c. 2007 Religion News Service

VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ A female Canadian evangelist was a seminal figure in the creation of today’s American religious right, says a new book that traces the life of the legendary Aimee Semple McPherson.

McPherson was the first major leader in the U.S. to promote the mix of apocalyptic theology, Hollywood-style theatrics and media savvy that characterizes the political wing of today’s evangelical movement, says Matthew Avery Sutton in his new book, “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America” (Harvard University Press).

With Sutton’s book, a recent PBS documentary and chatter on National Public Radio, the flashy, publicity-loving McPherson is getting the attention in death that she so craved in life, decades after she helped birth the modern Pentecostal movement.

McPherson, who died at age 53 in 1944 after a possibly accidental overdose of barbituates, was adored and reviled by millions in her day. She was a household name years before the world ever met Billy Graham, Jimmy Swaggart or Pat Robertson.

Yet she was controversial _ and sometimes seemed to thrive on all the attention. Said to simmer with sexuality, the luxury-loving “Sister Aimee” had several husbands, was criminally charged with faking her own kidnapping to cover up an affair, and had often-difficult (non-romantic) relationships with the famous, both in politics and Hollywood.

Other books have been written about McPherson, but Sutton’s goes far in making the argument that the Ontario-born evangelist was the most influential model for the merging of conservative Christian identity and American patriotism.

McPherson popularized the politically charged belief that the United States is God’s “Chosen Nation.” Sutton argues that McPherson was responsible for rescuing conservative Protestantism from obscurity while creating the political model for today’s religion-fueled Republican Party. She promoted the conviction that Jesus Christ and the “American way of life” are synonymous.

“The flag of America and the church stand for the same thing. … They stand or fall together!” preached McPherson, who founded the Foursquare Gospel Church, which claims 6 million members today. Her original 6,000-seat Angelus Temple in Los Angeles is again drawing large crowds.

The center-left attacked McPherson in songs and movies for her alleged hypocrisy and xenophobia. She put on elaborate stage plays that demonized (literally) Catholics, Jews, Japanese-Americans, Communists and atheists.

Just as McPherson believed God chose Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus, the book suggests McPherson set the stage for the religious ideologues who push a religious-political movement on the U.S. “to serve as locus for the last days and His ultimate restoration of the faith.”

Through her popular, pioneering Bible radio programs, McPherson constructed a religious empire from which she launched what are now known as the U.S. “culture wars.”

At the time of the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial” over the teaching of evolution, McPherson organized a giant parade and theatrical play at her baroque Angelus Temple. The event portrayed what she called the “hanging and burial of monkey teachers.”

More than 80 years later, Sutton suggests McPherson’s brand of evangelical sensationalism is again spiking up whether to teach evolution in U.S. public schools, even as the issue barely registers in most other industrialized countries.

“She was one of the most influential figures in U.S. history,” writes Sutton, a history professor at Oakland University in Michigan. “She was the first religious celebrity of the mass-media era.”

Although Sutton, who was raised in the Foursquare Church, adopts a balanced tone in this almost affectionate biography, he laments how McPherson’s condemnation of “dangerous outsiders” as un-American remains integral to Christian neo-conservatism. The current targets of such suspicion, Sutton suggests, are gays and Muslims.

Born in 1890 near Ingersoll, Ontario, McPherson grew up in a troubled home with a Salvation Army mother, becoming known in her teens as a gifted orator.

At 18, she married a fiery missionary in Canada. But he soon died in China, and a depressed McPherson moved to Hollywood, where she married a man who wanted a dish-washing wife. She couldn’t take it.

With her mother’s help, she set out to evangelize in tents across Canada and the U.S. and became famous as a faith healer.

Although Edith Blumhofer’s earlier biography, “Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister,” focuses more on the folk hero’s life in Canada, Sutton’s book stands out for its socio-political analysis of McPherson’s pivotal role in what became today’s politicized evangelical Christianity.

The conservative Protestant movement is now one of the largest and fastest growing religions around the globe, often promoting a muscular mix of Christian theology and American nationalism.

Ironically, it was a Canadian who made it the force with which the world is now reckoning.

Editors: To obtain photos of Aimee Semple McPherson, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on ”photos,” then search by subject or slug.

KRE/LF END TODD