Hard west evangelists tombs6/17/2023 ![]() … She drove recklessly to the front of the auditorium, slammed on the brakes, blew a screech on a police whistle, raised a white-gloved hand to the congregation, and shouted: “Stop! You’re speeding to hell!”įor a sermon entitled “Eighteen Day Diet or the Skeleton Army,” McPherson covered the stage with bones, which then “became clothed with sinews and flesh” through special effects. The world’s greatest evangelist sat in the saddle dressed as a speed cop. That night Sister gave us “The Green Light Is On.” The opening remarks were the deafening roar of a motorcycle speeding down the ramp with the cutout open. In Marcus Bach’s 1946 tour of upstart religions, They Have Found a Faith, he described one of McPherson’s illustrated sermons: (There’s also someone on stage wearing biblical robes and a long fake beard, swinging around a gigantic prop pocket watch, whose presence isn’t explained but is probably related to the New Year.) It’s a pretty wild service, but Sister Alice has nothing on Sister Aimee. At a key point in the sermon, another seven women dressed as angels, representing the seven heavenly virtues, take to the stage and give their halos to the seven deadly sins. In Perry Mason’s second episode, Sister Alice delivers a sermon apparently based on 1 Corinthians 10:21 and “illustrates” it by having seven women onstage with her wearing robes labeled with the names of the seven deadly sins. Like Alice’s spectacular services, Aimee’s combined old-time religion with new-time Hollywood special effects. That had everything to do with Sister Aimee’s illustrated sermons, which invite a more direct comparison with Sister Alice’s. In 1918, at the age of 28, McPherson arrived in Los Angeles in her trademark “Gospel Car,” a 1918 Oldsmobile with “JESUS IS COMING SOON-GET READY” painted on the side. Her husband joined her and made a go of it for a while, but he ultimately went home to Rhode Island, divorcing her in 1922. In 1915, she abandoned McPherson and set out on the road with her children to preach the gospel, fulfilling a promise she’d made to God while suffering from appendicitis. After returning to the United States, she married again, this time to Harold McPherson, an accountant. Originally from Ontario, she moved to Chicago in 1908 with her first husband, Robert Semple, who converted her to Pentecostalism, took her with him on a missionary trip to China, and promptly died of dysentery. She got her two last names from her first two marriages, neither of which ended well. Send me updates about Slate special offers.Īnd to understand Sister Aimee, it helps to understand her backstory.
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