The woman who became America’s most famous preacher and then disappeared

“I gazed in breathless admiration at the copper-haired, white-clad angel on the platform above me,” her daughter, Roberta, remembered. “Mother’s arms were outstretched as she blessed the humble congregation, her face aglow with some mystical inner light, her voice vibrating joyously alive … ”

McPherson, one of the early Pentecostal preachers, triggered the phenomenal growth of the religion, which started in America in the early 1900s. By the 21st century, one-fourth of the world’s Christians were Pentecostals. As Claire Hoffman explains in her vividly written biography, Sister, Sinner, McPherson wasn’t the only female evangelist at the time, but she was one of a few. Aside from Maria Woodworth-Etter, Mary Baker Eddy, Helena Blavatsky, Sojourner Truth, and a couple of others, religious women mostly worked in the background.

McPherson grew up on a farm in Ontario, Canada, where she later met and married Robert Semple, a Pentecostal missionary. They traveled to China on an evangelical tour. After they arrived, McPherson and Semple became ill with malaria. He died. She gave birth to her daughter, Roberta, and returned to the United States, where she and Mildred Kennedy, her mother, held revival meetings. Kennedy took care of finances as well as organizing and preaching.

McPherson soon met and married Harold McPherson, with whom she had a son. They started in Massachusetts and eventually settled in Los Angeles, California. Their marriage ended in divorce. She disliked homemaking and childcare, but she succeeded as a preacher.

McPherson began her career by holding tent revivals and traveling across the U.S. in an old car with the words, “Jesus Is Coming Soon — Get Ready,” painted across its sides. She preached sermons holding a megaphone while standing in the back of the car. In 1919, she held services in Baltimore at the Lyric Opera House and drew national newspaper attention as a faith-healer. Many thought this was hokum. Nevertheless, she was among the most famous women of the 1920s and 1930s. By her 30s, she had built the Angelus Temple, a megachurch that could seat 5,300 people, founded the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, and started a Bible college.

At the time, men made the decisions, wrote the sermons, and preached to the congregation. McPherson made her own decisions. She wrote and preached her own sermons as well as several books, five operas, and more than 200 songs and hymns. McPherson fed the hungry and provided shelter for the homeless. She reached out to African Americans when segregation was the law of the land. She preached pacifism when the world was at war. And she loathed Darwinism.

Reaching the pinnacle of success, she started a radio station to connect with international audiences. But it brought unintended consequences, including Kenneth Ormiston, McPherson’s radio technician. He was 30, married, and the father of a son. She was 36, widowed, divorced, and the mother of a daughter and son. He was a womanizer. She was infatuated with him (according to her mother).

McPherson disappeared while swimming at Venice Beach on May 18, 1926. Her mother thought she had drowned and told her followers that she was with Jesus. Soon, people noticed that Ormiston had also disappeared. The two were missing for a month. People saw them in Carmel, California. Ormiston’s wife threatened a lawsuit. National newspapers ran frenzied headlines about a tryst.

McPherson emerged in Arizona, saying she had been held in a shack in the Mexican desert. Some thought her disappearance was a money-making scheme. Others said Rev. Robert Schuller, her competitor, was slandering her. There was a supposition that California liberals spread false rumors to damage her reputation.

Speculation inspired several earlier McPherson biographers, including Edith L. Blumhofer, Matthew Avery Sutton, and Daniel Mark Epstein. However, Hoffman generally avoids taking sides. She writes that McPherson’s story is a cautionary tale about the hazards of fame and “how poisonous the public eye can be for those who live their lives in front of it.” While she makes a good point, I hoped for more evidence regarding McPherson’s disappearance, especially since “the scandal” forms the central action in the biography.

Hoffman, however, packs the book with facts about racism, segregation, war, pacifism, and the Great Depression. She includes particulars about McPherson’s connections to Mahatma Gandhi, whose teachings on nonviolence and women’s rights inspired her; Charlie Chaplin, who secretly attended services at the Angelus Temple; and H.L. Mencken, who, while covering McPherson’s trial for the Baltimore Sun, disagreed with her regarding evolution but liked her and sympathized with her.

A MURDER ON THE SAN FRANCISCO FRONTIER

She seemed to have several vocations, which at times contradicted each other. She was an inspired writer who put together gripping sermons that drew thousands, but concocted a less-than-convincing story about her disappearance. She was a talented performer who seemed to love the show business aspect of preaching more than anything else. She believed she was a healer, but in the end, she couldn’t heal herself.

McPherson was an insomniac who died at age 54 from accidentally ingesting too many sedatives. But her Angelus Temple celebrated its 100th birthday in 2023, and the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel lives on. According to its website, it is a global church now and has 6,500 ministers in the U.S. alone, many of them women.

Diane Scharper is a regular contributor to the Washington Examiner. She teaches the Memoir Seminar for the Johns Hopkins University Osher Program.