Transcript for Anthea Butler and Arlene Sánchez-Walsh — Reviving Sister Aimee

August 9, 2007

Krista Tippett, host: I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "Reviving Sister Aimee." We'll explore the legacy of a flamboyant woman in U.S. religious history, the 20th-century Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. Theatrically and controversially, she helped to popularize a charismatic faith that touched millions in her time and reaches an estimated half-billion people in ours.

Ms. Arlene Sánchez Walsh: She's a woman doing this at a time when not very many men or women are thinking this way. So I've got a church, but not only do I have a church, I've got a radio station. Not only do I have this radio station, but I'm feeding everybody in Los Angeles. How many ways can I get this message out that's possible? And maybe that's a little bit, you know, televangelist. But televangelists can be very much one-sided. You do not see very many televangelists today figuring out how they're going to feed the poor.



Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippet. This hour, as part of our occasional series on historic figures, we'll delve into the spiritual legacy of the 20th-century Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, a pioneering broadcaster, a religious innovator and a volatile celebrity before her time. Aimee Semple McPherson was one of the most controversial and effective figures to spread the populous faith of the modern Pentecostal movement that now touches as many as half a billion people globally.

From American Public Media, this is Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Today, "Reviving Sister Aimee."

Aimee Semple McPherson has not gone down in history as a household name. But her reach as an evangelist and media pioneer in the early 20th century was remarkable even by today's standards. She was a famous preacher and worship leader decades before the most liberal Christian denominations began to ordain women. She was the first woman to receive an FCC license to operate a radio station. She built and led a 5,000-seat church in Los Angeles, the Angelus Temple, a huge circular building where she preached often more than 20 times weekly to capacity crowds.

She helped to feed 1.5 million people during the Great Depression, the poorest of the poor, without regard for race or creed. The actor Anthony Quinn reported that Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, and Greta Garbo all fell short of the first electric shock of meeting Aimee Semple McPherson. Here she is giving a sermon at the Angelus Temple in 1939 that was broadcast on KFSG, the radio station she created.

Ms. Aimee Semple McPherson: (from archival recording) Lord, bless us and give us a soul-shaking revival tonight. Let everyone in Angelus Temple and listening over the air, down on the ships at sea and wherever they may be, feel God's motivating power.

Ms. Tippett: Aimee Semple McPherson's religion lives on most directly in the Pentecostal denomination she founded, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which today has over five million members in 147 countries. But her legacy even there is complicated by the controversy that marred her fame and accomplishment. She was married three times, had at least one nervous breakdown, and was accused of staging her own kidnapping in 1926.

My two guests this hour see her as a complex figure, yet say that her personal life that was scandalous in the early 20th century makes her more empowering for modern women, not less so. Later, I'll speak with Arlene Sánchez Walsh who studies the contemporary global Pentecostal movement.

Ms. Arlene Sánchez Walsh: There are some religious figures whose personal life have been laid open this broadly before the public. But generally, it's viewed as a negative. It's viewed as something that was overcome, that God in his grace has seen beyond that. But her as a woman, as a single mother, as divorced, as someone who kind of exuded this quiet sexuality when women just were not supposed to be sexual unless they were a different type of woman, is very unique, very unique. And so I'm attracted to her humanness.

Unidentified man: (singing) You don't have to worry

Ms. Tippett: We'll trace the human and spiritual story of Aimee Semple McPherson with my first guest, Anthea Butler, an assistant professor of Religion at the University of Rochester. The woman later referred to by millions as Sister Aimee was born Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy in Canada in 1890. As she was growing up in the early years of the 20th century, the Pentecostal movement was just beginning, urging Christians to reclaim the gifts of the spirit of the earliest church, preaching, healing, and especially speaking in tongues. As Aimee Semple McPherson would later tell it, one day when she was 17 years old, she walked into a Pentecostal service feeling cold and far from God. I asked Anthea Butler what happened to her there.

Unidentified man: (singing) Your friends maybe few but I've got a home for you.

Ms. Anthea Butler: Well, I think she's really struck. I mean, anybody who walk into a Pentecostal service for the first time, it's all this movement with your body. And you're taught in a certain way to control your body. I mean, think about this. This is just, you know, right at the turn of the century. We're still sort of Victorian worldview sort of way.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Butler: And to see people sort of, you know, women and men letting their bodies loose in worshipping, all these tongue-speaking and people touching each other and all. It's, I mean, it's got to put you in a different kind of space, you know? And then you add on the charismatic preacher and then, you know, the rest is sort of history in a certain way.

Ms. Tippett: Right. Right. And the charismatic preacher was Robert Semple, a young Irishman

Ms. Butler: Yeah.


