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Aimee Semple McPherson was many things to many people, and she was always a sensation. Perhaps the most prominent evangelist of the 1930s, McPherson preached to thousands of people every week and trained hundreds of young men and women for ministry and missionary roles. She was also married three times, liberally enhanced her sermons with spectacle and drama, and disappeared for a week under circumstances that remain mysterious to this day. Apart from her importance to the development of North American Christianity, McPherson has much to teach women in ministry, if only they look close enough.
McPherson’s ministry and the public’s response to it illuminate how difficult it is for women in Christian ministry to truly change the culture of their organizations. Although McPherson was revered by her followers, she not only faced criticism from outsiders, but also a more subtle form of resistance: the gender role ideals of her followers. In order to gain a better understanding of the difficulties facing marginalized leaders, we must analyze the rhetoric not only of a leader’s critics, but also of her supporters.
In this case, a rhetorical analysis of certain articles from the Foursquare Crusader—the newsletter of McPherson’s church—reveals a congregation that embraces two mutually exclusive ideals: support of a strong woman pastor and adherence to traditional gender roles. Looking at these articles through the lens of rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s theory of “piety” allows for an understanding of how a leader’s supporters can adhere to ideas that contradict what that leader symbolizes. Burkean piety theorizes why it is so hard for people to speak or act against the norms of the culture around them: there is always pressure to conform—to be “pious” to cultural ideals and therefore blend into the crowd.
Seen through the lens of Burkean piety, McPherson’s supporters are caught between a rock and a hard place: They must remain “pious” with regard to gender roles while still supporting the woman they revere. According to Burke, such a contradiction should result in “perspective by incongruity,” in which someone realizes the gap between their beliefs and their actions or words, leading them to change. However, gender role stereotypes persisted in the Foursquare Crusader and after McPherson’s death, the Foursquare Church reverted to male leadership for decades. I argue that perspective by incongruity can be canceled out by a strong enough belief that someone or something is the exception to the (pious) rule—in other words, by adherence to a greater piety. In McPherson’s case, her continual emphasis on her calling by God allowed her supporters (and even herself) to rationalize her leadership while still adhering to their culture’s limiting beliefs about gender.
McPherson, therefore, can serve as an example for those studying women (or other marginalized people) in ministry from any time period. Although analyzing the rhetoric of critics is important, it is just as important to analyze the rhetoric of the leader’s supporters. Do they successfully resist any cultural pieties? Or do they view the leader as the exception to the rule? In this essay, I begin by introducing McPherson and giving a brief rhetorical history surrounding her ministry and the contemporary views of women in church leadership. I will briefly summarize the rhetoric of her detractors, then jump into analysis of the Foursquare Crusader and point out the rhetorical contradictions of her supporters. I will use Burkean piety to illuminate why and how McPherson’s supporters did not significantly change their attitudes toward women in leadership even with such a strong woman at the helm of their church. I will end with a few suggestions for how to apply the principles from this case study to further rhetorical analysis of the supporters of other women in ministry.
Early Years of Ministry
At the time Aimee Semple McPherson began her ministry in the 1920s, the American church was grappling with several different movements and ideals competing for power. Women, newly empowered during the first World War, had taken positions of leadership in the church as well as in industry and public life. They had successfully campaigned for the right to vote in 1920. Many women were active in the new church denominations that were founded at this time, especially Pentecostal denominations. However, to no one’s surprise, many men viewed the new level of freedom women achieved as a threat. One of the biggest struggles in the church at the time was the tension between these newly empowered women leaders and a reactionary movement toward “muscular Christianity” that emphasized “masculine” virtues such as patriotism, physical strength, bravery, and especially athleticism.
