Women of Faith in Church History---Sister Aimee Semple McPherson: A Woman Who Stood for the Word of God
The history of the Christian church is filled with women whose faith shaped the lives of others.
Some were missionaries. Some were evangelists. Some taught the Bible. Some wrote books or hymns. Some raised children who would serve Christ. Some cared for the poor, the sick, and the forgotten. Some opened schools. Some endured persecution. Some stood courageously when the culture around them moved in another direction.
Their stories deserve to be remembered.
But there is an important reason for remembering them.
We are not going to place these women on pedestals.
We are not going to assume that everything they believed or did was right simply because they were Christians or because God used them.
Instead, we will ask a more important question:
What does their story show us about faithfulness to Jesus Christ and the authority of God's Word?
That question brings us to our first woman: Aimee Semple McPherson.
A Young Woman Confronts Evolution
Aimee Kennedy grew up in Ontario, Canada, in a Christian home strongly influenced by the Salvation Army.
As a teenager, she encountered something that shook her faith: the teaching of evolution.
According to McPherson's own account, she first encountered the theory in a high-school geography textbook. She believed that she was being confronted with a direct contradiction between the Bible's account of creation and the evolutionary account she was being taught. The experience became a crisis of faith.
Her response was not to quietly abandon Scripture.
She began searching.
She read arguments on both sides. She wrestled with the questions. And eventually she became convinced that she could not surrender the authority of God's Word.
She wrote a letter to a local newspaper calling young people to stand by what she regarded as the truths of Scripture. PBS's historical account describes this confrontation with evolution as dramatic and decisive in her life.
That early conflict would follow her for the rest of her life.
McPherson's opposition to evolution was not simply an isolated disagreement about science. For her, it was a question of whether the Bible could be trusted when it spoke about the beginning of the world and the nature of mankind.
That is a question worth taking seriously.
The Bible as Authority
This is where Aimee McPherson's story becomes particularly interesting for us.
The central value of this series is not celebrity.
It is not success.
It is not the size of a ministry.
It is not how many people followed a particular preacher.
It is the authority of God's Word.
McPherson believed that the Bible was God's Word and treated its teaching as authoritative. Her later ministry continued to be marked by a strong commitment to biblical Christianity. Her opposition to evolution remained an important part of her public life, and in the 1920s she became an active opponent of teaching evolution in public schools.
Her position eventually became part of the larger national controversy surrounding the Scopes trial of 1925.
She was not merely watching from the sidelines. She used her growing influence to oppose the teaching of evolution and to defend what she understood to be the biblical account of creation.
For Aimee, Genesis mattered.
The opening chapters of Scripture were not disposable.
They were part of God's revelation.
From Conviction to Calling
But Aimee's life did not become a lifelong campaign against evolution.
Her deepest concern was the gospel.
As a young woman, she became convinced that Jesus Christ was calling her to preach. She eventually married Robert Semple, a Pentecostal preacher, and the two went as missionaries to China.
Their time there was tragically short.
Robert died after contracting malaria, leaving Aimee a young widow with an infant daughter.
She returned to America.
But she did not leave her Christian calling behind.
Her ministry expanded into evangelistic preaching, healing ministry, tent meetings and eventually nationwide evangelistic campaigns.
She and her family traveled in what became famous as the Gospel Car, carrying the message of Christ from place to place.
Across its doors was a question:
Where will you spend eternity?
That question reveals something about the center of her ministry.
The ultimate issue was not evolution.
It was eternity.
Taking the Gospel to the People
Aimee McPherson understood something that many churches were slow to appreciate.
The church could use the new means of communication that God had placed within reach.
She preached in tents.
She used music and drama.
She later used radio.
In 1923, she opened Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, a massive church building that became the center of her growing ministry. PBS records that the temple seated approximately 5,300 people.
Her use of radio was particularly significant.
She understood that the gospel did not have to remain inside a church building.
It could enter homes.
It could reach people who would never attend a revival meeting.
It could cross geographical boundaries.
The technology was new.
The message was old.
Jesus Christ was still the message.
A Woman Who Believed God Could Use Her
McPherson's ministry also challenged the expectations of her age about what a woman could do.
She preached to enormous crowds.
She led a growing Christian movement.
She established a Bible school.
She became a pioneer in Christian broadcasting.
She organized ministries to help people in need.
She became one of the most recognizable Christian figures in America.
PBS describes her as one of the most prominent and controversial evangelists of the period between World War I and World War II.
Yet perhaps the most important lesson is not that she became famous.
