Daniel Mark Epstein - Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson

Copyright 1993 by Daniel Mark Epstein

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Epstein, Daniel Mark.

Sister Aimee: the life of Aimee Semple McPherson / Daniel Mark
Epstein.1st Harvest ed.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-15-600093-8
1. McPherson, Aimee Semple, 18901944. 2. EvangelistsUnited
StatesBibliography. I. Title.

BX7990.168M274 1993
289.9dc20 92-23324

eISBN 978-0-547-54498-4
v1.0214

For my daughter,
Johanna Ruth Epstein

The author wishes to record his thanks to many people who contributed to this biography through research activity, by providing documents, and by sharing their memories and impressions of Aimee Semple McPherson and the events of her life, both on and off the record, for attribution and for background. He wishes first to thank Rolf McPherson and Roberta Salter for their generosity in submitting to many hours of interviews; he is also grateful for lengthy interviews granted by Nathaniel Van Cleave, Leland Edwards, Charles Duarte, Howard Courtenay, and Jean Gulick in Los Angeles, and Mary Young, A. B. Teffetteller, Modena Teffetteller, Edythe G. Dorrance, Elmer McCammon, Margery McCammon, Ruth Baker, and Edyth Campbell of Hemet, California. Everett Wilson, a local historian in Salford, provided many essential documents, rare news clippings, photographs and census records, as well as hospitality. Doug Carr and J. C. Herbert of Salford were very helpful there, as were the librarians of Salford. In Los Angeles, I was fortunate in having the kind and energetic cooperation of Leita Mae Steward and the heritage department of Foursquare International. They generously provided workspace, copying facilities and unconditional access to the archives of the Church, and helped arrange interviews. Marc and Alice Davis provided generous hospitality in Los Angeles, and Alice Davis, who once acted on the stage at Angelus Temple, shared many anecdotes. The enormous task of obtaining and organizing most of the news articles, books, and periodical essays from the years 19181944 was accomplished by researcher Catherine Martin, who was resourceful in finding answers to difficult historical and medical questions. Dr. William Waldman, M.D., helped to answer medical questions, as did Dr. Jackson Eyeliff. My father-in-law, Julian Hartt, professor emeritus of religion at the University of Virginia, answered many of my questions about the origins of the charismatic movement. The staff of the library at Union Memorial Hospital provided important medical articles concerning arthritis, cancers, disorders of the immune system, and spontaneous remission, as did the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Robert Bahr donated his entire file of primary resources from a book that he wrote about the evangelist more than a decade ago. My daughter Johanna Ruth Epstein helped organize the footnotes, and provided helpful editing suggestions. Rosemary Knower helped trim the manuscript and reorganize many sectionsonce again her wise editing has been an invaluable aid to clarity. The head of research at The Enoch Pratt Library, Eleanor Swidan, discovered hundreds of documents, old news articles, and references to Aimee Semple McPherson in contemporary literature; without her imaginative and painstaking detective work, this book would be much narrower in scope.

It happened not in the misty, nebulous long ago, to white-robed men and women in a time we cannot quite visualize as ever having had reality, but to children and men and women who had street addresses and telephone numbers, who came in automobiles and not on camel-back by caravan, as it was said they did long ago. The blind saw again; the deaf heard. Cripples left their crutches and hung them on the rafters.

LOUISE WEICK,
The San Francisco Chronicle, 1921

Somebody must have seen her marching up Main Street from the direction of the bank and the barbershop, a very young woman in a white dress, carrying a chair.

Her auburn hair was swept up from her temples into a loose chignon, revealing the cameo perfection of her profile. She had set the chair down firmly against the curb on the street corner and jumped up on it as though she were about to sing or give a speech to no one in particular; at that hour of the evening in Mount Forest, Ontario there were few people aroundsome after-dinner strollers, an occasional carriage or automobile, a kid on his bicycle.

Standing on the chair, she raised her long hands toward heaven as if calling for help in whatever it was she had undertaken to do. And then she did nothing. Given her unconcealable nervous energy, this was probably harder for the young woman than anything. She closed her large, wide-set eyes and just stood there with her arms straight up, like a statue of marble invisibly vibrating.

That had been quite a while ago. A man stopped to admire her, and another. A little boy was tempted to toss a pebble at her to make sure she was alive, but his mother caught his wrist. Once people saw her, they could not pull their eyes away, partly because she was so beautiful in the intensity of her concentration, partly because they had to see if she would move.

Now the crowd that gathered around the shapely young woman began arguing over how long she had been standing there, on the chair, at the corner on Main Street in Mount Forest, Ontario, with her hands up. Some said it was no more than twenty minutes. But one old farmer claimed he began watching her when the sun was above the pines. That had to be an hour past, because now it was well on toward dusk. And still he could scarcely detect the rise and fall of her breast as she breathed in and out.

It was not hard to draw a crowd in Mount Forest in 1915. A new motorcar or a dogfight would do it. But this was probably the only time a person ever drew a crowd there, and held it, just by standing still in silence.

They fell to speculating and arguing over what could be the matter with the little woman on the chairwhether she was crazy, possessed by the devil, or catatonic. She certainly was not a native of Mount Forest. Someone in the crowd said he had seen this young woman around the Victory Mission just up the street. Someone else offered the information that the rigid madonna on the chair above them was Sister Aimee Semple McPherson.

While we have Sister Aimee Semple McPherson squarely in our sights and she is standing still (like the hummingbird), let us seize this opportunity in the summer of 1915 to take a long hard look at her. She has not stood still this long since she began to walk, and she will not stand still this long again while she is breathing. Aimee is twenty-four years old. She is in the bloom of health, quite beautiful by any standards, with pointed features that are curiously both angelic and foxlike. She is particularly beautiful now in repose, her full lips concealing rows of long, even teeth. Later, when she smiles her dazzling smile, or laughs, the upper lip will draw back over the slightly protruding teeth with an effect that might be described as... horsey. This is the single defect, a minor one. There is an almost terrifying symmetry in the face, as if it were a half-face folded over. Now with her eyes and mouth closed we may admire the brow, high and broad, the straight hairline, the Hellenic nose. Most of us have a light and dark hemisphere to our facesAimees is one oval of light.