her quit. The Board gave her that vote, meaning that Ralph Jordan would keep his place, and Minnie stormed out). Minnie moved into her own house, and left the Temple. Aimee bought her out for, it is believed, a bit more than $100,000 (Bahr, p. 260; Epstein, p. 326) -- equivalent to probably a few million today. Minnie started preaching on her own, though she didn't get nearly as much attention (Sutton, p. 162).
Interestingly, Nichols also quit. Several hundred members followed him; he also took the Temple choir. He accused Aimee of selling out to materialism and even accused her of wearing too-short skirts (Bahr, p. 259). Another former subordinate, John Goben, broke away in 1930 and published something called "Aimee, the Gospel Gold Digger" (Sutton, pp. 162-163). Ouch. (Epstein, p. 336, thinks that many of Aimee's associates hoped that Goben could bring her around, but when it came to open conflict, they weren't ready to go against Aimee. Sutton adds that Goben may have been trying to court her, and had struck out, which might explain his behavior. Aimee got a lot of crazy proposals. Most were from nut cases, but one came from Homer A. Rodeheaver, the editor of the book we've indexed as Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs, who sometimes led events in the Temple. Aimee wasn't interested -- Roberta said she didn't like the way he kissed; Sutton, p. 168. Milton Berle claimed to have had an affair with her, but Sutton, pp. 174-175, points out that this was during one of the periods when she was pretty sick, and Berle was known to exaggerate his exploits. All this was perhaps another side effect of splitting with Minnie; although Aimee said she had received "hundreds" of proposals of marriage. This was yet another task Minnie ended up dealing with, until Aimee left her behind; Sutton, p. 110).
I won't try to keep straight the chronology of the next dozen years. Aimee's general trend was toward more craziness and a more comfortable life. Among other things, Aimee settled in a very fancy 5000 foot home (financed largely by a friend) far from the Temple (Sutton, p. 151).
She clearly became more of a "Hollywood" type, working on her weight and, it is suspected, getting a facelift (Sutton, pp. 163-164). There doesn't seem to be proof of that, and indeed Epstein, p. 339, says that her appearance didn't change -- but pictures of her in the early 1930s make her look younger than she had a decade earlier, with (I think) a narrower nose and smoother skin. If she didn't have cosmetic surgery, age was amazingly kind to her. On the other hand, she was sick for many months at this time, and out of public sight; it's conceivable that the illness itself altered her appearance.
Her self-modernization had at least one positive side effect: she took a much more active role in pursuing women's rights. From the start, she had done things usually reserved for men (from preaching to driving cars): in the 1930s she increasingly sought to help others gain new freedoms (e.g. Sutton, p. 204, notes that her Bible College graduated more women than men). She even took a position on Original Sin that decreased the blame placed on Eve relative to Adam (Sutton, p. 206), and the Foursquare organization formally condemned sex discrimination (Sutton, p. 207).
Bahr, p. 263, thinks that Aimee tried to gain a sort of revenge on her mother by building successful businesses -- but Aimee had no business sense and all her ventures failed (Bahr, pp. 262-264) -- as Minnie had foreseen (Sutton, p. 163; Epstein, pp. 324-326. Epstein, p. 327, calls Aimee "pathetically gullible" and calls her schemes "harebrained"). And then the stock market crashed, so new ventures were impossible. Aimee was broke (Bahr, p. 265).
A pair of managers, Cromwell Ormsby and Frank Timpson, inspired hatred by almost everyone. (Ormsby, in fact, ended up in prison for jury tampering; Aimee visited him there even though he would sue her for a quarter of a million dollars! -- Epstein, p. 367) Epstein, pp. 333, says, "We begin to discern a disturbing pattern. In desperation to find someone other than her mother to take charge of business matters, Aimee seems to have agreed, time and again, to surrender her will completely to any man who appeared fit for the job. There were Ralph Jordan and Cromell Ormsby. Later there would be A. C. Winters and Giles Knight, before Rolf McPherson finally came to the rescue."
The obvious thing to do would have been to reconcile with her mother. There was a brief reconciliation that ended in 1930 (Bahr, p. 296; Epstein, p. 336), but Minnie knew it wouldn't last (Epstein, pp. 337-338). And even Minnie couldn't straighten everything out; a government investigation into Aimee's books found them so fouled up that it wasn't worth the effort of further investigation! (Epstein, p. 338). The experiment ended violently -- Minnie ended up with a broken nose, and claims that Aimee broke it, though it happened in private so there is no proof either way (Epstein, pp. 339-340. Epstein, pp. 341-342, thinks the quarrel was about Aimee's lifestyle and, yes, hair).
