The 1926 kidnapping of Aimee Semple McPherson certainly affected the course of her career. Through the years some segments of the media have misrepresented the effects as diminishing her ministry. For example, the “Reader's Digest Encyclopedia” stated that after the “scandal” of the kidnapping “her following dwindled” (page 705). Nothing could be further from the truth. Five years after the kidnapping Mrs. McPherson herself told reporters covering her October 1931 revival in Boston, Massachusetts, which many hailed at the time as “the greatest evangelistic meeting the world has ever known,” that after her ordeal her church “trebled.”
Nowadays the religious media, at least, is giving the evangelist a better press. Edward E. Plowman, in his article about the Golden Jubilee Convention of the Foursquare Church which Christianity Today entitled, “In Love With Aimee,” much to the distress of many who felt that it should have been captioned, “In Love With Jesus,” wrote, “The evangelist was kidnapped and held in Mexico and she managed to escape. The Los Angeles district attorney and the press, however, seemed bent on proving it was all a lie to cover up her involvement in a romantic scandal. She was later vindicated” (March 30, 1973, page 50).
Mrs. McPherson died on September 27, 1944. Cynics gloated that soon her Foursquare organization would “come apart at the seams.” It did not, but rather grew. Donald Gee, who had long been quite critical of Mrs. McPherson's “notoriety,” stated five years after her death, “Many prophesied, and who can blame them, that the work had been founded upon her personality, but if we accept our Lord's test that, ‘by their fruits ye shall know them,’ the results are all in her favor, for the work has only deepened and increased in every way since her death, and the undeniably good fruit is
Since Donald Gee wrote that statement, the Inter-national Church of the Foursquare Gospel has continued with phenomenal growth under the leadership of the founder's son, Dr. Rolf K. McPherson. When his mother passed away, there were about four hundred Foursquare churches in the United States and Canada and two hundred foreign mission stations. Twenty years later the movement had grown to about seven hundred fifty American churches and more than twelve hundred congregations in the rest of the world. In 1983, American and Canadian churches totaled almost twelve hundred while foreign congregations about eight thousand. Membership in 1983 exceeded one hundred sixty thousand in the homeland, with a worldwide constitu-ency of almost five hundred fifty thousand. Gross valuation of properties owned by the movement has increased from about ten million dollars in 1944 to three hundred and three million in 1982. Converts worldwide in the one year of 1982 numbered three hundred and four thousand. The church operates parochial schools, Bible institutes, colleges, orphan-ages, radio stations and campgrounds.
Ed Plowman wrote regarding 1973 statistics that “Sister Aimee would have gotten excited over the reports” (ibid.).
How much more excited would she be a decade later! The Foursquare church is reputedly the fastest growing church in the Philippine Islands and the largest Protestant denomi-nation in certain Latin American countries.
The ministry of Aimee Semple McPherson, her associ-ates and successors, has contributed enormous resources of personnel to other Christian movements, leaders who got their start or training or eminence under Foursquare auspices. Dr. N.D. Davidson, who retired in the late 1970s after serving many years as the Oregon District Superin-tendent for the Assemblies of God, told me, “I might have gone to hell if it had not been for Sister McPherson.” Davidson was converted in one of her meetings in Southern California and held several offices in the Santa Paula Foursquare church before going to his subsequent affiliation.
Sidney Correll of United World Missions, musician Paul Mickelson who left Angelus Temple to become Billy Graham's Crusade organist in the 1950s, singer-missionary Norman Nelson, Hubert Mitchell, Roy McKeown, Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, and Dean Miller who was President Eisenhower's pastor at a Presbyterian church in Palm Springs, California, are among hundreds of names of ministers of renown who began their careers in the Four-square movement. On the other hand, some who at first gave promise under Mrs. McPherson of great usefulness to the cause of Christ abandoned Christian work altogether.
The now celebrated motion picture actor, Anthony Quinn, is one. As a teenager, Anthony professed conversion and joined Angelus Temple after his grandmother, Oaxaca, was healed of a critical illness when Aimee Semple McPherson came to the Quinn shack to pray for the sufferer. He remained active for a time in the church and to this day looks back with nostalgia on the association. “| preached for Aimee Semple McPherson," he has told national television audiences. And Quinn continues quick to counter criticisms he hears against the evangelist. He remains a strong fan of Mrs. McPherson.
A number of prominent figures in Hollywood's film industry showed a fascination with Mrs. McPherson's ministry through the years. The evangelist was a great comfort to Mrs. Alexander Pantages. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin, among others, attended her services at Angelus Temple from time to time. Charlie Chaplin came backstage after one of her illustrated sermons and suggested that the Temple install a proscenium arch to facilitate the audience's perception of the drama-tizations. His suggestion was soon implemented.
While the church has been growing phenomenally since the evangelist's death, libels defaming Mrs. McPherson have continued multiplying. One fiction concerns the amount of her estate. In the Northwest Today Sunday magazine of the Seattle Post-intelligence of November 8, 1970, the question and answer feature, “PEOPLE etc.," carried a query about how much Aimee Semple McPherson was worth when she died, The answer given was that she “left property valued at $59 million to her son and $10 million to her mother.” She actually left an estate which hardly exceeded $10,000. She had put everything into the church and kept virtually nothing for herself.
Another fantastic fabrication has been the report often repeated (cf. the television program “Hollywood Squares,” July 3, 1972, besides many Sunday supplement magazines) that an operating telephone is installed in Mrs. McPherson's coffin. The media regurgitates this ridiculous falsehood periodically in spite of repeated denials by the cemetery, the telephone company and the denomination.
