Book Review
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Sister Aimee - the Life of Aimee Semple McPhersonDaniel Mark Epsteinis an American poet, dramatist and biographer. He has been awarded an NEA Poetry Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Prix de Rome (1977), the Robert Frost Prize, the Emily Clark Balch Prize from The Virginia Quarterly, an an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006. Something I have to say: A few years ago, my wife and I moved to Poland, where 98% of the people are Catholic and where the Catholic Church works in every way like a sect. |
I feel that God sent my wife and me to Poland for a reason, but I confess that without my little church and my good friend Denise, I would not have been able to survive.
A brief review of:
Sister Aimee
Daniel Mark Epstein tells the story of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson, born Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy, itinerant preacher, show maestro, and founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. This 'Foursquare Church' is presently a Pentecostal empire with millions of members; all potential buyers, Epstein must have thought and presents Aimee as one of the godliest if not a bit unfortunate women of the present age. In fact, with her temple and its dynastic rule, her spouses, her passion, her prolificacy and her much defended moral lapses Aimee may remind a reader of no one less than King David. It is sad therefore, even gut-wrenching at times, that Epstein simply rattles off the often controversial facts of Aimee's life, and leaves a reader who is not promptly star struck gasping for insights in Aimee's psyche and social & religious contexts.But then, Epstein never meant to write an exhaustive commentary on Aimee. As he says in a speech delivered at a Foursquare convention six years after publication: "I am a storyteller, first and foremost. I am not a scholar, nor a journalist, though I greatly admire those disciplines."
The irony of course is that Aimee would have loved it this way. She was a story teller too. Even up to where friend and foe were forced to wonder how exactly Aimee defined truth, when she testified under oath that she'd been abducted and steadfastly upheld her impossible story.
If Epstein had been a true storyteller, he would have searched for the true conflict that defined Aimee. He would have found a monster and written a monumental book. Now he stumbles about awkwardly in a reality which he does not comprehend, endorsing legend and confusing communion with God with being horny.
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As he describes Aimee's reaction to Robert Semple ("like an arrow though my heart"), he makes a rightful link to St Theresa of Avilla but diverts erroneously to the erotic charge that some project on Bernini's sculpture. People who never experience a mystical moment tend to confuse the ambrosia of such ecstasy with the bubble gum of sexual arousal. Or as Theresa wrote, "The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God." And that is what must have happened to Aimee: in the same instant she became a kingdom and Robert her king, and her world became a kingdom and God its king, and all kingdom and kinghood blended together into one. Epstein writes, "It is fair to say that Aimee's conversion was one part religion and nine parts falling in love," but he is wrong. A natural mystic does not 'fall in love' with anyone or anything that does not serve as a window or conduit through which to see God and the great one-ness of His creation. |
What I especially miss in Epstein's book is a discussion on the effect that he death of Robert may have had on Aimee's later connubial misfortune and her intense need to evangelize. The parallels between Robert and Jesus are too strong to have had no repercussions, whether consciously or not, in a person like Aimee. Both Robert and Jesus showed her God and her own salvation. Robert and Jesus were the only persons Aimee ever followed. Aimee killed Jesus by her sin and Aimee killed Robert by her ignorance of contaminated food. It only takes a distant sense of metaphor to see Robert and Jesus become a binal fractal, but Epstein (himself an accomplished poet, we are assured) sums up Aimee's heart of hearts with an esoteric, "the death of her husband will become a dominant note on the instrument of her fulfillment." I have no idea what that means and I doubt that it's correct English, whether prosaic or poetic, to say that something becomes a note on an instrument, let alone an instrument of one's fulfillment.