In 1930-1931 came Aimee's worst physical breakdown; she was away from work for ten months, suffering "insomnia, extreme agitation, acidosis, radical weight loss, and, at first, hysterical blindness" (Epstein, p. 342). Indeed, it was Epstein's opinion that she never fully recovered and was never fully healthy again (p. 347). In the coming years, she suffered anemia, other blood disorders, shingles, even a "tropical fever" contracted during a trip to Guatemala (Epstein, p. 372).
Roberta (briefly) married William Bradley Smythe, an officer on a ship Aimee and Roberta took to China, in 1931 (apparently unable to handle all the McPherson hoopla, he went back to sea less than two years later, and Roberta sought a divorce; Epstein, p. 381). Rolf married a Bible student named Lorna Dee Smith a little later (Bahr, p. 296; Sutton, p. 169). Even Minnie remarried, and tried to set up an evangelical tour -- but the man involved was a bigamist! (Sutton, p. 169. Roberta's marriage also failed, less spectacularly).
In 1931, Aimee herself eloped to Arizona (which had no waiting period to get married) with one of her performers, a singer named David L. Hutton who had met her through Rodehever (Sutton, p. 169; Epstein, p. 364, says that journalists suggested the elopement). They were married on September 13 (Epstein, p. 475). Other than being Christian, it's hard to see what she saw in him. Epstein, p. 362, says "David Hutton Jr. was a short, hippopotamic baritone she hired to play the Pharaoh in her opera The Iron Furnace" and suggests "Aimee fell in love with the Pharaoh, in his stage whiskers and Egyptian headdress, as the rehearsed in the summer of 1931." On p. 364 Epstein says, "He must have weighted three hundred pounds.... Smiling, he looked like a demented Herbert Hoover. When Hutton was not smiling, he resembled the sissyish tyrant of a boy scout troop." He was thirty, ten years younger than Aimee. Despite all those earlier marriage proposals, Epstein, pp. 362-363, thinks she married him because he was the only one who asked at that lonely time in her life.) The marriage collapsed in 1934 (Bahr, p. 296).
Hutton wasn't faithful to her; at one point, he was accused of making a move on a nurse who was treating Aimee (Sutton, p. 172; Epstein, p. 366). He was convicted in civil court and required to pay $5000 in damages (the nurse had asked for $200,000!). The shock of hearing about it from Hutton caused Aimee to fall and fracture her skull (Epstein, p. 374; Sutton, p. 172). In early 1933, she took a leave of absence from preaching to go on a world tour to try to recover her health. The church was to be run by Harriet Jordan and Willedd Andrews. Hutton was left with nothing but the music department -- and he was so upset that he quit the job (Epstein, p. 381). Amazingly, it was Hutton who filed for divorce, claiming she didn't give him enough money and power (Sutton, pp. 172-173). He had also gotten her commissary involved with a fellow named Roy Watkins who was was eventually tried for corruption (Epstein, p. 375). By 1932, everyone except Aimee was sick of Hutton; it took her a lot longer to give up. But, according to Sutton, p. 173, getting rid of him finally helped her improve Aimee's health.
She also got into a fight with a junior pastor she had hired, Rheba Crawford. Crawford was in some ways a younger version of Aimee, though "tougher [and] abrasive. She was less charismatic in front of a crowd, but still spell-binding" (Epstein, p. 391). Sarah Brown, the religious female lead in the musical "Guys and Dolls," is loosely based on her as interpreted by Damon Runyan (Epstein, p. 390). In 1935, Aimee made the seemingly-logical decision to hire Crawford as substitute pastor while she was on the road, even though Crawford was a paid employee of the state at the time (Epstein, p. 391). But Crawford insisted on making attacks on politicians from Aimee's pulpit (Epstein, pp. 395-396). She also -- horrors! *danced with her husband* (Epstein, p. 397. Crawford pointed out, "If I can sleep with him, I can dance with him." But that was no answer to the sorts of fundamentalists who hung around Aimee). It all fed into Aimee's paranoia (Epstein, p. 399).
