By Matthew Avery Sutton
From the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth Rock to Christian Coalition canvassers operating for George W. Bush, american citizens have lengthy sought to combine religion with politics. Few were as winning as Hollywood evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. through the years among the 2 global wars, McPherson was once the main flamboyant and debatable minister within the usa. She outfitted an greatly profitable and cutting edge megachurch, confirmed a mass media empire, and produced spellbinding theatrical sermons that rivaled Tinseltown's amazing exhibits. As McPherson's energy grew, she moved past faith into the world of politics, launching a countrywide campaign to struggle the instructing of evolution within the colleges, safeguard Prohibition, and resurrect what she believed was once the us' Christian historical past. confident that the antichrist used to be operating to ruin the nation's Protestant foundations, she and her allies observed themselves as a besieged minority referred to as through God to affix the "old time faith" to American patriotism. Matthew Sutton's definitive learn of Aimee Semple McPherson unearths the girl, mostly remembered because the hypocritical vamp in Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry, as a trail-blazing pioneer. Her lifestyles marked the start of Pentecostalism's develop from the margins of Protestantism to the mainstream of yank tradition. certainly, from her position in Hollywood, McPherson's integration of politics with religion set precedents for the non secular correct, whereas her big name prestige, use of spectacle, and mass media savvy got here to outline sleek evangelicalism. (20070409)
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Extra resources for Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America
Sample text
9 Although she believed that the Foursquare gospel came to her by divine inspiration, its historical roots can be traced. The fourfold gospel, a common concept among both pentecostal and holiness groups in the late 1800s and early 1900s, focused on the nature of Christ’s character; he was savior, baptizer with the Holy Spirit, healer, and coming king. First and foremost, McPherson emphasized Christ’s ability to transform individuals’ lives through the act of salvation. Building on the long North American evangelical tradition, she believed that an immediate, life-changing salvation ex- The Foursquare Gospel • 45 perience served as the defining moment that separated Christians from non-Christians.
That day hundreds of Klansmen entered Angelus Temple dressed in full regalia. ” Before the music had ended, the evangelist ordered her daughter and son home, but Roberta sneaked back into the church to watch from the balcony. When it came time for the sermon, McPherson went to the pulpit and softly announced that God had placed a new message on her heart. ” According to McPherson, the man sat down on the church steps, too tired to go any farther, and wept until a stranger approached him. The stranger put his hands on the man, and told him not to be sad.
The Middle Western. . ” Yet the audience’s combination of “mental mediaevalism with an astonishing up-to-dateness in the physical realm” struck this journalist, writing in late 1926. ” McPherson chose different words to describe her flock. “The Lord sent us many, many women and men of wealth and high social standing,” she wrote. ”45 In fact, the church welcomed all types of people, representing many different vocations. Accountants and architects, artists and auto mechanics, barbers and bakers, bookkeepers and builders, carpenters and at least one cartoonist, chiropractors and dancers, a dentist and over a hundred domestics, draftsmen and druggists, engineers and farmers, gardeners and grocers, more than six hundred “housewives,” laborers and laundry workers, meat cutters and merchants, soldiers and nannies, newsboys and musicians, over seventy-five nurses, ranchers and real estate men, salespeople, stagehands, and stenographers, students and teachers, and waiters and waitresses filled the auditorium.