| Epstein states, "Her ministry would for ever be infused with the spirit of eros," but in fact it would be forever marked by bride-hood. Her magazine she names The Bridal Call, her temple Angelus. And why doesn't Epstein explain that name? In fact, why doesn't the Angelus Temple website, or Foursquare website or any of the major websites that deal with Aimee or Angelus Temple explain that name? And while I'm asking: Why sees no one the need to explain where Aimee's son and dynastic successor Doctor Rolf McPherson received his Ph.D. and in what discipline? Epstein opens the story of Aimee in what he must see as a pivotal moment and a key activity: Aimee standing on a chair, theatrical and luring people into the church on the premise of a good show. The year is 1915. Aimee Semple McPherson, filled with the Spirit, knows what she wants and how to get it. The book that unfolds after this scene tries to maintain this image but completely derails when Aimee's life does the same. Epstein makes the mistake that so many of us make: to believe that any of us could actually be as holy as we let on. Like a tour guide on his first day Epstein explains, "This is a peculiar gift, difficult to understand if you are not Pentecostal. We may compare it to the power to induce hypnosis, so long as we respect the distinctions: we must not profane the sacrament we cannot understand." In other words, Epstein wrote a book on Aimee the way a deaf person would write a book on Bach. |
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| In his Foursquare speech Epstein boasts a unique insight in Aimee's mentality. But if he had understood Aimee he would have opened in that Hong Kong hospital: The year is 1910. Aimee Semple is eight months pregnant with her first child. She's sick with malaria, marooned in a filthy, demonic world, out of reach of home and anything that makes sense. Her husband of two years, whom she adores, has just died because while he was sick, she fed him produce from acres that were fertilized with human excrement. She didn't know, but he died all the same. What else did she not know? And where was the God of healing that she and her husband came here to preach? "For the next month, as she opened her eyes morning after morning to the horror of Matilda Hospital and what had happened to her, Aimee Semple would sit up and scream at the white walls." |
Six weeks later, with Roberta Star in her arms, she landed in San Francisco and journeys on to New York. How was the world at that time? How was New York? How was America ready for a person like Aimee?
It is abundantly clear that Aimee was a natural mystic, and mysticism is an often misunderstood genetic disposition towards divine experience, in general signified by multilateral intensity; hysteria, mood swings, proneness to psychoses. On top of that, she experienced a deep psychological trauma that even in non-mystics is prone to result in the kind of insanity that may go unnoticed or is even encouraged in both certain religious circles and the world of theatre.
Much of the theatric energy that today goes into mass gatherings such as rock concerts and sport games had only one outlet in those days: revival rallies. Religion was then much more common than now, and often the only source of entertainment. People who wouldn't in good fashion go to a theater, would not object to a church service, and with that, Aimee assumed an entirely open market. On the other hand, medicine in general and specifically psychology was not as evolved as it is now. Perhaps there were many more people suffering from psychosomatic symptoms than nowadays. Link that to an uncured and highly sophisticated malfunction in a deeply passionate and mystic mind and you have a preacher-healer of the calibre of Aimee Semple McPherson.
Perhaps it is all part of God's great plan to have people like Aimee give strength to the botched and the bungled. Perhaps there were indeed outbursts of spiritual power during Aimee's services that healed physically infirm people. Either way, here at Abarim Publications we have no doubt that Aimee was truly in love with God, but we do not believe that her ways were Biblical. Her popularity stemmed from her charisma and theatrically induced healing powers, and not from her theological insights or even superior spirituality. In fact, some of her theology ranges from poor Scripture Theory to blunt heresy (see below). A clear sign that Aimee was a gifted show host and not the spiritual giant of her stage character came when she began to violate her own laws and married husband number three when husband number two (whom she had left) was still alive. Aimee refused to submit to the larger Body of Christ and insisted on totalitarian rule. As a result of that her family began to fall apart and suffered some appalling episodes in court.
If we seek a role model, we should find one in Christ. If we then think we need a human role model, we shouldn't look up at those people that came floating to the surface of a tumultuous ocean, but rather the botched and the bungled that managed to hang on in those same dire days.
Although we can be sure that Aimee knew God - and had a brilliant sense of theater - her theological sagacity was too weak to lead a church.