1936 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the events that had led to the founding of Pentecostalism, and Aimee decided it was time to return to those roots (Sutton, pp. 185-186, 200). She still differed from them in one big way, though: Although she believed the Second Coming was soon to be expected, she still believed in supporting the poor and the afflicted (something many millenarians though was pointless), so the Temple kept its commissary open.
Her taste for goofy pageantry had not faded; on one of her tours, she preached a sermon "Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight," based on the poem by that name, and actually swung on the clapper of a big bell for it (Epstein, pp. 367-368; see also the notes to "Hang on the Bell").
Although she was willing to help almost everyone, there were two partial exceptions: she had a clear prejudice against Jews (though she also said that no nation which persecuted the Jews ever did well; Sutton, pp. 248-254) and "subversives," whom she tried to root out. However, according to Sutton, p. 248, "Despite relentless efforts on McPherson's part, there is no evidence that she ever exposed a single subversive."
The worst management purge came when Aimee appointed some loyalists, including her daughter Roberta, to higher positions in the Temple; the man she put in charge of her finances was Giles Knight. Aimee, meanwhile, went on a fundraising tour (Bahr, p. 266).
It's important to understand just how messed-up the Temple was at this time. It was broke. It had no accounting system, no budget, no system of purchase orders; whoever wanted money just took it (Epstein, p. 407). Aimee's lawyer, Willedd Andrews, was not very smart and mismanaged everything (Epstein, p. 403). Of course it was being run into the ground! It wasn't dishonesty, it was just that no one could control spending. (I am curiously reminded of Acts 6, where the early Church was being utterly mis-managed by the Apostles because they were busy with other things. The church responded by appointing the Seven Hellenists to manage day-to-day-affairs. Aimee tried the same thing, but with less competence.) Andrews's replacement, Jacob Moidel, thought the Temple needed to start giving its top employees -- Moidel, Rheba Crawford, Roberta, and Harriet Jordan, who was basically in charge of everything else -- contracts, to assure their services (Epstein, p. 404). I think he was right, but Aimee would eventually decide that she had been coerced into signing (Epstein, p. 405). It was at this time that Aimee gave Giles Knight the power to control all expenses (Epstein, p. 406).
Sutton, pp. 209-210, describes Knight as a "successful California business man [who] believed that God acting through McPherson had healed his son of a major affliction. He joined the Foursquare movement, became a pastor, and then served on the board of directors as business manager, treasurer, and eventually vice president. Under Knight's tenure, the Foursquare organization regained economic stability and the respect of the community, while avoiding the ridiculous scandals and financial mismanagement that had dogged McPherson in the early thirties. Although [Aimee] faced numerous insurrections among her staff and family... Knight righted the ship."
Knight was able to cut expenses dramatically -- but he was so brutal about it that it sparked rebellions. Even Roberta refused to have any more to do with him. She and several other leaders told Aimee that it was Knight or them -- and when Aimee refused to reign in Knight, they walked out (Bahr, pp. 269-271). Aimee said she wanted Roberta back -- but in a way that would have taken away all her more important roles; it was insulting (Epstein, p. 408). Roberta and her party wrote an open letter to Aimee; Aimee responded by calling upon the Board of the Echo Park Evangelistic Association -- Aimee, Rolf, and Roberta. With Roberta absent, but Knight and Andrews present, Aimee and Rolf changed their own by-laws and expelled Roberta (Bahr, p. 272; Epstein, pp. 408-409). Roberta and Moidel were out; Knight (who was competent but autocratic) and Andrews (who wasn't even competent) were in charge from then on. Thus Aimee had succeeded in destroying two of the three most important relationships in her life, those with her mother and daughter.
Andrews issued a statement that at least implied that Roberta had blackmailed Aimee (Epstein, p. 409). Roberta (who by then had remarried and was known as Roberta Star) sued Andrews for slander in 1937. That produced a court case in which Aimee testified against Roberta on behalf of Andrews; she looked sick as she did it, but she took the side of her incompetent lawyer against her daughter (Epstein, pp. 416-417). Roberta won the case -- the only issue was whether Andrews had intended his false statement to be public, and he clearly had -- and Roberta won $2000 plus court costs (Bahr, pp. 273-274; Epstein, p. 415). Roberta left California to take a job in New York (Bahr, pp. 274-275. Epstein, pp. 409, 411, observes that Roberta never fought back against Aimee, despite heavy provocation). In New York, she joined a radio program called "Hobby Lobby" as a researcher. In 1941, she married bandleader Harry Salter, who would go on to create the "Name That Tune" program. But Roberta was unable to restore her contact with her mother -- apparently Giles Knight forbid it (Sutton, pp. 418-419).