Interestingly, many male church leaders did not see female ordination as the most significant threat, but instead, the “feminization” of Christianity which emphasized emotional expression, especially during worship, the kindness and gentleness of Jesus, and an individualized intimate relationship with God.1 This so-called “feminization” corresponded to some extent with the revival preaching style popular at the time since, “in their efforts to appeal to the masses, revival preachers popularized a new preaching style known more for its emotionalism and its emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”2 However, “with a new preaching style, new doctrines, and a diverse cadre of leaders, evangelicalism also undermined the mainline Protestant denominations” on these points, inviting backlash.3 In fact, as McPherson herself wrote, “Orthodox ministers . . . disapproved . . . of a woman who invaded the fields, not alone of orthodoxy, but of men. Still more they disapproved when the woman evangelist carried evangelism still further by making her services not a sepulcher of ritual . . . but a paean of joy and fervor.”4
Male leaders of established denominations believed that emotionalism and the feminization of Christianity were driving men away from the church. Thus, “muscular Christianity” was born. Muscular Christianity focused on traditionally “masculine” virtues and physical fitness, especially on the part of preachers and pastors. Within this movement, physical fitness and manliness were seen as Christian virtues and integral parts of the church. As male leaders sought to bring men back to their churches, “in reasserting the masculinity of the church, some leaders also attempted to curtail women’s leadership.”5 In fact, as new denominations became more mainstream and organized, women’s leadership became more and more restricted: “from the time that the loose sects began to organize into denominations, various degrees of restrictions on the leadership and ministry of women grew more severe.”6 Even in the Pentecostal movement,
by 1923, two years before Aimee Semple McPherson started building Angeles Temple, within the Assemblies of God in which she had held credentials for five years, the restrictions on women’s ministry had begun in earnest. . . .Though most of these were reinstated later, the ethos of male dominance did not die easily and continues to some degree until the present.7
McPherson entered ministry during a time when increasing numbers of male leaders were actively working against feminine “influence” in the church. Instead of going along with this trend, she decided to put her emotion, her female self, and feminine imagery at the center of her ministry.
From the beginning, McPherson’s ministry centered around one image—the bride of Christ:
Unlike masculine preachers in the mainline denominations who mimicked Jesus and his apostles, and unlike the evangelical preachers who performed as sports heroes, McPherson developed alternative personae in keeping with the feminized evangelical tradition. Of her many personae, two of the most consistent were the servant and the bride.8
Over and over again in her sermons, McPherson emphasized the ideal of the bride of Christ. For her, the bride of Christ was the “central metaphor for the church and for her theology.”9 In the Bible, the church is sometimes depicted as the bride of Christ, awaiting the unity and wedding feast of the new creation. McPherson, as the head of her church, viewed herself as a persona of the church, and therefore as the bride of Christ herself. Of course, some of this persona played into the stereotypes of the time, as “her most popular illustrated sermons depicted McPherson as an ideal 1920s woman: a companionate wife . . . to Jesus.”10 Still, McPherson claimed power through this persona:
She was the ultimate of what [churchgoers] all aspired to be as the bride of Christ, and that status gave her power over her fellow brides. McPherson provided her congregation with living, breathing displays of a biblical bride of Christ as well as an authoritative minister.11
In order to emphasize this persona, McPherson sometimes wore white gowns to preach, even going so far as to reenact some of the marriage parables of the Bible on stage. In doing so, she—perhaps intentionally, perhaps not—set herself up as a threat to the growing muscular Christianity movement and the established male preachers of the day. That opposition would haunt her throughout her controversial life and career.
Marriages
A brief overview of McPherson’s romantic life will give some context for her ministry and the rest of this article. Born Aimee Kennedy in 1890, she grew up in the Canadian countryside in a devoutly religious home. In 1907, a Pentecostal revivalist came to town, and at one of their meetings, Aimee met Robert Semple, an evangelist who became her first husband. Theirs was a happy marriage, and they eventually moved to China as missionaries.12 Sadly, within months of their move, Robert died. Aimee was devastated, writing, “oh, that death had never loosed those beloved arms [of Robert Semple]! . . . Had a man’s cool and determined logic been available in years to come, what grief and misfortune might have been spared the helpless, inexperienced little mother-evangelist!”13 McPherson’s emphasis on “a man’s cool and determined logic” shows that she herself subscribed to some of the gender stereotypes of the day. Robert Semple had asked McPherson to be his “helpmate” in his evangelism, and she had gladly accepted that role.14