Ms. Butler: Yeah. Yeah. And this is  I mean, it's awful. I mean, it's just, you imagine you get married. You're about to have your first baby and your husband's dead. And then you're with all these people you don't know. And then you've got to, you know, get in touch with your mother and try to raise some money to get back home on a boat. I don't think we really sort of realize now, you know, as a young woman, how daunting that must have been. I mean, all sorts of things could have happened to her. But, I mean, she shows a lot of pluck from the very beginning, really.

Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm. And I also could imagine that this story could've continued with another person saying, 'Well, I don't believe in all of this anymore,' right?

Ms. Butler: Oh, absolutely.

Ms. Tippett: 'Surely, God didn't call me to witness the death of my husband in a foreign country and become impoverished.' But she went back and started working with The Salvation Army and, within a very short time, seems to have felt called to ministry in a huge way.

Ms. Butler: Yeah. Exactly. And in the interim of that, you know, meaning, husband number two.

Ms. Tippett: Yes.

Ms. Butler: And this is always very interesting to me because I think, in part, poor McPherson did not know what he was getting into. You still have the sort of conventional, you know, Adam and Eve, everybody gets married, this is part of God's plan for everyone. But for Pentecostals, I think, which is different than fundamentalists, is that God's still speaking. And that the fact that God is still speaking and still "calling" people, and put that in quotation marks, makes a difference especially for Pentecostal women when they go, somebody like Aimee who goes off to do all of this, you know, missionizing and traveling without the husband.

Ms. Tippett: So you tell the story of, you know, how her ministry then develops.

Ms. Butler: Part of what happens after Aimee gets married to Harold is that she tries to be a housewife for a little while. She tries, and it sort of works in a way because she has her second son, Rolf. But she continues to be sick. There is sickness all the time. And I think one of the big Pentecostal tropes is, 'If you don't do the calling that God asks you to do, you get very ill.' And then finally, you know, she's basically close to death. And she hears this voice, you know, 'Are you going to go? Will you go?' And she says yes. So she picks up, she takes off. And she tells Harold, you know,' I tried it your way. Now, will you try it mine?'

Ms. Tippett: So, I mean, I think she started publishing The Bridal Call

Ms. Butler: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: while she was there. And tell me about that.

Ms. Butler: Yeah. The Bridal Call is really great because she, if you think about Oprah's magazine, O, now

Ms. Tippett: Yes.

Ms. Butler: what's always interesting is that she, you know, sort of has herself on the cover a lot, too, in various guises. So she might be dressed up as a shepherdess or something like that on the front of some the Bridal Calls that you'll see. But it's about, you know, all early Pentecostals, during this time period, are sort of putting out their own publications. I think this is something that people really miss. But as a woman putting out her own publication

Ms. Tippett: Yes.

Ms. Butler: You know, on the road, think about this, you know, I mean, having to do this.

Ms. Tippett: I mean, she becomes a preacher and a publisher and then a broadcaster.

Ms. Butler: Absolutely.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah.

Ms. Butler: Yeah. And I think, you know, this is, speaks to really her entrepreneurial sense. I mean, she's like, 'It's not enough for me to go in the road. I need to have a broadside to sell.' She's not thinking about it as being sales; it's ministry.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Butler: But it also puts some money in the coffers so that she could continue this work of the ministry, you know? Somebody's got to pay for this stuff.

Ms. Semple McPherson: Hallelujah. And let all the white spots in the world, the United States with its freedom to preach the gospel, no one to tell us what we can broadcast or print or publish. Thank God we have the chance to still keep our light burning. Amen.

Religious followers: Amen.

Ms. Tippett: She really seemed to have little interest in race or creed or social class.

Ms. Anthea Butler: Yeah.

Ms. Tippett: Her gatherings were remarkably ecumenical. And, but what's interesting to me is that diversity and pluralism in the mix of people there was also what was astonishing about the Azusa Street Revival at the very earliest days of the Pentecostal movement. However, very quickly, within the Pentecostal movement in general, that was not maintained, right?

Ms. Anthea Butler: Yeah.

Ms. Tippett: I mean, blacks and whites and Latinos who'd worshipped together on Azusa Street worshipped apart. But Aimee Semple McPherson is this figure who seems to carry that mind forward in time quite boldly.

Ms. Anthea Butler: Exactly. So I think, for her, it was more about, you know, 'What do I think heaven's going to look like?' What you don't see a lot of and, I think, what's always puzzling and troubling about Aimee at the same time is that she could play allegiances across the board. I mean, you do have to remember that this is someone who, on the one hand, has interracial meetings, but on the other hand, you know, has a couple of incidences where the Ku Klux Klan gives her money.

