SISTER, SINNER

5 stars out of 5

For a variety of reasons - none of them religious - I've always been fascinated by the "Come let me wrap ye in the cloak of the Lord" televangelists who pretty much ruled the Sunday-morning airwaves back in my day - names like Rex Humbard, Ernest Angley and Dr. Robert Schuller. Watching them spit out their fire-and-brimstone messages, invite viewers to come to the altar to be "saved" (or healed) and, of course, make pleas for money was, if nothing else, always a hoot.

But years before their time was an evangelist who I'd call a trailblazer for a variety of reasons: Aimee Semple McPherson. Although her ministry was going strong on the radio when I was a youngster, I never heard her (she died in 1944, when I was but a toddler). But I certainly heard of her, if only that there was some kind of scandal involving her ministry; so when I got the chance to read the story of her life, I threw my arms to the sky and offered thanks (in this case, to the publisher, via NetGalley).

And what an interesting ministry - and life - she had. Plagued with scandal, intrigue, and, yes, love (at least for all things heavenly), her story just kept getting more intricate and involved as the pages flew by. Among the initial revelations are that she was married twice despite preaching so-called "old-time religion; she was 35 years old in 1926, when thousands flocked to her Angelus Temple (a.k.a. Million Dollar Temple) in California; her sudden disappearance, and presumed drowning in the ocean, most likely was faked and has never been fully resolved.

It's the parts before and after that disappearance, though, that are fascinating, at least to me - especially the complicated relationship between Aimee and her "stage mom," Minnie Kennedy, and her two children with first husband Robert Semple at age 17, Rolf and Roberta - the latter presumed to continue Aimee's ministry had those ocean waters actually claimed her life. 

Along her life's somewhat erratic journey, she became wildly popular on the born-again Christian circuit - being dubbed, mostly by her detractors, as the P.T. Barnum of Christianity. It is the "stuff" of that journey, of course, that fills the pages of this book - but also of course, I'll leave it up to other readers to find and enjoy them, hopefully as much as I did. Oh, and there's an extensive list of sources at the end as well.

Sister Sinner by Claire Hoffman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2025); 384 pp.