The wild story of Americas pioneering mega-preacher Aimee Semple McPherson and her mysterious disappearance
She was a blend of P.T.Barnum, the colorful showman credited with declaring, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and the infamous flamboyant televangelist couple Tammy Faye and Jim Baker who built a scandal-riddled evangelical empire — all rolled into one.Back in the early years of the Roaring Twenties it was a charismatic lady evangelist by the name of Aimee Semple McPherson who ruled a circus-like path to heaven that enthralled audiences and worshippers alike.Operating out of what was America’s very first megachurch — the Angelus Temple, in Los Angeles, with more than 7,000 daily visitors — McPherson, by age 33, was a star who found her calling by dazzling followers with flamboyant sermons that described a rapturous state of love with God.A faith healer, too, McPherson’s dramatic sermons included adult baptisms by immersion in water — with stage scenery borrowed from nearby Hollywood studios, and all of it backed by her brass band or 14-piece orchestra and a hundred-voice choir outfitted in heavenly white.And it all guaranteed that the collection plates would be spilling over at the conclusion of her services. To the devout, Aimee Semple McPherson was a modern-day saint, more recognizable than the pope.“Aimee sold herself as ‘the just right option’ — more comfortable than the thumpers who yelled about sin and hell, but also someone who embraced the pure fundamentals of Christian faith.
She was ‘Everybody’s Sister,’ ” writes journalist Claire Hoffman in her wild ride of a biography, “Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).As Hoffman details, McPherson’s “critics called her the P.T.Barnum of Christianity.
She used live camels, tigers, lambs and stately palm trees — whatever it took to bring the ancient world alive on her stage.” She was “the Goldilocks alternative — not too hot, not too cold.The just-right message on Jesus,” Hof...