And this is one of the, you know, one of the hard parts of the story. So I think that it works for both sides of her strengths. I think, on one level, I think she's very much sincere about the interracial context of her revivals and later on at Angelus Temple. On the other hand, she is very pragmatist, in a sense, and knows that if I need some support, I'm going to have to get it from somewhere.

Ms. Tippett: OK. You mentioned the Angelus Temple, which could seat 5,000 people. And, I mean, it's not just that there were 5,000 people there once a week on Sunday, either. I've seen that it was filled to capacity sometimes three times a day, seven days a week.

Ms. Anthea Butler: All the time. Yeah. And what was great was that she knew how to put on a show for you.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Anthea Butler: So, I mean, why wouldn't you line up to go see the illustrated sermon, or to see her preach, or to see this fabulous choir, or the many guests who would come through to see it. I mean, it was the greatest show sitting right there on Los Angeles that you could, you know, line up for, even better than the movies. And they're still silent.

Ms. Tippett: Religious scholar Anthea Butler.

Ms. Semple McPherson: And this evening, our sermon is to be rebroadcast at 12:15. I understand now on the radio they are making a large record in Hollywood at the company, which'll be replayed, and I presume, kept as long as the world stands. So I would like to be sure before they start the needle working there that you people understand how to say "amen." Let me hear you say it.

Religious followers: Amen.

Ms. Semple McPherson: That's a Methodist amen. I was brought up in Methodist church. Now, let's hear a real Holy Ghost, on-fire, Pentecostal amen.

Religious followers: Amen.

Ms. Semple McPherson: That's better. Let's hear a "hallelujah."

Religious followers: Hallelujah.


Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippet and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today, "Reviving Sister Aimee." We're seeking to illuminate the humanity and spiritual legacy of Aimee Semple McPherson, a Pentecostal evangelist with a pioneering ministry for three decades in the early 20th century. She died in 1944 of a suspected accidental overdose, just shy of her 54th birthday.

My guest, Anthea Butler, has a special scholarly interest in the role of women in the Pentecostal movement, especially in the Church of God in Christ, a predominantly African-American denomination that is the fifth-largest Christian tradition in the U.S. This was one of the earliest churches to grow out of the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906, where modern Pentecostalism was born under the leadership of an African-American preacher.

Aimee Semple McPherson was a product and champion of that egalitarian theology, which also ordained women a century ago. Yet, at the same time, she was easily parodied by contemporaries such as Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Parker, in part, for the theatricality of her personality and her ministry. She often donned a nurse's uniform when she spoke publicly. Her popular illustrated sermons at Angelus Temple included lavish moving sets, live animals, and Aimee in starring roles as a milkmaid, motorcycle cop, and pilot. She once posed with a large, constructed gorilla to promote her rejection of Darwinism. It was difficult then as now for many to take Aimee Semple McPherson seriously.

Ms. Tippett: I think it was easy then and it's easy now to just say she was a show person. She was a movie star. She had charisma and a charisma in the way we think of it now.

Ms. Anthea Butler: Yeah.

Ms. Tippett: And that that's really essentially the way to explain this woman. I mean, how importantly does that figure in how you explain this woman?

Ms. Anthea Butler: I think it's important. But I think there's, there's something deeper. And, and It's almost dangerous to say in the same word as Pentecostal, but I'll go ahead and say it. There's something sexy about her. And it's this, it's the thing in the

Ms. Tippett: And beautiful, she was beautiful.

Ms. Anthea Butler: And beautiful, yes. She looked like she could be, you know, a very much, a femme fatale or somebody's mother at the same time.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah, that's right.

Ms. Anthea Butler: I mean, I think seeing her evokes, you know, especially in her, I call it the heavier phase, pre-1926, in her heavier phase, she looks like, you know, a woman who can stand her ground. But she still looks very attractive. And so I think that drew people in. But for her, it's, 'I know I've got to get them in. But when I get them in, I'm going to give them the message.' And that's what becomes more important for her.

I mean, I think she realizes that she's got to marry sort of this Pentecostal embodiment with a strong sort of, you know, message of, 'Here is this message of the gospel. Here's this Pentecostal experience. Here's how it can work out in your life and, and change things.' And so for that, I think, she's totally holistic in a certain way. I mean, I think it's just, it's easy to see her as an entertainer, but she's much more than that.

Ms. Tippett: Right. And what  something I've notice is then  that in articles that emphasize her as this entertainer, they often don't mention or kind of downplay the work she did during the Depression, feeding the hungry, I mean, feeding 1.5 million people.

