The first new biography of Aimee Semple McPherson in over 30 years, Claire Hoffman’s Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson shines a bright light on the life and times of the colorful 1920s evangelist whose spellbinding preaching and healing services drew thousands to her Los Angeles temple.
Drawing on deep archival research, Hoffman skillfully sketches the contours of the life of a woman whose personality dazzled thousands and whose preaching and healing elevated her to the level of a Hollywood personality. Born Aimee Kennedy, as a young girl she seemed already poised to bring the word of God to people. By 5 years old, she knew much of the Bible by heart and would line up her dolls to preach to them. As a teenager, an encounter with her soon-to-be husband, the Pentecostal preacher Robert Semple, deepened her faith and developed her passion for healing others physically and spiritually. From that moment she “saw herself as a figure whose fate was part of a larger Christian epic,” writes Hoffman.
Following the death of one husband and divorce from another, McPherson set out on a cross-country trip, preaching at tent revivals along the way, blazing a gospel trail and landing eventually in Los Angeles, where her fame and popularity rivaled any Hollywood star’s. Follower donations built her megachurch, Angelus Temple, which filled every night with crowds clamoring for McPherson to touch them through her messages and her healing.
In 1926, scandal dogged McPherson when she mysteriously disappeared and just as mystifyingly reappeared in Mexico. Although rumors swirled about a possible affair, the incident only elevated McPherson even more in the public’s eye, and her celebrity grew. Hoffman’s fast-paced narrative reveals the ragged rhythms of McPherson’s later life as she maintains her fame and her ministry while struggling with financial problems, health issues and bitter family fissures. Thoroughly detailed and captivating, Sister, Sinner traces McPherson’s mercurial rise to fame and her eventual descent into ignominy.