Who Was Sister Aimee? the Incredible Story of L.A. s Famous Evangelical Priest

Nobody actually saw Aimee Semple McPherson surrender to the ocean - but when, on May 18, 1926, her mother told a shocked crowd of over 5,000 followers at the Angelus Temple in Echo Park that its founder was drowned, Los Angeles grieved.

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McPherson, the evangelical preacher known as Sister Aimee or just Sister was one of the most beloved, enigmatic, and identifiable characters of the Jazz Age in the Golden Land. In the mourning period after she yielded to the Pacific, despair reportedly caused one girl to commit suicide, while a deep-sea prowler looking for McPherson's remains died of exposure; according to Carey McWilliams, one ecstatic follower glimpsing an image of Aimee on the bright, shimmering waters was forcefully restrained from plunging into the waves and another, twenty-six, leaped into the sea crying, I'm going after her,' and was drowned. [1]

So when, five weeks later, on June 23, Sister Aimee turned up at a Mexican border town near Douglas, Arizona, people were confused - and excited. And angry. The resulting scandal put the character of Aimee Semple McPherson on public trial. So who was she?

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Aimee Kennedy was born in 1890 near Ingersoll, Ontario, where, at age 17 she met, fell in love with, and married Robert Semple, a magnetic Irish Pentecostal itinerant preacher. The young couple, with their mutual calling, sailed to China as missionaries, but Robert soon died of malaria; Aimee, now only 19, gave birth to her first child a month later. After moving to New York, she remarried to Harold McPherson, a grocery clerk who settled her into a life of domesticity in Providence, Rhode Island. It did not agree with her; after almost succumbing to illness, an insistent divine voice urged her: NOW-WILL-YOU-GO?

Aimee took a child under each arm and fled Rhode Island to return to the family farm in Ontario. She telegrammed her husband: I have tried to walk your way and have failed. Won't you come now and walk my way? She was to take up preaching again; Harold would join her for the beginning of her career but, overwhelmed by her character, he could not sustain life with his charismatic wife, and they divorced in 1921.

McPherson took her mother and children on the road preaching. They were nomads, crisscrossing the country and drawing massive crowds anxious to hear Sister Aimee's evangelizing message. Carey McWilliams, later her neighbor in Los Angeles, noted that their worldly possessions, at this time, consisted of the usual paraphernalia of traveling evangelists: a car and a tent.

Sister Aimee received a clear vision of the city of her salvation: Los Angeles, already a city of cultish inclination. She imagined a bungalow with a garden that awaited her and her family. And so, like many others, she hit the road and headed west to pursue her dream.

The car was called the Gospel Auto, and Sister Aimee famously painted evangelistic slogans across its sides in gold lettering: JESUS IS COMING. GET READY and WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY? By night, they would turn the front seat back and sleep in the car: The big outdoors is our home, she wrote in her memoirs. With joy we kneeled by the running board at night to pray. [2] She spoke of her car as if it were a talking horse, a valiant coworker for the Lord, writes Daniel Mark Epstein in his biography, Sister Aimee. In July 1918 she wrote, Sometimes when we leave the car on some errand, we find on returning that a crowd has gathered about the faithful car which is holding its own street meeting and preaching all by itself. [3]

Dayton Sunday News coverage of Aimee Semple McPhersons 1919 visit in her Gospel Auto.

She preached a Pentecostal-leaning gospel, spoke in tongues, and seduced viewers with the spectacle of a woman preacher. A female preacher in 1915 was, to many people, a horror, notes Epstein. To the Episcopalians of the time, McPherson's meetings appeared like orgies scripted by the Witch of Endor. With detractors, she was fearless and relentless: Don't you ever tell me that a woman cannot be called to preach the Gospel! She insisted on gathering integrated groups of followers, and was, perhaps, the first evangelist to hold integrated revival meetings in the South.[4]

In a favorite stunt of hers, Sister Aimee would stand silent and motionless on a chair at a busy street corner with arms raised and eyes closed. Once a crowd formed that was large enough, Sister Aimee would snap her eyes open, yelp Quick! Follow me! - and run to her venue with a tail of curious followers. Once inside, she would order the doors shut and command her captive but mesmerized audience.[5]

It was during a stint in New Rochelle, New York, with her daughter gravely ill, that Sister Aimee received a clear vision of the city of her salvation: Los Angeles, already a city of cultish inclination. She imagined a bungalow with a garden that awaited her and her family. And so, like many others, she hit the road and headed west to pursue her dream.

McPherson was one of the first women to cross the country by automobile without the company of a man.

By now, the Gospel Auto was a seven-seater Oldsmobile, and everywhere they went, the strangeness of their vessel and of the sight of a group of women traveling without an escort drew people to Sister Aimee and her Foursquare teachings. From Gettysburg to Tulsa, she met crowds, shocked them, and made fans of them. All along the way, she comforted her children with the promise of a bungalow and a canary. It was, as Kevin Starr writes, a Biblical journey, a spiritual quest for the promised City of the Angels. [6] McPherson was, moreover, one of the first women to cross the country by automobile without the company of a man. By the time she arrived in Los Angeles, Sister Aimee was already a celebrity.

At first renting

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