Ms. Anthea Butler: Absolutely. And the commissary was  you know, you've got this commissary where people were not turned away. She has food there. You know, she's feeding people at least once or twice a day. She's got workers in the commissary. She is actually passing out food there. I mean, all of this sort of gets missed in the, you know, sort of the more salacious aspects or maybe more sensational aspects of her story. And I think what she does is this great service. It's this other piece of Pentecostalism. It's the social justice piece

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Anthea Butler: that gets missed, you know? Because people just look at, 'Oh, they're lifting their heads and they're shouting. And they're speaking in that little, funny language.' But it's much more. And for her, it's like, 'I'm not going to just give you this message. I'm going to show you how I love you. So  'cause I'm going to feed you. And I'm going to help you get out of this.' And even before the Depression, she's working with prostitutes and women who are abused. I mean, there's something that's there in her that's much stronger than this just, 'I'm going to feed people, so I can tell them about the gospel.' It's that this is a real need. 'I want to see people get better. I want to see them helped.'

Ms. Tippett: Is this kind of story  did you grow up in the Church of God in Christ?

Ms. Anthea Butler: No, I didn't. I'm actually Catholic. But I had gone to a Pentecostal church for 10 years and sort of, you know, and Foursquare Church actually, Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California. And that's how I learned about Aimee. And what struck me about the story in Foursquare was that most people looked at Aimee as this person who had been forgotten now. She started the denomination, whatever. And then you saw these men up here every Sunday

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Anthea Butler: doing the Sunday service. But the only person that I felt, you know, really revered her history in the proper way is now  is the president of International Foursquare, Jack Hayford. And he gave this message one evening about rescuing one of her shoes off the trash heap at Angelus Temple. And he talked about people throwing away their history and throwing away the history of this great woman who started the denomination. And it got me to thinking about, 'Well, if this got all started by a woman, why can't you see women now?'

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Anthea Butler: 'Why don't you see women in the more prominent places, not just in Foursquare, but in other churches as well?' And that sort of started me out on this quest to try to find out anymore about Aimee Semple McPherson. But then to find out about women in Pentecostalism more broadly, because I could see the sort of backlash, in a sense.


Ms. Anthea Butler: Well, it was funny. You know, I asked a couple of people that I knew. And they were like, 'Oh, I don't know, you know? Maybe it's just because of history and that's the way it is now. Maybe a lot of women aren't going to school.' But I found out the opposite. I found out that, you know, there's tons of women entering in the seminary and women that were at Life Bible College and other places and the women that I saw in church. And I think, you know, what happened here, and I think part of it, in the story of Pentecostalism at least, has been this story of becoming the mainstream. And when you have, 100 years ago, Pentecostalism is looked at as this aberration, the crazy people who are waiting for Jesus to come. And then you get 20 and 30 years in, and people get a little bit more settled and denominations are formed. They have to decide how much they're going to acquiesce to the general public viewpoint and, or

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Anthea Butler: you know, or what they think the Holy Spirit has said to them.

Ms. Semple McPherson: I have come to Broadway, the Mecca of sin, the citadel of worldliness. Oh, I feel, in answering this invitation, though I should like to stand in the midst of the Broadways of America and lift up my hands and cry, "Stop. You're drifting away from the faith of your fathers. You're drifting away from prayer, drifting away from the Bible-reading, drifting away from the family altar. And only ruin and the heartbreak and the home-break lay in the direction of backsliding." I am coming out to help bring you back, as if can, to the fold. Give me a burden for souls, Lord. Give me a love for the lost. Let my heart bleed as thy own, Lord. Give me a burden for soul.

Ms. Butler: We could hear her speak. This is really great. But I mean, just think, this is, you know, we're starting to get into the age of the talking movie. And then when we move, move forward, she's a different kind of media figure altogether. I'm very sorry she passed away when she did because, I thought, I wonder what she will look like on TV?

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Butler: But, you know, there you go.


Ms. Butler: Yeah.

Ms. Tippett: They may forget her feeding the hungry during the Depression. But, and then, you know, it's fascinating.

Ms. Butler: And they forget that the

Ms. Tippett: She disappeared. She was on Venice Beach. She's found a month later in Mexico. She has this story that doesn't seem to add up about being kidnapped. There are all kinds of explanations of what may really have been going on, including she may have been having an affair with somebody who worked in her radio station.

Ms. Butler: Yeah.

Ms. Tippett: She had a nervous breakdown a few years later. She had these failed marriages. And some people would say, 'This proves that this was not a woman of God, but just a flawed human being with a big ego, who liked to be on stage.' I mean, I think some people would hold the whole Pentecostal enterprise in suspicion seeing this

Ms. Butler: Yeah.

Ms. Tippett: and seeing her as a representative of it.

Ms. Butler: If you're narrow-minded, yes.

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Butler: But I think, and what's more interesting to me is that she managed to not mess it up as much as she could have. And what I mean by that is this. I mean, if you think about the fact that you've done all of this work and you're constantly traveling. You're taking care of two little kids. And you've got, you know, your mother's kind of always there sort of nagging at you all the time even though you've done all this stuff. And, you know, everybody wants to feel a little bit of personal love and attention. It's not enough to have a crowd of 5,000 in front of your face all the time. They don't go home and tuck you in at night.