Perhaps the most flagrant fiction of all libelling the evangelist since her death appears in Milton Berle’s latest autobiography. After a benefit entertainment in 1930 which he claims starred both himself and the evangelist at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Berle represents that she lured him to her apartment twice and seduced him. On atable beside the bed, he declared, was a crucifix and candles, which he handled, he says, by not looking at it. This portrayal is not mentioned in his earlier book, Laughingly Yours, which has some autobiographical content and was published in 4939 during the lifetime of the evangelist.
Some acquaintances who would like to believe the worst about Mrs. McPherson have told me, “We wantto believe the story, but that bit about the crucifix convinces us it cannot be true.”
There are other reasons why the story cannot be true. Mrs. McPherson's daughter, Roberta Salter of New York, told me, “Mother never had an apartment in her life.” And by 1931 she kept herself securely chaperoned to guard against such allegations. Furthermore, the year 1930 is one in which we can trace the evangelists appearances and whereabouts almost every day. She was incapacitated with illness a full five months of that year, and there is no place in her schedule, as reported in her publications and church and travel records, for any such benefit. Besides, Roberta also told me, “Mother never did a benefit in her life. She had her own charities.”
The charities the evangelist organized and operated included the Angelus Temple Commissary where anyone could receive food, clothing, job information, and other assistance no matter what was his race, creed, or religion. Hundreds of times the Los Angeles Fire Department and Police Department brought or referred to the commissary destitute families who could not find help elsewhere. Between the time the commissary opened and the evangelist died, it had fed and clothed more than one-and-one-half million persons.
One of the beneficiaries was the family of Richard Halverson who would become Chaplain of the United States Senate in 1981. On February 15, 1971, this then pastor of a prominent Washington, D.C. area Presbyterian church told an Angelus Temple convention audience: “In 19351 came to
Los Angeles with my family. We had driven all the way from North Dakota. We had just enough money left to make the first month’s rent on an apartment. When we put that down we were flat broke. We literally didn't have another penny. was nineteen. We didn't have anything to eat. The Echo Apartments’ manager said, ‘Why don’t you come down to Angelus Temple? They'll give you something to eat.’ My mother came down here. came with her. We went to your commissary. They loaded us down with groceries. And we lived off Angelus Temple that first month. You took care of us. You loved us. Then mother was given a job in the commissary, and so the rest of the time we were here she worked there and at least earned our food. Well, when we lived at the Echo Apartments we were here in Angelus Temple nearly every Sunday. And had the privilege and pleasure of hearing Sister Aimee Semple McPherson preach many, many times in this place. So can tell you that am greatly honored to be in this pulpit.”
The Angelus Temple commissary continues in operation.
At a subsequent International Foursquare Convention at Angelus Temple, Dr. Robert H. Schuller, pastor of the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, told delegates of an occasion when he landed late one night at Los Angeles International Airport where he had left his car parked. In driving home he tuned his dial and stopped at a radio station carrying a sermon by a woman preacher whose voice he did not recognize. He got more and more excited as he listened to the message. He exclaimed, “| want to get that woman to preach at my church.” Atthe end of the sermon he learned he was listening to Angelus Temple's radio station KFSG and hearing the voice of the long deceased evangelist, Aimee Semple McPherson, whose sermons continue to be broadre periodically by recording and are available on cassette ape.
Brickbats also were frequently aimed at the evangelist, but they often boomeranged. Donald Gee wrote, “She was fiercely attacked, perhaps more fiercely than any other contemporary evangelist. But it is significant that those who went out of the way to attack her always went down, while she and her work remained” (op. cit. page 121).
“Lately Thomas,” in a chapter called “Coda,” chronicled the debacles in the public careers of those who spearheaded the case against the evangelist concerning the kidnapping, especially District Attorney Asa Keyes, his erstwhile assistant, Joe Ryan and Police Captain Herman Cline. About: the only principal in the case who enjoyed an ascending career afterwards was Aimee Semple McPherson.
The tide is beginning to turn in the public's perception of the kidnapping of the evangelist. All of the die-hards, when confronted with the evidence supporting Mrs. McPherson's account of her abduction and with the truth about her many-faceted ministry, are willing to rethink their attitudes toward the oft-parrotted misrepresentations by the press. Motivation of the media may not be malice but rather, as reporters often told Mrs. McPherson in excusing the bad publicity they gave her, “Aimee good — that’s no news. Aimee bad — Wow!”
When the truth has been told, dramatic results have ensued, In 1975 Vicki Haas enrolled in a course at UCLA about the affairs in Los Angeles. This seminar included considerable attention to the career of Aimee Semple McPherson and its main textual source was Lately Thomas' book, Storming Heaven. Vicki's pastor, Jack Hayford, phoned mein April and put Vicki on the line to explain the situation. On April 28 mailed her more than a dozen documents, some of which she shared with her instructor and class. On May 10 she wrote me, “| must tell you am very excited about the direction the seminar is taking. In these past two weeks there has been a definite change of attitude and tone in the class. Storming Heaven is rarely mentioned and the professor has recommended that the students stay away from newspaper sources in their research. They have been scouring every kind of archive imaginable in the city of Los Angeles which might have any kind of connection or information at all about Mrs. McPherson. They have also gone to Angelus Temple itself and have been very impressed by the receptivity of those at the Temple. In the midst of all this, much positive information has surfaced about Mrs. McPherson. It's really a blessing to watch some of the students begin to take a different position concerning Mrs. McPherson. believe many of the students who have never known of the Lord will be exposed to Jesus through this class.”
The truth is being told, and the verdict is in. Aimee Semple McPherson was really kidnapped as she said.
The End