It is that she believed that God had given her a task to perform.
She did not wait for the culture to give her permission.
She preached.
She traveled.
She organized.
She communicated.
She built.
She served.
And she kept pointing people toward Christ.
But We Must Tell the Whole Story
This is where historical honesty becomes important.
A Christian biography should not become hagiography.
Aimee Semple McPherson's life included controversy, personal failures and difficult questions. Her 1926 disappearance and the competing explanations surrounding it became one of the great media stories of the period. Charges eventually failed to produce a conviction, but the controversy followed her for years.
Her marriages and divorces also became subjects of public criticism.
Her flamboyant style disturbed some conservative Christians even while other Christians were deeply attracted to her preaching.
Her Pentecostal beliefs, healing ministry, theatrical presentations and enormous public influence all generated controversy.
We should neither hide these things nor allow them to erase everything else.
That is one of the reasons to study Christian history.
The people God uses are still people.
They are not perfect.
They need grace just as we do.
The Measure Is the Word
So how should we remember Sister Aimee?
We should remember the young Canadian girl whose faith was shaken when she encountered evolution.
We should remember the woman who chose to stand on what she believed Scripture taught.
We should remember the missionary who went to China.
We should remember the widow who returned home with a young child.
We should remember the evangelist who traveled across America in a Gospel Car.
We should remember the preacher who filled enormous auditoriums.
We should remember the pioneer who recognized the potential of radio.
We should remember the woman who built Angelus Temple and established a Bible school.
We should remember the Christian who sought to bring the gospel to ordinary people.
But we should also remember her weaknesses and controversies.
And through all of it, we should keep the proper measure.
The measure is not Aimee Semple McPherson.
The measure is the Word of God.
That is important because Christian history is not Scripture.
The Bible is God's authoritative revelation.
Church history tells us what Christians did with what they believed the Bible taught.
Sometimes they were faithful.
Sometimes they were mistaken.
Sometimes they were courageous.
Sometimes they failed.
Sometimes they served Christ beautifully while still carrying serious weaknesses.
That is why Christian history can teach us humility as well as inspiration.
Why Remember These Women?
That is what we will explore in this new series, Women of Faith in Church History.
We will meet women from different centuries and different parts of the Christian world.
Some will be famous.
Others will be almost forgotten.
Some will have impressive records of faithfulness.
Others will have complicated stories.
But we will try to approach every life in the same way:
What did this woman believe?
What did she do?
How did she serve Christ?
Where did she succeed?
Where did she fail?
And most importantly:
What does Scripture teach us as we consider her life?
The writer of Hebrews tells us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.
Their lives are not Scripture.
But their stories can still teach us.
They can remind us that God has worked through generations of ordinary men and women.
They can challenge our courage.
They can expose our weaknesses.
They can strengthen our faith.
And they can remind us that the gospel of Jesus Christ did not begin with us—and will not end with us.
Sister Aimee's story begins with a young woman asking a profound question:
Can I trust the Word of God?
For her, that question became the beginning of a lifetime of preaching Christ.
And that is a fitting place for this se
Throughout the history of the Christian church, women have served Christ in remarkable ways.
Some preached. Some crossed oceans as missionaries. Some taught children and young people. Some wrote books and hymns. Some opened schools. Some cared for the poor and the sick. Some stood beside their husbands in ministry. Others carried out ministries that stood on their own.
Their stories deserve to be remembered.
Not because every woman was perfect. None of them were.
Rather, their stories remind us that God has always worked through ordinary people—people with strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, courage and fear.
That is the purpose of this new series, Women of Faith in Church History.
Our first story takes us to the first half of the twentieth century and to one of the most remarkable women in American evangelical history: Aimee Semple McPherson.
From Canada to China
Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1890. As a teenager she struggled with questions about faith. At seventeen she attended a revival meeting preached by Robert Semple.
There she came to a personal commitment to Christ.
She married Robert Semple, and the young couple soon went to China as missionaries. Their missionary service, however, was tragically brief. Robert contracted malaria and died, leaving Aimee a young widow and mother.
She returned to North America with her daughter, Roberta.
The story could easily have ended there.
Instead, it was only beginning.
The Evangelist and the Gospel Car
Aimee eventually became known as an evangelist, traveling extensively and preaching to large crowds.
Beginning in 1918, she undertook extensive evangelistic journeys across the United States, sometimes traveling in what became known as her Gospel Car.
She understood something that would become increasingly important in twentieth-century evangelism: the church could not simply wait for people to come through its doors.