And I would imagine that this place of prominence that she had was a very lonely place. And so, you know, you can read the story of her disappearance and, you know, whether or not she's with the radio operator and all this. You can read that as, 'Oh, this is salacious. It's terrible, all of this.' Or you could read it as, 'This is somebody who hadn't had a break in, how long?'

Ms. Tippett: OK. You know, there are some sadness when you kind of, when you read her story. And you, and as you've been describing, you see all she accomplished. You see how uneven it was. You see how she collapsed occasionally. And she dies of what looks like an accidental overdose. Although, I read somewhere that her funeral was still one of the largest funerals ever to be held in Los Angeles. So many people were there.

Ms. Butler: Yeah. I think it's an indictment against the rigor of religion, actually, to be quite honest. And I'll  and I'll mean it by this. What becomes the issue is how much are you supposed to give up of yourself to live for God? I mean, this is always the big question. And, you know, and there's all these great songs about, 'I surrender all, put your all on the altar'

Ms. Tippett: Yeah. Yeah.

Ms. Butler: all these sorts of things. And people saying these things, they really mean them. But nobody ever bothers to think of a life like Aimee's. And, you know, Aimee just decided to go headlong into all of this. And, you know, there is a point in which you have to count the cost of what it's going to do.

And, you know, do you pull back when your family starts to fall apart or your daughter doesn't like you anymore? Do you pull back when your mother turns against you? Do you pull back from it when, you know, you've had this accusation against you that you really ran off with the radio operator? Do, do you pull back? And I think someone like Aimee says, 'No, I don't pull back from it.' But at the same time, in not pulling back, you pay a personal price. And I also think that to  you know, Protestants don't have saints, you know?

Ms. Tippett: Don't have saints, yeah.

Ms. Butler: But they don't have saints. But they like to make saints, even though they don't want to make saints. And by that, I mean this. There will always be said that the leader should be held to a higher standard. But the fact of the matter is, is that the leaders have more opportunity to fall. And I think part of what happens is that the people who are usually the very closest to these people see them as being almost these demigod figures. And they don't see them as being human beings.

And so the frailties of the, you know, the Jimmy Swaggarts or the Jim Bakkers or the Aimee Semple McPhersons, I mean, you could just make a list a thousand miles long. But I think it, to me, those stories speak more to  this Pentecostal experience is a very powerful experience. But it doesn't  it ties into the human experience, everybody fails. And, you know, the question about the Pentecostal experience is that, is there redemption after the failure? And I think that there is. I think, you know, Aimee tried to work towards that. Unfortunately, up to now, history has not been very kind to her. I mean, I think in the last 10 to 15 years it's been a lot kinder to her.

But, you know, I wonder, you know, will Jimmy Swaggart or the Jim Bakkers have the same story? And I think that, you know, unfortunately, they're going to be more remembered for the transgressions more than anything else. I think Aimee can be rehabilitated because there's a corpus of material there that shows something else entirely.

Unidentified woman: (singing) If I had wounded any soul today, if I have caused one foot to go astray

Ms. Tippett: Anthea Butler is assistant professor of religion at the University of Rochester in New York, an author of a new book, Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World.

Unidentified woman: (singing) dear Lord, forgive

Ms. Tippett: This is Speaking of Faith. After a short break, we'll speak with Arlene Sánchez Walsh. She says that Aimee Semple McPherson epitomizes the challenge and the importance of taking Pentecostalism seriously as a force around the globe today.

Unidentified woman: (singing) Oh guide me love me and my keeper be. Dear Lord, forgive

Ms. Tippett: Our audio clips of Aimee Semple McPherson were captured from film and audio reels of the 1930s. Take a look at this rare archival footage and many photographs. There is a visual tour on our Web site, And we're making it easier to listen to Speaking of Faith when it best suits your life. Subscribe to our podcast for scheduled downloads or access the audio as part of our e-mail newsletter. Discover more at



Ms. Tippett: Welcome back to Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "Reviving Sister Aimee." We're exploring the meaning and enduring spiritual legacy of the controversial 20th-century evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who was born in 1890 and died in 1944. She was the first woman to receive a license to operate a radio station from the FCC. She founded a 5,000-seat temple in Los Angeles, and fed over a million people during the Great Depression. She also had a famously tumultuous personal life.

