70 years ago: The death of Aimee Semple McPherson

A backlog item that I should have posted three months ago:

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Matthew 7:18

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. I Corinthians 14:34-35

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. I Timothy 2:12

On September 27, 1944, Canadian-born American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson died of an apparently accidental overdose of sleeping pills, 12 days before her 54th birthday. Mrs. McPherson, born Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy on a farm in Salford, Ontario, was brought up in the Salvation Army and converted to Pentecostalism in her teens. She married Pentecostal missionary Robert Semple when she was 17. Mr. Semple died in 1910, and Aimee's later marriages, to Harold McPherson and David Hutton, ended in divorce in 1921 and 1934, respectively. Mrs. McPherson founded Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, which opened in 1923; the church evolved into the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

Mrs. McPherson pioneered the use of radio for evangelism, and was a forerunner of modern televangelists. She was accused of faking her own kidnapping in 1926, but a grand jury investigation resulted in all charges being dropped.

I have an unsympathetic view of Mrs. McPherson, but readers can visit sites such as Aimee McPherson and Aimee Semple McPherson and come to their own views.