Rheba Crawford was terminated at about the same time (Epstein, p. 410); that sparked another lawsuit that eventually resulted in a private (but seemingly expensive) settlement (Bahr, pp. 297-298; Epstein, p. 416. At least the settlement kept Aimee out of court).
And still Aimee kept involving herself with non-management tasks. There was talk of a political career -- the idea was floated that she would run as Huey Long's vice presidential candidate. Long's death of course ended that (Sutton, p. 212), but Aimee was active in politics, campaigning against Al Smith in 1828 and against Upton Sinclair when he ran for governor of California. But she wasn't a party hack; she supported most of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's actions as president (Sutton, p. 214).
At one point she took a role in a Vaudeville company, preaching sermons in the course of the show. That only lasted a week, because the audiences weren't interested and stopped coming (they wanted to hear about the controversies of her life). At least it let her pick up a big check (Epstein, pp. 384-387. Sutton, pp. 180-182 says she got $17,000; Epstein, p. 387 says this was the total take for the week, of which she got $5000). She was all over the trade papers. Which didn't mean she vanished from Broadway; the Irving Berlin and Moss Hart musical "As Thousands Cheer" (which included the songs "Heat Wave" and "Easter Parade") featured Helen Broderick impersonating Aimee (Epstein, p. 388); that lasted some 400 performances although revivals have been few because of its topical content (Hischak, p. 34). She was even in the first version of Johnny Mercer's 1937 song "Hooray for Hollywood" (Sutton, p. 183), although you don't often hear that particular verse any more:
Hooray for Hollywood,
Where you're terrific if you're even good
Where anyone at all from Shirley Temple to Aimee Semple
Is equally understood....
Epstein, pp. 417-418, says that no one knows the details of the arrangements between McPherson and Knight -- but on p. 418 he says, "from all accounts, it appears that Sister Aimee completely surrendered not only her public life but her personal life to the control of Reverend Giles Knight, from April of 1937 through February of 1944. During this period she was virtually under house arrest. She could not see anyone, even her children, without Knight's approval. She could not leave her house except to preach, or teach classes at the College, without Knight's permission -- and he routinely withheld it. She accepted no phone calls from the press." The irony is that McPherson had rebelled against Minnie for being too controlling -- and then, having blown off her mother and her daughter, McPherson gave Knight far more control of her life. Nathaniel Van Cleave, one of the few who was close to her at this time, says, "she chafed under Knight's regimen, and it may in fact have contributed to her death." She told another confident, Harold Jeffries, "I am lonely, so lonely. Dr. Knight won't let me go out, at all." I can't help but wonder -- did Knight think her mental disorder was overtaking her, and limit her to tasks where it didn't matter? Or could he have gotten some sort of civil commitment order for her that let him control her? It makes no sense.
At least, in 1939, Knight's economies succeeded in paying off the Temple's debts; they had a ceremony to burn the mortgages (Epstein, pp. 416-417). Thereafter, Aimee started engaging in ever more elaborately staged illustrated sermons. Who needed theater when you had Aimee preaching out of a giant yellow flower? (And, yes, that was one of the many elaborate stage set-ups she used!) She was preaching sermons with titles like "The Lone Ranger, " Treasure Island," "The Wizard of Oz" (that one came out about the time of the movie), "The Trojan Horse," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and the inimitable "Seven Sneezes of Shunem" (Epstein, p. 425, 435).
Aimee, despite her earlier fears about the state of the world, went all-in for America once Pearl Harbor happened -- so much so that Sutton, pp. 262-263, thinks she sold out her principles. Among other things, the church went from supporting pacifism to kicking out conscientious objectors. On a more positive note, she made great efforts to help sell the war bonds needed to finance the conflict (Epstein, p. 427; Sutton, pp. 264-265).
One of the things Giles Knight didn't allow Aimee was a decent doctor (Epstein, p. 434). By this time she had arthritis that made her walk slowly, and she often refused to sit down because it was so hard for her to stand again (Epstein, p. 430); she could only climb steps slowly and by clinging to the banister (Epstein, p. 435), and she often leaned on Giles Knight literally as well as figuratively. She also had urinary problems, which also caused her to develop fevers (Epstein, pp. 434-435). She had anemia so severe as to require transfusions; it left her tongue and lips white (Epstein, p. 436). She at least once contracted dysentery. She could not get enough water. Her face still looked young, but her body was that of an old woman. There may have been other problems; Aimee and Knight never told all that they knew about her health -- not even to Rolf, who was being groomed to succeed Knight.