Yet Aimee Semple McPherson was one of the most colorful and effective figures to spread the populist faith of the modern Pentecostal movement, which mobilized in Los Angeles a century ago. There are now over 100 Pentecostal denominations globally. But Pentecostalism is not essentially a set of institutions and beliefs. It is a charismatic  in the words of believers, a "spirit-filled"  impulse and practice that has penetrated all of the world's Christian traditions. At its present rate of growth, one billion people may be part of this movement by the year 2025.

(Sound bite of music)

Ms. Tippett: My next guest, Arlene Sánchez Walsh, is a member of a California congregation of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, the denomination Aimee Semple McPherson founded. Arlene Sánchez Walsh both admires and regrets the boldness with which Aimee Semple McPherson used media to bring the upstart Pentecostal movement to a mass audience. At her spiritual best, she says, Aimee Semple McPherson succeeded in marrying Pentecostal exuberance with empowerment for people otherwise on the margins of authority, society, and religion.

And, she says, that aspect of Aimee Semple McPherson's spiritual appeal is a window to understanding the dramatic rise of Pentecostal Christianity today, especially in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Arlene Sánchez Walsh's own scholarship has focused on Latino religious experience.

Ms. Tippett: The pope, recently, in 2007, went to Latin America to reckon with how incredibly powerful Pentecostal spirituality has been. And I just wanted to ask you about that, because you are also part of that story and you're helping to tell that story. So, you know, how would you talk to somebody about that as a part of what Aimee Semple McPherson was kind of bringing into the world?

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: I think the idea of mission. The idea of it's not just here that you do your church, but you are equipped, and they always talk in that language, you are equipped to go out to spread this message around the world. Starts at the beginning and it keeps going. There are constant appeals to mission even today. Foursquare is 5, 10 times larger around the world than it is in the United States. And as a matter of fact, probably, like, many other classical Pentecostal denominations and the global Foursquare movement, it's growing. And that's definitely a part of her legacy. It's got to go out. And so you see just a barrage of activity throughout the world. Foursquare starts a lot in Central South America. I think Panama's its first outpost.

Ms. Tippett: But here's what I'd like to get at, as well. I was interested in the press reporting around the pope's trip to Latin America, which was, you know, which is very explicitly in part about, kind of, reaching out to that Roman Catholic base which seems to be

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Yeah.

Ms. Tippett: which is being eroded mostly by Pentecostal spirituality. What I don't think journalists knew how to describe or even explain was, what is that appeal? You know?

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: OK.

Ms. Tippett: What is it that is eroding that base, that is, that is drawing people into this world? I mean, you're talking about the mission. But what is it that is happening then that they take out there.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: OK. I think there's about three things that are happening. One of them is that Pentecostalism is, kind of, an unvarnished, if you will, spirituality. It's embodied, it is highly personal and very intense. And so for people who are used to a, kind of, hierarchical traditional, liturgical religion, this, kind of, breaks all boundaries because you don't have mediators anymore. You don't have

Ms. Tippett: Priests.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: You don't have priests

Ms. Tippett: Or bishops.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: you don't necessarily even have sacraments. You just have you and God. And God can work those same miracles that they know about in terms of healing, that people are used to praying through saints or through Mary for, that they can occur immediately in one's life. So I think the immediacy, the immediate experiential nature of Pentecostalism, it's just a powerful magnet for people.

Secondly, I think Pentecostal churches, they're small. So there's an intimacy in a Pentecostal church, in the outskirts of Mexico City where there's, like, 75 people or even in East LA where there's about 50 people, there's an immediacy in that you know your pastor, and the chances are your pastor's just like you. They're probably bi-vocational. They are probably not seminary educated. And so they, there's something about the tangibility of reaching out to someone who's just like you that makes it more attractive. And, I guess, thirdly is that Latinos have the sense of empowerment. That they have now taken control of their spirituality. It isn't part of a hierarchical church function. It's me. And I can do with it what I will. So if I want to pray, I can do that. If I want to help out, I can do that. There are more places for me to help out. If I want to become a part of, quote, unquote, "The priesthood of all believers," if I want to do that, I can do it immediately. So I don't need to wait for training. I don't need to wait for church sanction. I can do it now. And so, I think, finding a place for Latinos to be who they are spiritually and otherwise. That creates a very exciting picture.


Ms. Sánchez Walsh: That's right.


Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Well, I, I've talked to several Foursquare women who are so inspired by the notion of Sister Aimee. And these are Latina women who know that in their home countries, they would not have a voice, in Guatemala and in other places in Argentina. But when they immigrate to the United States, they hear this story and they just become excited about the idea that even if they were once divorced, even if they have their own marital problems, even if they're not the best person, they have a dream. They have a dream of wanting to preach. They want to open a church.