After mourning Robert for some time, she met her second husband, Harold McPherson. Harold was a businessman who had strict ideas about a “woman’s place.” When marrying Harold, Aimee told him that her heart and soul were in evangelism,15 but he insisted on her occupying a traditional wife’s role in the home. As she tried to adjust to this new reality, she became ill and depressed.16 Things became so dire that she actually left her husband and began preaching again. She wrote to him saying, “I have tried to walk your way and have failed. Won’t you come now and walk my way? I am sure we will be happy.”17 Harold (and his mother) responded: “Why don’t you be like other young women and be content to stay at home and attend to the housework?”18 They asked her to “return immediately, ‘wash the dishes,’ ‘take care of the house,’ and ‘act like other women.’”19 Needless to say, McPherson refused, and the couple soon divorced. McPherson officially left the life of a 1920s housewife behind: She “never again adhered to traditional gender norms or returned to domesticity.”20 Reflecting on her second marriage, McPherson wrote:
Oh, don’t you ever tell me that a woman can not be called to preach the Gospel! If any man ever went through one hundredth part of the hell on earth that I lived in, those months when out of God’s will and work, they would never say that again.21
The call to preach and evangelize guided McPherson’s whole life, and she would never again lose sight of it. She founded the Foursquare Church in Los Angeles and traveled around the country evangelizing. After many years of preaching and many years of controversy, including a still-unexplained disappearance, McPherson eventually married a third time, to Robert Hutton, but the marriage did not last long and once again ended in divorce. McPherson died in 1944, leaving behind two children (one with Semple and one with McPherson), a church with tens of thousands of congregants, and a complicated legacy.22
As mentioned above, critics of McPherson and her church abounded. The center of their critique was McPherson’s feminized style and “movie star” personality. McPherson was labeled a “hypersexualized actress who played upon the emotions of her followers.”23 For her critics, “McPherson’s popularity could not be explained by compelling theology or persuasive sermons; instead, McPherson’s physical appearance and sexual attractiveness brought Los Angeles’s ‘morons’ back to her temple week after week.”24 Not only her preaching style but also her personal life came under fire constantly:
New York journalist Stanley Walker wrote of McPherson’s appeal in these suspicious, modernist terms: “By putting some sex appeal in the old-fashioned revival brand of salvation, embellishing it all with colored lights, brass bands and the Hollywood tone, she keeps her flock in a constant state of excited admiration. She has sex appeal. . . . Much of the woman’s life, as well as her religion, has been directed by sex impulses.”25
Constant publicity and controversy took a toll on McPherson, and she struggled with her mental health at times. She was never free from the spotlight, and eighty years after her death she remains a controversial figure.
There has already been much scholarly analysis of McPherson’s critics and the rhetorical moves they made to try to discredit such a powerful woman in the church. However, less attention has been paid to her supporters, many of whom were devoted to her. Although her congregants loved her and often defended her, many of them still maintained contradictory ideas of women’s proper place in society and the church. Rhetorical analysis of certain articles from the Foursquare Crusader, the newsletter of the Foursquare Church, shows a congregation with conflicting values.
One of the most interesting articles from the Foursquare Crusader is the announcement of the marriage between McPherson and Hutton. In the (unattributed) article, the author writes, “we are sure he [Hutton] will be a real helpmate for our own dear Sister.”26 “Helpmate” is a loaded term in the debate over women’s leadership in the church, as God uses it to refer to Eve’s relationship to Adam in Genesis 2:18–20. While modern translation scholars point out that the Hebrew word denotes “help from a place of power” or even “ally in battle,” it has traditionally been used to justify mandating a subordinate role for women in Christian marriages. The fact that this article uses the term “helpmate” to describe Hutton is, therefore, quite surprising and speaks to McPherson’s role as a true leader in the church. In another reference to Genesis, McPherson is quoted as saying, “I want to serve the Lord more and more, and He has said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone,’ and surely He does not intend for woman to be alone.”27 McPherson continues, saying, “I want to go forward with my work and a companion will aid and strengthen me.”28 Both of these quotes show reversal of the companionate wife ideal—and even a reversal of the Adam/Eve relationship. Hutton, the article records, comments, “I want to be a help in God’s work and do my share in assisting my wife in her great religious movement.”29 This Foursquare Crusader article presents a marriage that reverses traditional gender roles, with McPherson in a position of power and leadership and Hutton as a helper and companion.
Some articles in the Foursquare Crusader appear to promote similar views on gender roles. In one, McPherson writes that “the love of a mother is akin to that of God,” deviating from the “fatherly love” that provides the standard metaphor for God’s love.30 In another, a reverend enumerates the many times women preach in the Bible and suggests that the disciples on the road to Emmaus were Cleopas and his wife, a very progressive interpretation at the time.31 Yet another article lauds McPherson for overcoming “the old moss-back belief that ‘women should be seen and not heard,’ when it came to preaching the Word of God” and praises her for establishing a “new precedent for the ministry of women.”32 These and other Foursquare Crusader articles acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of women to the church and to ministry within it.