I do find it curious that the God who allegedly gave Aimee the power to perform healings couldn't heal her, or at least let her lead a relatively pain-free life to let her do her job more effectively.
On February 1, 1944, Giles Knight finally stepped down from his post controlling Aimee's life, with Rolf McPherson taking over the Temple (Epstein, p. 436). Rolf was a good choice; he didn't have his mother's charisma, but he had his grandmother's managerial skills and would take the Foursquare movement to new heights. And the change set Aimee free to travel again.
On September 26, 1944, Aimee went to Oakland to hold a series of revivals (Sutton, p. 267, who notes that she was to preach at the very same auditorium where, in 1922, she had first invoked the "Foursquare Gospel"). Bahr, p. 280, says she also intended dedicate a church there. But she never made her appearance. On the morning of September 27, around 10:00 a.m., Rolf (who had left her at about 11:00 the night before) entered her room and found her unconscious body surrounded by pills. Taken to a hospital, she was dead within about an hour (Sutton, p. 267).
She had been taking sleeping pills for a long time, but these were different: Seconal (secobarbital), a barbituate medication. It is not known where or how she got those pills -- the bottle had no pharmacy label (Epstein, p. 437). An autopsy, which officially denied suicide (Epstein, p 440) found that she had multiple serious conditions: kidney problems and liver problems; the doctors thought this might have made the Seconal more deadly. In addition, Seconal can affect memory, so she might have taken more pills than she intended to (Bahr, p. 280). Alternately, Seconal clears the body relatively slowly (Stevens/Klarner, pp. 135-137), so she might have been told not to take it more often than a few times a week, and though she took only the recommended amount for a day, she might have gone above the limit for two or three days. It was not clear whether the Seconal alone had killed her, or a combination of problems (Sutton, pp. 267-268) -- though the fact that she died quickly, rather than in an extended coma, perhaps hints that it was a combination. In this, her death is extremely similar to Judy Garland's a quarter of a century later: too many barbituates, and no evidence to show if it was accidental or deliberate. There was no note or other sign that it was a suicide attempt. (Sutton, p. 268, declares that she was not depressed, but offers no evidence on this point.) She had made two calls to doctors on that night, but she was in Oakland and they in Los Angeles, so they could not attend her. It is not clear why she called (Bahr, p. 280; Epstein, p. 438), but it was probably for help. Why she did not call an ambulance, or the hotel staff, we can't know -- but someone full of barbiturates probably wasn't thinking clearly.
It is interesting that chloroform can cause liver damage, and Aimee claimed to have been chloroformed during her kidnapping.
There was a visitation for her at the Angelus Temple starting on October 6, 1944. An estimated 45,000 people came to view the body over three days (Bahr, pp. 2-3). Her funeral took place on October 9, the day she would have turned 54 (Sutton, p. 270). 600 cars escorted her body to the cemetery (Epstein, p. 439) She was buried in a marble sarcophagus at Forest Lawn -- in a casket so heavy that the pallbearers almost dropped it (Sutton, pp. 270-271).
She never really got over her grudges. Bahr, p. 282, says that she left Minnie a whole $10 on condition that she not contest the will. (Were I Minnie, I might have contested it just for that insult.) The cash value of the estate was said to be worth about $10,000 (Epstein, p 440). Roberta got $2000 (and couldn't attend the funeral because of the problems of wartime travel; Epstein, p. 439). Rolf got her share in the Angelus Temple and, in effect, the ownership of the Foursquare Gospel (which by then was on a sound financial footing). He became its President for many years. He and Roberta both lived until the last decade of the twentieth century. Minnie died in 1947.
Hinnels, p. 245, reports that when she died, her church included 400 American congregations and had 200 foreign missions, with more than 22,000 total members. And it has continued to grow since then. Sutton's conclusion (p. 280): "Aimee Semple McPherson reshaped and redefined the old-time religion in the United States, in effect resurrecting Christian America." That emphatically has its dark side, but the darkest parts were not her doing.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Sutton, pp. 3-4, says that Aimee's "integration of the latest media tools with a conservative creed established precedents for the twentieth century's most popular ministers, from Billy Graham to Oral Roberts to Pat Robertson. Possibly more significant, she brought conservative Protestantism back from the margins to the mainstream of American culture, by arguing that Christians had an obligation to fight for the issues they believed in and boldly proclaiming that patriotism and faith were inseparable."