The gospel had to go where the people were.
That conviction would shape the rest of her ministry.
Angelus Temple
In 1923, McPherson opened Angelus Temple in Los Angeles.
It was more than a large church building. It became the center of a growing ministry involving preaching, prayer, Bible education, missions, music, social ministry and evangelism.
McPherson also established a Bible institute that trained both men and women for Christian ministry. Within a few years, the movement associated with her ministry had planted numerous churches and was developing an international missionary ministry.
She also believed that the gospel should be communicated creatively.
Her services used music, drama, visual presentations and what she called "illustrated sermons."
She recognized the potential of new technology and became an early pioneer in Christian radio. In 1924, her radio station, KFSG, began broadcasting from Angelus Temple.
For McPherson, the question was not simply, "How have we always done church?"
The question was, "How can we communicate the gospel to the people God has placed before us?"
Faith and Compassion
Her ministry was not limited to the pulpit.
During the Great Depression, the Angelus Temple commissary provided food and clothing to people in need. The Foursquare Church records that the ministry eventually served more than 1.5 million people during those difficult years.
This is an important part of her story.
Christian faith, in McPherson's ministry, was not merely something to be proclaimed.
It was something to be lived.
People who were hungry needed food.
People who were sick needed prayer and care.
People who were searching for God needed to hear the gospel.
People who had been pushed aside by society were welcomed.
Her ministry sought to address all of these needs.
A Life That Was Not Simple
But it would be a mistake to tell McPherson's story as though everything was easy or uncomplicated.
Her personal life included two failed marriages after the death of her first husband. Her enormous public ministry also brought intense media attention.
In 1926, she disappeared while swimming at Venice Beach. Weeks later she appeared in Mexico and said that she had been kidnapped and held captive.
The story became a national sensation.
Some people believed her account. Others accused her of having fabricated the disappearance to conceal an affair. California authorities brought conspiracy-related charges, but the charges were eventually dropped for lack of sufficient evidence. McPherson continued to maintain that she had been kidnapped.
Whatever conclusions one reaches about the disputed events, the episode reminds us of something important:
Christian history is not a collection of stories about perfect people.
It is a record of God working through human beings whose lives could be complicated, painful and sometimes controversial.
That should make us careful historians—and perhaps more humble Christians.
What Should We Remember?
Aimee Semple McPherson died in 1944.
But the movement she founded continued. The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel grew into a worldwide Christian denomination.
What, then, should we remember about Sister Aimee?
We should remember a woman who believed deeply in evangelism.
We should remember a missionary who had experienced personal loss.
We should remember an evangelist who traveled extensively to preach Christ.
We should remember a pioneer who saw the possibilities of radio when that technology was still young.
We should remember a church leader who trained men and women for ministry.
We should remember a Christian who established practical ministries for people suffering during the Great Depression.
And we should remember that her story, like every human story, contains both achievement and controversy.
That last point matters.
The purpose of this series is not to create heroes who cannot be questioned.
Nor is it to tear down people because their lives were imperfect.
It is to look honestly at the men and women who have gone before us and ask:
What did they do?
What did they believe?
Where did they succeed?
Where did they struggle?
And above all:
What can their stories teach us about faithfulness to Christ?
Hebrews tells us that we are surrounded by "a great cloud of witnesses."
The women we will meet in this series were not all alike.
They lived in different centuries, came from different countries and served Christ in very different circumstances.
But each story gives us another opportunity to see how God has worked through His people in history.
And that is where we will go next.
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COME AND DINE
Jesus has a table spread
Where the saints of God are fed,
He invites His CHOSEN people,
Come and dine;
With His manna He doth feed
And supplies our every need:
O ’tis sweet to sup with Jesus all the time!
Refrain
Come and dine, the Master calleth,
Come and dine;You may feast at Jesus’ table all the time;
He who fed the multitude, turned the water into wine,
To the hungry calleth now, Come and dine.
The disciples came to land,
Thus obeying Christ’s command,
For the Master called unto them, Come and dine;
There they found their heart’s desire,
Bread and fish upon the fire;
Thus He satisfies the hungry every time.
Refrain
Soon the Lamb will take His BRIDE
To be ever at His side,
All the host of Heaven will assembled be;
O ’twill be a glorious sight,
All the saints in spotless white;
And with Jesus they will feast eternally.
Refrain
CHARLES B. WIDMEYER, 1906.
Come and dine. John 21:12
Aimee Semple McPherson’s favorite song.
Biographies
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