Epstein has failed to demonstrate immunity to Aimee's magic antics. His book is part of the great Aimee show; a nurse's mantle to cover an ever wounded and ever covert core. He seems genuinely endeared by Aimee, but he lacks the insight to write a book of much importance about her.
The doctrine of storytelling states that it doesn't matter of it's true or not, as long as it is told well. But when statements are passed as truth, they should be truthful. Turning a church into a theatre has been tried before. It's where Carnival came from. And even though some churches still try it (Willow Creek, for instance), many others seem to feel that the essence of the Gospel has not a whole lot to do with anything that can be acted out on a stage.
As she forwarded the Gospel of Joy with vaudeville and zeal, Aimee sacrificed sound theology on the altar of presentation. A good example is her fetishistic obsession with the Song of Solomon, bundled under the name Attar of Roses. In this Song of Solomon the bride, the groom and the choir take turns singing each others praises, and early in the piece the bride identifies herself with a certain flower that grows on the Plain of Sharon. That this flower is not a rose but a crocus goes often unnoticed but Aimee manages to hijack the image of the bridal rose and apply it to the groom! Suddenly, she exclaims, the holy Rosebud starts growing petals and Pharisees come to yank them out!
This petal-pulling image is more than a bit silly. The Song of Solomon depicts the king of Jerusalem who visits his commoner betrothed in her dream. If the Song of Solomon is to be understood as a type of the relationship of the church and the expected Christ (as most scholars agree it is) it should be stressed that Jesus Christ is the King of the universe who sits at the right hand of the Father, with all due glory and power and splendour. He is not - and should not be portrait as, or believed in as - a helpless, foot-washing rosebud that anyone can violate.
Healing, the most famous aspect of Aimee's ministry, is not very well understood by any of us. We don't know why some of us are healed while others aren't. But it is certainly wrong to believe that anyone will be healed if only a powerful enough healer has a go at it. Many pagan cultures entertain healing rituals that often work quite well, for all kinds of reasons. Christianity, however, does not work with shamans but with the ever present Spirit of God. People should not flock to certain 'successful' faith-healers but to God.
It is also wrong to believe that something will happen because you believe that it will happen. God shows Himself not through power in the faith but through faith in the power. The difference is not subtle. Unbelief closes the door for God (not even Jesus Christ could do much for people who did not believe) and faith opens that door. But ultimately, it is God who does the doing.
Click here for an audio clip of a fragment of one of Aimee Semple McPerson's sermons (0.7 Mb). In it she can be heard making a very common but very big mistake, namely to believe that works are in any way salvific. Works accompany faith like colour accompanies light. Works are nothing but the visible manifestations of faith, and provoking people into doing things that are not motivated by their own faith has nothing to do with that faith. It is completely folly to throw away crutches or glasses (and ultimately medicines and therapy) just because you want to be healed.
To establish their reputation faith healers only need a fraction of their audience to be healed. The large majority that remains unhealed usually also remains silent, especially since failure to heal is attributed to lack of faith. There are cases, also from the audience of Aimee Semple McPherson, of people who were traumatized for life because God apparently ignored them and didn't love them, and left them sick. Healing should not be made into a show. It should be conducted in a Biblical way and in a private setting. The patient must be personally mentored and tutored and made to feel the love that exists in the Body of Christ in stead of waiting in line for some star spangled stranger to whisper suggestions over them. Even in the ministry of Aimee Semple McPherson there are no medical records that suggest that Aimee ever healed severed limbs, cancers or anything that can not be attributed to psychosomatic infirmities.
However, in our opinion, there should be little doubt that Aimee herself believed that she healed tens of thousands of people, and saw fresh flesh take the place of cancerous holes. It is our ultimate impression that Aimee suffered from delusions, and that she preached ultimately to deal with the loss of her husband. Aimee should never have been the leader that she became, but should have served on a church board that guarded and guided her. With her talents and charisma, she would have been equally stunning but with causing far less damage.