They want to be in charge, you know? They  are not satisfied with being, kind of, a handmaiden of their pastor husband. They want to do something independently. I think the spirit of independence is very attractive to Latina women, many of whom have that glass ceiling in almost all denominations, evangelical or otherwise, who cannot break beyond that glass ceiling of being a senior pastor or being someone who can actually preach aside from teaching. There's always, kind of, semantic games people play with what women are actually doing.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: But there's no question that in Pentecostal churches, women, who are more than half of the congregation, prophesy, preach, teach, and they do things that would be viewed as unseemly in other theological settings. And I think that's just a powerful  it's a powerful message.

Ms. Tippett: Pentecostal scholar Arlene Sánchez Walsh. I'm Krista Tippett, and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today, "Reviving Sister Aimee." Ironically, even in the Pentecostal denomination that Aimee Semple McPherson founded, women serving as senior pastors are rare. Arlene Sánchez Walsh says that the original egalitarian impulse of Pentecostalism narrowed as it became less of a movement and more of a hierarchy. In the U.S., women have also taken on more subservient roles as Pentecostalism has become closely associated with mainstream conservative Christianity.

Some recent biographies and documentaries describe Aimee Semple McPherson as a predecessor to the televangelism and conservative politicized Christianity of our time. But Arlene Sánchez Walsh suggests that analogy holds partially at best.


Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Right.

Ms. Tippett: and she did, kind of, looked at all the different kinds of messages there are about women in scripture, and she found her own ministry validated by statements such as, "In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free." I mean, she did, she did find what she was doing, also, to have its basis in the Bible.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Probably more powerful than that, and I don't discount that, is the Joel passage where, "Your sons and daughters shall prophesy."

Ms. Tippett: Right, right.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: And so if that's our anchor text, aside from all the stuff in Acts, which is almost everything, then it's hard to discount that. If women can prophesy, then what do we do with that? If the spirit falls on all flesh, then what do we do, not only with women, but with people who are not Christian? The spirit has fallen on all flesh. Pentecostalism has wrestled with women for a while, and it'll  it's still wrestling with women.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: I think Pentecostalism, theologically, needs to wrestle with the rest of it, with the rest of what that statement means because it's a radical statement. And it will. It will take a generation or so, but it will.


Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Yes, because of its history and because of where it's placed in the world. Because it has to wrestle with pluralism if it's in Africa, if it's in Latin America, to certain extend with Catholicism, obviously. And if it's in Asia, it has to wrestle with gender, it has to wrestle with race, it has to wrestle with all these big questions. Does it have the capacity to, does it have the theological capacity to ask these questions? That's a question that I haven't had answered yet.

Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm. Let's talk about other aspects of Latino Pentecostalism presently or projects that you know about where you see the legacy of Aimee Semple McPherson or strains of early Pentecostalism she represented, kind of, still at work and evolving. And I'm thinking of, for example, the notion of healing. And I think that's something you talk about a lot as part of really vibrant ministries in the world now.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: I think that's a really important part of the reach of global Pentecostalism. I think, an interesting study that came out a few months ago from Pew mentioned that 49 percent of Pentecostals, as they call the renewalist, which is Pentecostal's last charismatic, 49 percent report never speaking in tongues, but 60 percent believe that the most important part of Pentecostalism is healing. And for Latinos, I don't think healing has ever really stopped. I mean, one of the things that I'm  that I've been looking at is at how ethnic churches, not just Latino, but Asian, African, African-American, other racial, racial churches, rather, how they seem to maintain a more heightened sense of Pentecostal spirituality than Anglo churches. If you go to a typical Anglo Pentecostal church in the United States, for example, it seems, again, to be fairly generically evangelical, there's not a lot of prophecy

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: or tongues, et cetera. But if you go to an ethnic church or a racial church, there's a lot of that.

Ms. Tippett: OK. And I also think that when you talk about healing, and maybe this is the way, for example, that are culture evolves, and Pentecostalism evolves

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Yeah.

Ms. Tippett: I mean, Aimee Semple McPherson was part of that generation where healing meant somebody walked in and  or rolled in in a wheelchair and was supposed to stand up and walk out on their two legs, right? It was that kind of public, that physical healing.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Right. Yes.

Ms. Tippett: And yet, I mean, you've written about Pentecostal groups and projects, Victory Outreach, for example

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Yeah.

Ms. Tippett: which is about being there for people who are wounded in every conceivable way in our society.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: That's correct.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Mm-hmm. Yes. It's an anti-drug ministry, anti-gang ministry. And so they, they are still very much rooted in the classical, Pentecostal form. Meaning that you're  one day you're a heroin addict, they'll lay hands on you, pray for you, the next day, you don't want anymore heroin.

