“Pentecostalism – whatever else it is – is a religion of the extraordinary and the new.  Its leaders at times find the pursuit of the exciting to be exhausting.  (Interestingly, Charles Grandison Finney, the apostle of excitement, warned in his Lectures on Revival that excitement long continued would be destructive.)”

In 1926 Aimee Semple McPherson was the most famous woman in America.  She was nationally known as a Pentecostal preacher and healer.  From small beginnings on a farm in Ontario, Canada, she went as a missionary to China with her husband Robert Semple.  After his death, she returned to America and began to preach.  Still when she arrived in Los Angeles in 1918, she was poor and little known.  Yet within a few years, after tireless travel to preach and to heal, she had become famous and built her 5500-seat Angeles Temple as the base of her ministry.  For a fine book on her career, see Edith Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson, Everybody’s Sister (1993).

At the height of her success, on May 18, 1926, Aimee went swimming in the Pacific Ocean, as she often did.  She was due to speak at the Temple that evening and had gone with her secretary to the beach to swim, relax, and prepare for the evening.  Her secretary saw her go into the water, but she then disappeared.  After frantic searching, most people assumed that she had drowned.

Yet on June 23, 1926 she appeared in the small border town of Douglas, Arizona, telling the story of how she had been kidnapped and held in a house in the Mexican desert.  She had at last escaped and walked for hours to reach Douglas.

Even before her reappearance, questions had been raised about this apparent drowning.  Since there was a theatrical character to her church services, some wondered if this was all a publicity stunt.  Others knew that she had been threatened for her opposition to crime in the city and thought that perhaps she had been kidnapped.  Still others speculated about her friendship with the radio engineer at the Temple and wondered if she might have taken off with him.  Even her mother, Minnie Kennedy, in charge of the Temple in her absence, seemed hesitant to believe that she had drowned, delaying the formal memorial service until June 20.

Aimee’s reappearance, while leading to great rejoicing among her followers, increased the questions.  Her story of kidnapping could not be substantiated.  Despite a careful search, no house was found in the desert.  Her clothes and shoes did not seem to reflect hours of walking in the desert.  She was eventually charged in Los Angeles with wasting police time, but the case against her collapsed.  She never deviated from her story and her followers never doubted her.

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