Aimee Semple McPherson evangelist scandal rocked Los Angeles 85 years ago {Foursquare Pentecostal}

When the famous falter, people pay attention. That’s as true today as it was 85 years ago, when the most prominent evangelist of the day suddenly vanished. Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared from Los Angeles on this date in 1926.

The woman at the center of this mystery seemed to have everything – beauty, eloquence, the fame that accompanied one of the first major multimedia ministries. Pentecostal minister Aimee Semple McPherson established the 5,000-seat Angelus Temple based on her Foursquare Gospel.

She built her ministry over years of tent revivals, newspaper columns, radio broadcasts and charismatic flourishes that included faith healing and elaborate costumes. All that collapsed after the celebrity known as “Sister Aimee” went for a swim in the Pacific and didn’t come back.

During the month she was missing, the faithful feared her death, the law deployed men and boats to search for her and the newspapers followed every lead on her whereabouts. When McPherson surfaced, she said someone had kidnapped her for ransom.

But she couldn’t quash rumors that she’d dallied with a radio operator from Angelus Temple who’d also disappeared while she was away. Aimee Semple McPherson may have arisen from the dead, but her evangelical fame never did

Aimee Semple McPherson, nationally known healing evangelist in the 1920's - 1930's. Founded and headed the Foursquare Gospel Church, led a controversial life and died of a drug overdose in 1944.

From this website

Her first husband, Robert Semple, died in China in 1910, where the young couple had gone as missionaries. In 1911 she married Harold Stewart McPherson. He complained about her hysterical behavior and her neglect of him, and
in 1921 the marriage ended in divorce Aimee had left Harold to attend to her preaching.
Interestingly, Aimee's associate pastor, Rheba Crawford, also left her husband to preach, and Rheba's husband also divorced her.
    In May 1926, McPherson disappeared and was thought to have been drowned while swimming off the California coast. A month later she turned up in Mexico, claiming to have been kidnapped, but the evidence led most people to believe that she had an affair with a former employee, Kenneth Ormiston, who was married at the time. The two had been seen together earlier in the year during Aimee McPherson's trip to Europe. At the same time Aimee sailed for Europe, Ormiston disappeared from his job, and his wife, Ruth, registered a missing-person report at police headquarters.
    She told police a certain prominent woman was responsible for her husband's disappearance. They had also been seen together checking into the same hotels at
various times in California, after her return from Europe, prior to the alleged kidnapping. Though McPherson claimed to have wandered for 14 hours across roughly 20 miles of cruel desert covered with mesquite, cactus, and catclaw to escape her captors, when she was found she showed no sign of having been through such an ordeal. Her shoes were not scuffed or worn; there were grass stains on the insteps there was no grass in the desert through which she claims to have wandered, she was not dehydrated or sunburned; her lips were not parched, cracked, or swollen; her tongue was not swollen; her color was normal; her dress was not torn and bore no dust or perspiration stains. The dress collar and cuffs, though white in color, were barely soiled. Further, she was wearing a watch her mother had given her a watch she had not taken with her to the beach. Aimee told reporters that her ankles were bruised and torn by ropes from her captivity, but there had been no sign of such injuries when she was examined.
    An exhaustive search was made to find the adobe shack with a wooden floor where she claimed she had been held captive and which she described in detail to the authorities, but no such shack was found in a 46-square-mile area. Experienced desert men and trackers who attempted to find her attackers, traced her footsteps, and they found where she apparently had gotten out of an automobile on a road not far from where she was found.
The senior tracker testified that he examined every foot of the ground over which she had claimed to have walked and that her tracks had been found nowhere. As for the shack, he said: "I do not know of an adobe house such as the one described by Mrs. McPherson within a hundred and fifty miles of Agua Prieta, and I know every house in this vast area, A grocery receipt signed by McPherson was found in a Carmel, California, cottage where it appears Aimee had met Ormiston during the time she was alleged to have been kidnapped. Several eye-witnesses testified that they saw the two together during that period.
    The year after this episode, McPherson rejected the social taboos preached against by Bible- believing churches of that day. She bobbed her hair and started drinking, dancing, and wearing short skirts. In her early years she had preached against such things. Her choir director, Gladwyn Nichols, and the entire 300-member choir resigned because of her lifestyle.
    He told the press that they left because of Aimee's surrender to worldliness her wardrobe of fancy gowns and short skirts, jewelry, furs, her new infatuation with cosmetics and bobbed hair, all specifically condemned by her own teachings.

