Aimee Semple McPherson

Biography

Born Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy on her family's farm near Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada, she was raised a Methodist, her father James's faith. Her mother Mildred worked for the Salvation Army. In December 1907, she attended a local "tent revival" on a whim, and fell in love with its Irish-born preacher, Robert Semple. They married on August 12, 1908 in a Salvation Army ceremony. They moved to Chicago to join Pentecostal preacher's William Howard Durham's Full Gospel Assembly, where Aimee discovered her gift as a faith-healer and "speaking in tongues". While in China on missionary work, Aimee and Robert contracted malaria, probably due to eating food grown in soil fertilized with human feces (a wide-spread practice). He died of dysentery on August 17, 1910 in Hong Kong; 29 days later, she gave birth to their daughter, Roberta. On Robert's headstone, Aimee had inscribed: "He led me to Christ". She made her way to New York City, where Mildred secured her a job with the Salvation Army. There, she met accountant Harold McPherson. They married on February 5, 1912, and moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where their son Rolf was born the following year. She tried to be the dutiful housewife he expected, but the pull of missionary work was too-great. With the children in tow, she returned to Canada to begin her ministry. She and the children, joined by Mildred, spent the next 7 years traveling North America, spreading the Good News, living from hand-to-mouth. Harold tracked Aimee down to Florida to take her back to Rhode Island, only to join her, even doing some preaching himself. But he soon longed for his former life of stability and predictably, and returned to Providence. He filed for divorce, citing desertion; it was granted in 1921. In 1918, Aimee sent Mildred to Los Angeles to rent the largest hall she could find for her sermons, reasoning that the city's rampant growth made it the perfect home base for the ministry. She was an overnight sensation; people waited for hours to get into the 3,500-seat Philharmonic Auditorium, which was standing room only. On January 1, 1923, the world's first "megachurch", Angelus Temple, was dedicated, built by Aimee with funds raised by her followers, donations of building materials, and volunteer labor - "by faith", as she put it - intending it as a place where people of every Christian denomination could gather. Angelus Temple was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 27, 1992. On May 18, 1926, she and her secretary went to Lompoc's Ocean Beach Park for a swim. Soon after arriving, Aimee went missing. A search, complete with deep-sea divers, was organized as the media went into a frenzy, reporting "sightings" from Canada to Mexico. It fell to 15-year old Roberta to take to the pulpit at Angelus Temple, and deliver the "altar call" made famous by her mother as parishioners wept, convinced that the woman they affectionately called "Sister" had drowned. In the pre-dawn hours of June 23, Aimee showed up at the Agua Prieta, Mexico home of Ramón González. She told González and his wife a wild tale: she had been approached by a couple who begged her to come to their car to pray for their sick child, but was shoved into the car and taken to a shack in the desert, where "Steve", "Mexicali Rose", and another man drugged and tortured her. She escaped and walked, by her estimation, 20 miles in the broiling heat. Agua Prieta mayor Ernesto Boubion arranged for his police to transfer her to the Douglas, AZ police, who took her to a hospital. While most of the 50,000 people who greeted her at Union Station were more-than-willing to believe her, civic leaders - who had initially welcomed Aimee, but were now convinced that her over-the-top brand of Old Time Religion was turning their fair city into a laughingstock - were not. Over the objections of her mother and the Temple's lawyers, she went to court to clear her name. In three grand jury inquiries, she could not prove she had been kidnapped. However, District Attorney Asa Keyes could not prove she had NOT been kidnapped. Conflicting testimonies, missing evidence, and a lawsuit against Boubion for attempted extortion muddied the waters further. But the damage to her reputation in the "court" of public opinion - spurred by media speculation that she concocted the story to hide a secret tryst with a former employee, a married man - had been done. Hundreds of followers, disillusioned and heartbroken, left Angelus Temple. Those who stayed to help with the herculean task of rebuilding the ministry were shaken to their core when Aimee married on September 13, 1931, as convention at the time held that divorcées did not remarry. It also didn't help that David Hutton, an actor and musician, took full advantage of being "Mr. Aimee", and had a string of highly-publicized scandals. They divorced in 1934. Lost amid the roller-coaster that was Aimee's life was her charity work. She personally spearheaded relief efforts when an earthquake struck Santa Barbara in 1925, when the St. Francis Dam broke in 1928, and when an earthquake struck Long Beach in 1933. In 1928, she opened a commissary which operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, providing food, clothes, medical, and dental care to the needy, regardless or religion, race, ethnicity or national origin. Companies and individuals who would otherwise have had nothing to do with her found themselves donating food, supplies, money, or labor. A 1936 survey indicated that Angelus Temple was assisting more families than any other public or private institution in Los Angeles. On September 26, 1944, Aimee traveled to Oakland for a series of revivals. Rolf found her unconscious in her hotel room the next morning; an hour later, she was dead. While the autopsy did not determine the cause of death, the coroner stated it most-likely an accidental overdose, compounded by kidney failure. Forty-five thousand people filed past her casket as she lay in state at Angelus Temple. She was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale in a marble sarcophagus flanked by two angels. Rolf took over the ministry, which he ran for 44 years, and has grown to over 7 million members worldwide. Roberta - who had a falling-out with Aimee over church management - and her second husband, Harry Salter, created the game show "Name That Tune".