Aimee Semple McPherson was the most flamboyant and controversial minister in the United States between the world wars, building a successful megachurch, a mass media empire, and eventually a political career to resurrect what she believed was America's Christian heritage. Sutton's definitive study reveals the woman as a trail-blazing pioneer, her life marking the beginning of Pentecostalism's advance to the mainstream of American culture.
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2015 The first comprehensive history of modern American evangelicalism to appear in a generation, American Apocalypse shows how a group of radical Protestants, anticipating the end of the world, paradoxically transformed it. “The history Sutton assembles is rich, and the connections are startling.” —New Yorker “American Apocalypse relentlessly and impressively shows how evangelicals have interpreted almost every domestic or international crisis in relation to Christ’s return and his judgment upon the wicked...Sutton sees one of the most troubling aspects of evangelical influence in the spread of the apocalyptic outlook among Republican politicians with the rise of the Religious Right...American Apocalypse clearly shows just how popular evangelical apocalypticism has been and, during the Cold War, how the combination of odd belief and political power could produce a sleepless night or two.” —D. G. Hart, Wall Street Journal “American Apocalypse is the best history of American evangelicalism I’ve read in some time...If you want to understand why compromise has become a dirty word in the GOP today and how cultural politics is splitting the nation apart, American Apocalypse is an excellent place to start.” —Stephen Prothero, Bookforum
A religious leader who strongly identified with ordinary folk, she attracted hundreds of thousands of loyal followers throughout the United States and Canada.
The true story of America’s first superstar evangelist that “fills a significant gap in the history of revivalism” (The New York Times Book Review). Once she answered the divine calling, Aimee Semple McPherson rose fast from unfulfilled housewife in Rhode Island to “miracle woman”—the most enigmatic, pioneering, media-savvy Christian evangelist in the country. She preached up and down the United States, traveling in a 1912 Packard with her mother and her children—and without a man to fix flat tires. Her ministry was rolled out in tents, concert halls, boxing rings, and speakeasies. She prayed for the healing of hundreds of thousands of people, founded the Foursquare Church, and built a Pentecostal temple in Los Angeles of Hollywood-epic dimensions (Charlie Chaplin advised her on sets). But this is not just a story of McPherson’s cult of fame. It’s also the story about its price: exhaustion, insomnia, nervous breakdowns, sexual scandals, loneliness, and the notorious public disgrace that nearly destroyed her. A “powerhouse biography of perhaps the most charismatic and controversial woman in modern religious history,” Sister Aimee is, above all, the life story of a unique woman, of the power of passion that rejects compromise, and a faith that would not be shaken (Kirkus Reviews). “[Told] with insight, empathy and lyrical power . . . Daniel Mark Epstein sees the facts, and feels the mystery, and he has written a remarkable book.” —Los Angeles Times
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After a devastating missionary trip to China on which her husband died, Aimee Semple McPherson refused to give up her dream of winning new souls to Christianity.
Jesus and Gin is a rollicking tour of the roaring twenties and the barn- burning preachers who led the temperance movement—the anti-abortion crusade of the Jazz Age. Along the way, we meet a host of colorful characters: a Baptist minister who commits adultery in the White House; media star preachers caught in massive scandals; a presidential election hinging on a religious issue; and fundamentalists and liberals slugging it out in the culture war of the day. The religious roar of that decade was a prologue to the last three decades. With the religious right in disarray today after its long ascendancy, Jesus and Gin is a timely look at a parallel age when preachers held sway and politicians answered to the pulpit.
Pentecostals and Nonviolence explores how a distinctly Pentecostal-charismatic peace witness might be reinvigorated and sustained in the twenty-first century. To do so, the book examines the nature of the early Pentecostal commitment to nonviolence, and investigates the possibilities that might emerge from Pentecostals and Anabaptists entering into conversation and worship with each other. Contributors engage the arguments surrounding the heritage of Pentecostal pacifism in the United States and then move toward exploring nonviolence and peacemaking as crucial for contemporary Christianity as a whole. Ranging from theology, testimony, and pastoral ministry to interchurch relations, activism, and protest, this diverse collection of essays challenge and invite the whole church to the task of peacemaking while exploring the distinctive, and often neglected, contributions from the Pentecostal-charismatic tradition.
Pentecostalism was born at the turn of the twentieth century in a "tumble-down shack" in a rundown semi-industrial area of Los Angeles composed of a tombstone shop, saloons, livery stables and railroad freight yards. One hundred years later Pentecostalism has not only proven to be the most dynamic representative of Christian faith in the past century, but a transnational religious phenomenon as well. In a global context Pentecostalism has attained a membership of 500 million growing at the rate of 20 million new members a year. Aimee Semple McPherson, born on a Canadian farm, was Pentecostalism's first celebrity, its "female Billy Sunday". Arriving in Southern California with her mother, two children and $100.00 in 1920, "Sister Aimee", as she was fondly known, quickly achieved the height of her fame. In 1926, by age 35, "Sister Aimee" would pastor "America's largest 'class A' church", perhaps becoming the country's first mega church pastor. In Los Angeles she quickly became a folk hero and civic institution. Hollywood discovered her when she brilliantly united the sacred with the profane. Anthony Quinn would play in the Temple band and Aimee would baptize Marilyn Monroe, council Jean Harlow and become friends with Charlie Chaplain, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Based on the biographer's first time access to internal church documents and cooperation of Aimee's family and friends, this major biography offers a sympathetic appraisal of her rise to fame, revivals in major cities and influence on American religion and culture in the Jazz Age. The biographer takes the reader behind the scenes of Aimee's fame to the early days of her harsh apprenticeship in revival tents, failed marriages and poverty. Barfoot recreates the career of this "called" and driven woman through oral history, church documents and by a creative use of new source material. Written with warmth and often as dramatic as Aimee, herself, the author successfully captures not only what made Aimee famous but also what transformed Pentecostalism from its meager Azusa Street mission beginnings into a transnational, global religion.
A History of Religion in America: From the End of the Civil War to the Twenty-First Century provides comprehensive coverage of the history of religion in America from the end of the American Civil War to religion in post 9/11 America. The volume explores major religious groups in the United States and examines the following topics: The aftermath of the American Civil War Immigration’s impact on American religion The rise of the social gospel The fundamentalist response Religion in Cold War America The 60’s counterculture and the backlash Religion in Post-9/11 America Chronologically arranged and integrating various religious developments into a coherent historical narrative, this book also contains useful chapter summaries and review questions. Designed for undergraduate religious studies and history students A History of Religion in America provides a substantive and comprehensive introduction to the complexity of religion in American history.