Besides which there is the funny Milton Berle episode with this founder of the Foursquare Pentecostalist group. Milton is a funny guy

Milton Berle did manage to bed the grate founder of the FourSquare
from MILTON BERLE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY - Chapter 11, page 123
      In 1930, I took "Chasin' the Blues," a girl-studded flash act, out on the Orpheum Circuit. I was at the RKO Hill Street in Los Angeles the week there was a big charity show at the Shrine Auditorium. Every name act in town was asked to appear along with every movie star who gave a damn about something beside him or herself. The huge auditorium was filled, and backstage was like a sardine can packed with the world's most expensive sardines. Only one person stood alone, a woman well into her forties who wasn't half as beautiful as most of the movie names backstage. But there was something special about her. I felt it, and I didn't even know who she was, though her face looked familiar. It wasn't her dyed blond hair-there were lots of dyed blonds around-and it wasn't her dress, which didn't compare with some of the gowns the stars were wearing. It was something in the calm, sure way she stood-head up, back straight-waiting to go on.
      I pointed to her, and whispered to somebody standing next to me, "Who is that?"
      The guy looked at me as if I were a hermit who had just come out of the hills. "Aimee Semple McPherson." Aimee Semple McPherson!

MILTON BERLE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY - Chapter 12, page 129
decided were good Early American antiques, and very little else. No pictures on the walls, very little on the tables besides lamps.
      Aimee was still in the bedroom. "You're not a very religious man, are you, Milton?"
      It was the first time she had ever gotten near her field of work while talking to me.
      I didn't know how to answer her. "Well, not the way you are."
      "I know what you mean," she said, "but I don't quite see myself that way. I work in the area of religion, but I think of myself more as a scientist and a crusader."
      "Why did you ask about me?"
      "I was just thinking," she said, and the light went out in the bedroom, "that unless you were really interested, perhaps a visit to my Temple could wait for a cooler day."
      The door opened, and there was Sister Aimee in a very thin, pale blue negligee, her braid undone and her blond hair hanging down around her shoulders. There was a soft flickering light somewhere behind her in the bedroom-candles, I guessed-and it was enough to show, me that she wasn't wearing anything underneath. "Come in" was all she said.
      It was candles all right. Two of them on the night table by the bed, which she had already turned down. They were burning in front of a silver crucifix that stood before a triptych panel of the scene on Calvary. That started my nerves going again, but I solved the problem. I decided not to face that way when we got into bed.
      We never got to the Four Square Gospel Temple.
      And we didn't get there two days later, when she called again. This time, she just sent the chauffeur for me to bring me straight to the apartment. We didn't even bother with lunch.
      When I was dressing to leave, she stuck out her hand. "Good luck with your show, Milton."
      What the hell. I couldn't resist it. "Good luck with yours, Aimee."

He was a good comedian!

Well, Ms. McPherson may not have been on the up-and-up, but I CAN tell you the church she founded is strong and still going. I used to go to LifeCenter Foursquare in Spokane, WA. I can tell you for a fact that the pastor and his staff are people who love God and preach Christ.

I met Mrs. Hoagy62 while I was there.

In the entire time I went there, I never heard of ANY flakiness or untoward behavior. I learned more about what it means to be a Christian in 1 year there than I did in the 4 years I went to a full-blown Pentecostal church after I accepted Christ. And LifeCenter is the biggest church in town (in number of attendees).

It may have started in scandal, but the Foursquare denomination is doing MUCH better now. Of the 2 Foursquare churches I’ve attended, I’d recommend either to anyone seeking a relationship with Christ.

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