Aimee Semple McPherson set the stage for the modern-day TV evangelist preaching from their megachurch while also being a total hypocrite.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: May 18, 1926--
Fond of radio evangelizing, Aimee popularized using modern media to transform Jesus into home entertainment. Born in Canada in 1890 to a Methodist family, she was taught evolution in high school and didn’t like that one bit. She wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper asking why taxes were being spent to teach heathen science. People from across the country replied to that letter. She got her first taste of fame and liked it.
You know what I like? Paid subscribers.
At 17 she married a Pentecostal missionary and converted. He died of dysentery two years later. She remarried soon after (twice, and divorced twice) and started her ministry, ending up in Los Angeles in 1918, because she wanted to be in show business: fundamentalist Christian show business, with faith healing and speaking in tongues and all that.
She started the Foursquare Church, which now has more than 350,000 members, using radio evangelizing to raise funds to build one of the first megachurches: Angelus Temple, which still packs ‘em in.
Aimee continued her fight against Darwinism, using her now-massive platform to side against its teaching during the time of the 1925 Scopes Trial. But she wasn’t all bad. She desegregated her churches, and the KKK attended services in full garb in response, but the story goes they were so touched that hoods and robes were found on the ground afterward. Aimee was also dedicated to charity work.
But there were also the scandals. On May 18, 1926, Aimee was “k
idnapped” from a beach in Santa Monica. More than a month later she showed up in Arizona with a fantastic tale. She said she’d been abducted and hidden in a shack in the Mexican desert, but eventually escaped and walked 20 miles to the border. Tens of thousands greeted her return to Los Angeles. Prosecutors investigated her claim and came to the conclusion she’d actually spent several weeks shacking up with a former employee in a resort town.
Aimee and others were charged with criminal conspiracy and obstruction of justice, and the case was set for trial, but eventually dismissed for lack of evidence. There were claims of numerous other affairs, financial improprieties, and several lawsuits against her. She also fell from grace with the press. None of this deterred her faithful followers.
She died of an unprescribed barbiturate overdose at the age of 53, which was ruled accidental.
Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.
As Buffy the Vampire Slayer said, "Note to self; religion, wacky."
Evangelists certainly live peculiar lives. "Do as I say, not as I do." Yeah. 🙄 Great role models aren't they? Those that preach against something are the ones that always get caught with their pants down.