There is some truth in this, but I think this gives a wrong impression. Unlike the Jerry Falwells and Jimmy Swaggarts and Jim Bakkers of the world, I really don't think she was out for power or control over other people's lives; she genuinely wanted to save others, and she was kind rather than judgmental. Even H. L. Mencken, no friend of any sort of conservative Christian, thought her more sinned against than sinning (Sutton, p. 119). And she was female at a time when every major Protestant denomination rejected female clergy (and as some conservative denominations still do). Nor was she an old sourpuss or a whiner. I think she was dramatically wrong in her beliefs, but I can't help but wonder how things had turned out had the handsome young man she met at 17 and first hearing voices been someone intelligent rather than a fanatic like Robert Semple.
There are quite a few books about and by McPherson besides those cited here. The newest as of this writing are Heath Corder, Aimee Semple McPherson: The True Story Behind the 1926 Disappearance and the Religious Debate that Captivated America, independently published, 2025, and Claire Hoffman, Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous, Scandalous Story of Aimee Semple McPherson, 2025. The Hoffman book seems to be getting good reviews, but it came out too late to be used in the initial version of this article. I haven't tried to see the Corder volume; his other books look unreliable, and most seem self-published -- and if the author can't sell a book about true crime, sex, and a female minister to a publisher, I'm scared to know how bad it is.... Of the sources I've read, I would consider Epstein by far the best; it is thorough, carefully documented, and very cautious, neither accepting all of Aimee's biographical statements nor absolutely rejecting the outlandish claims about her charismatic ministry. It is a little too Freudian for my taste, but you can ignore that. Sutton is also scholarly and restrained, but more about Aimee's ministry than her life. Bahr is filed as a biography but is so imaginative that I would have preferred to call it historical fiction.
Aimee's story was ultimately an inspiration for Frank Capra's movie "The Miracle Woman," as well as Upton Sinclair's book Oil! and Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry (Sutton, pp. 144-148), though the portrayals are not very complimentary.
Those who wish to read more about the topic might wish to consult the following:
- Aimee Semple McPherson, Aimee: Life Story of Aimee Semple McPherson and This Is That; Personal Experiences, Sermons and Writings of Aimee Semple McPherson, Evangelist. The biography went through many editions; the biographers say that the first edition, although it concludes before her troubles, is in some ways the most valuable. The first edition is real (if obviously high non-objective) autobiography. The later editions just add some scrapbooks and clippings, and one suspects they whittle away at the honesty of the earliest edition.
- Other works by Aimee Semple McPherson, including Divine Healing Sermons, The Holy Spirit and The Second Coming of Christ. There other "topical" books by Aimee as well. These are, however, theology -- not Aimee's strong point.
- Lately Thomas, The Vanishing Evangelist, Viking Press, 1959. This apparently summed up the newspaper accounts of Aimee's disappearance and was Bahr's main source for his account of the event.
- Nathaniel M. van Cleve, The Vine and the Branches: A History of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, Foursquare Media, 2014. Note however that this is the church's own history.
Interestingly, although this song was clearly aimed at skewering McPherson for ignoring the requirements of her religion, it was included in the Liberated Women's Songbook in 1971, according to Sutton, p. 273.
ABOUT THE SONG
So how accurate is this song? Despite what Paul Stamler said, it has some problems. Let's look at some of its statements.
"She weighted a hundred eighty and her hair was red." Both statements are dubious. Apparently her hair was pale when she was young (Epstein, p. 22), but it grew darker as she grew up. Bahr, p. 29, and Epstein, p. 27, says it was "auburn" when she was a young adult, but others called it brown (Epstein, p. 157, quotes the Baltimore Sun as saying it was brown; Rogers, p. 63, quotes an eyewitness account to the same effect). The closest I've seen to someone calling her hair red was a newspaper account calling it "reddish" (Sutton, p. 8). Once she started dying her hair, she appeared for a while as a strawberry blonde (Epstein, p. 351), but that was long after the kidnapping. Clearly the author of this song never saw her in person.