Ms. Tippett: You know, I'm sure that someone would listen to you and just be very skeptical. And I will say that, as a journalist who's looked at this, this is something that is said of Pentecostals and globally, it does seem to have this body of testimony, let's say, and I think some evidence in there where people emerge from addiction who maybe, could not find help any other way. And those stories are kind of  are so dramatic. And I was actually thinking about this as I was preparing to interview you. And thinking about Aimee Semple McPherson and how people sometimes write off her seriousness by saying, 'Well, it was all about showmanship, it was all about the drama and the stage.' And then it occurred to me Pentecostal experience, maybe at its best or at its most dramatic is kind of larger than life, and that there is something magnetic about that.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Right. I don't know. There are, you know, I don't know other realms of life where people normally make claims like this. Pentecostalism's great genius is to say, 'Well, it really isn't about explaining it, it's about experiencing it.' And so what I do in my writing is, I try to let people speak for themselves, particularly people of color because I think there are some agencies, some religious agency, an empowerment that comes from telling your own story, free of the lens of any kind of preset, theological notion that it's impossible, it can't happen, it's, you know, there's wish fulfillment. There's all kinds of theories as to how this cannot happen. And I can be quite as incredulous as anybody else, but the power of creating your own, kind of, spiritual life story, that in and of itself is something that I think we have to consider in terms of how these testimonies affect others. What does it do to other people to hear this in an informal setting, at a house, with friends or in a formal setting at church? It, it shakes you. It validates you. I think we are people in search of a mystery.

We're in search of some kind of transcendence that we need a new language to describe what's going on here, other than these are just poor masses of disinherited people who can't find anything better and who are searching for moral order. No. They are middleclass, many of them highly educated, and they are searching for something, because something has happened to them.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Which is, I think, a different way of looking at it.

Ms. Semple McPherson: Today, I believe there are millions of people baptized of the Holy Ghost on this earth. We'll find them in India, China, the Philippines, Africa, and at home and abroad. (Unintelligible) the rich, the poor, the high and the low. Yes. We are all baptized by one spirit in the one body. Amen. And this

Ms. Tippett: What do you think Aimee Semple McPherson would say  how would she react if she came back today and could see the International Foursquare Gospel Church or if she could walk into your Foursquare Church in Pasadena?

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Yeah. She would, she would like my church.

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: I think it represents what she wanted. I won't put that positive a spin on it: I mean, I don't want to be that self-aggrandizing. She would like it, because it's multicultural and multiracial and it appears to be very much in keeping with what she wanted Foursquare to be, missions-oriented and diverse. She would also like it, probably, less so because it doesn't exhibit a lot of social concern at the ideal

Ms. Tippett: She might be a little disappointed in that.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: She might be a little disappointed there. So on the surface, she might like it. Globally, I think she'd love Foursquare, because it does what she wanted it to do. She wanted, for example, for higher education  she wanted us to set up Bible training institutes simply to train ministers. There is still an impetus to make theological training wholly practical, wholly local, and strictly for the training of pastors and ministers and not for any other type of intellectual exercise.

Ms. Tippett: Do you think she would be happier with the social justice element of the global church than the church in Pasadena?

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: Yes. Yeah, sadly. And, quite frankly, most Foursquare churches in the United States.

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Sánchez Walsh: My church is not unique. My church mirrors greatly what many other churches that I've visited and seen across the United States, when I've had a chance to visit them. She would be much happier with the global outreach, with the emphasis on healing and with the emphasis on social concern. So, I think, globally, her movement is, is doing fine.

Ms. Tippett: Arlene Sánchez Walsh is associate professor of Latino Church Studies and chairs the ministry department at Azusa Pacific University in California. She's the author of Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Society, and Self. Earlier this hour, I spoke with Anthea Butler of the University of Rochester.

(Sound bite of music)

Ms. Tippett: The actor Anthony Quinn commented that Hollywood's leading ladies paled in comparison to the first electric shock of meeting Aimee Semple McPherson. See what he was talking about on our Web site, View rare, archival footage and photographs of her from the 1920s and '30s.

You can learn much more about Pentecostalism on our Web site, too, and download MP3s of my complete, unedited conversations with both of today's guests. We're making it easier for you to listen to Speaking of Faith. Subscribe to our podcast, which includes downloadable audio of all our radio broadcasts and bonus material, or sign up for our e-mail newsletter. Listen to Speaking of Faith in the way that best fits your life. Discover more at

The senior producer of Speaking of Faith is Mitch Hanley, with producers Colleen Scheck and Jody Abramson and associate producer Jessica Nordell. Our online editor is Trent Gilliss, with assistance from Randy Karels. Our audio of Aimee Semple McPherson was provided by the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Special thanks this week to professor Margaret Poloma and archivist Janet Simonsen. Bill Buzenberg is our consulting editor. Kate Moos is the managing producer of Speaking of Faith, and I'm Krista Tippett.

Share Episode

Shortened URL