Her weight is an interesting point, because she was fairly strongly built (Epstein, p. 5) -- her ankles, in particular, were thick (a matter that would come up during the incident this song is about). A newspaper even ran a contest to "identify Mrs. McPherson's ankles" from a lineup of photos! (Sutton, p. 160). Epstein, p. 116, says that she "was louder and stronger than most men" and refers to her "bull neck" and "broad shoulders." And she was at her heaviest around the time of this song (Epstein, p. 269); she later lost weight. Epstein, p. 157, says she told the Baltimore Sun she was 150 pounds; the same source lists her height as five feet six inches. No doubt she rounded her weight down (and perhaps her height up); Sutton, p 160, accepts that she was 150 pounds but lists her height as five feet three inches. (I wonder if some of the difference in height has to do with the different ways she did her hair.) While she was strong and burly for a woman, I don't think there is any possibility she ever reached 180 pounds. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, she would go on to lose dozens of pounds and ended up almost waif-like (Sutton, p. 160; he adds on pp. 161-162 that it was after she lost the weight that people suddenly started describing her as very attractive). Epstein, p. 343, says that she lost forty pounds, or a quarter of her body weight, so that would make her maximum 160 pounds.
She "built herself a radio station." True.
"She found a man named Armistead who knew enough To run the radio while Aimee did her stuff." His name was Ormiston, but one can understand how oral tradition would twist that.
"She held a camp meeting out at Ocean Park... And nobody knew where Aimee went." A little deceptive; she went swimming at Venice Beach, and it was there she disappeared. But the general idea is right.
"She told her tale to the district attorney. Said she'd been kidnapped on a lonely trail." Again, a little deceptive. She said she was kidnapped in town and taken to a lonely cabin, and most of her story went to the newspapers. But broadly correct.
"In spite of all the questions, she stuck to her tale." True.
"Well, the Grand Jury started an investigation." There was indeed a Grand Jury investigation. Two, really. And they found "spicy information," but it was unverified and unverifiable.
"They found a cottage with a breakfast nook, A folding bed with a worn-out look, The slats were busted and the springs were loose, And the dents in the mattress fitted Aimee's caboose." The only one of these statements that is true, as far as I can tell, is the one that says there was a cottage at Carmel. Remember, we can't even prove she was ever at Carmel. Ormiston was; we don't know about Aimee.
"Well they took poor Aimee and they threw her in jail. Last I heard she was out on bail." Aimee never went to jail; she was charged, but posted bond without even appearing in court.
"They'll send her up for a stretch, I guess." They did not, but if the song was written during the couple of months in late 1926/early 1927 before the trial-that-wasn't, which seems likely, the author might have expected her to go to jail. But it's interesting that the author never actually lists any crime that she committed -- renting a cottage and having a tryst are not crimes.
"Now Radio Ray is a going hound; He's going yet and he ain't been found." The DA did not find Orniston, whose name was not "Ray," but Ormiston appeared voluntarily, if briefly, to testify.
"They got his description, but they got it too late, for since they got it, he's lost a lot of weight." There was no problem with his description, since there are photographs of him, and I'm sure his wife would have given them everything they needed. And I have heard nothing of him losing weight. I'd file this particular half-verse under "fiction."
Bottom line: The song is, in its rough outlines, an accurate description of the newspaper accounts of Aimee's story, although a number of the details are wrong. However, the newspaper accounts are informed speculation; we simply do not know what Aimee did during her disappearance. It is possible that the song is mostly right, but without more evidence, we really cannot know. - RBW
Bibliography - Bahr: Robert Bahr, Least of All Saints: The Story of Aimee Semple McPherson, Preintice-Hall, 1979
- Epstein: Daniel Mark Epstein, Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Senple McPherson, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993
- Hinnels: John R. Hinnells, editor, Who's Who of Religions, originally published 1991 as Who's Who of World Religions; I use the 1996 Penguin paperback with the shorter title
- Hischak: Thomas S. Hischak, The American Musical Theatre Song Encyclopedia (with a Foreword by Gerald Bordman), Greenwood Press, 1995
- Rogers: W. Lane Rogers, Crimes & Misdeeds: Headlines from Arizona's Past, Northland Publishing, 1995
- Stevens/Klarner: Serita Deborah Stevens with Anne Klarner, Deadly Doses: A Writer's Guide to Poisons, Writer's Digest Books, 1990
- Sutton: Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America, Harvard University Press, 2007
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