Unfortunately, the Foursquare Crusader does not maintain this viewpoint consistently. Some articles in the Crusader, especially in its later years, present a traditional view of gender roles within marriage. One particularly traditional article—a multi-page piece about marriage—includes many exhortations for women to submit to their husbands and remain contentedly at home. “In a truly Christian home,” the author writes, “the husband loves the wife [and] the wife submits to the husband and respects him.”33 Not only should the wife submit to her husband, but she should also avoid a career and instead focus on having children: “When both Father and Mother work and at different shifts at that, where is even the semblance of spiritual union and piety to be found? If home life is to be strong, much time needs to be spent there. The absence of children promotes discord.”34 The Christian ideal, the author writes, “emphasizes that the husband is recognized morally and legally as the provider for the family.”35
Other articles, although not quite as explicit with pronouncements about traditional gender roles, fall into similar stereotypes. One article, written by McPherson herself and titled “Men Wanted,” tries to recruit young people to the missionary field. Although the newspaper placed this article next to an image of McPherson literally shaping disciples out of clay, and although the article mentions women and calls them to the field, it repeats “MEN WANTED” throughout.36 McPherson even quotes a female reverend who emphasizes the need for “real ‘he’ men” as missionaries.37 McPherson also wrote an article for Mother’s Day in which she fondly remembers the domestic pursuits of her own mother and reflects on the importance of “mother” and “home” to husbands who come home “after the busy, bustling toil, when the long day is done.”38 The gender stereotypes and beliefs in these articles directly contradict other writings within the Foursquare Crusader. How can one group of people—and even one publication—hold such a contradiction? Of course, members of a congregation can have differing opinions about certain issues, but for the Foursquare congregation and McPherson herself, the question of women in leadership was at the very heart of their church and McPherson’s ministry. How could they maintain such contradictory rhetoric?
Burkean Piety
The answer can be found by looking through the lens of Kenneth Burke’s theory of “piety.”
In his book Permanence and Change, Burke—one of the foremost rhetoricians of the twentieth century and a contemporary of McPherson—introduces a concept he calls “piety,” which he defines as “the sense of what properly goes with what.”39 Piety, for Burke,
captures the often inexplicable or unarticulated (“It just isn’t done!”) intensity with which people bind themselves to, and are bound by, beliefs or behaviors. . . . Such devotion is a matter not of goodness but of completeness or thoroughness, taking an idea or role to the nth degree.40
In other words, piety describes the nearly religious intensity with which people adhere to certain cultural norms. Burkean piety involves “a scrupulous sense of the appropriate” in a given situation.41 Piety has both a communal and an individual aspect: “Although people in the same society share some pieties—gender roles, loyalty to a local sports team, professional behavior—piety is composed, felt, and enacted by individuals through the choices, both conscious and unconscious, they make.”42 Piety can be policed through one’s own conscience as well as through others’ comments, ostracism, or punishment.43 In sum, from a rhetorical perspective, piety explains why people resist change. Deviations from the “norms” that individuals or their communities have accepted result in both internal unease and external repercussions.
So how can piety help explain the Foursquare Crusader’s contradictions? Although the congregants of the Foursquare Church supported and loved their pastor, they could not overcome the piety surrounding gender roles that was baked into their culture. The messages about women’s “proper place” pervaded their lives, and these ideas were reinforced by those around them. They internalized this piety and could not overcome it entirely, even with McPherson at the head of their church.
This conclusion, however, raises another question. From a Burkean perspective, the example of McPherson could have been enough to break the piety of gender roles that her followers believed. According to Burke, overcoming a piety requires “perspective by incongruity.” Perspective by incongruity refers to someone experiencing or doing something that fundamentally violates their sense of piety, thus exposing their previous beliefs and actions for analysis. It “forces ‘inappropriate’ connections between elements and destroys those connections that have already been forged through a sense of appropriateness.”44 Perspective by incongruity works by “wrenching apart” words that one believes are inextricable45—words, in this case, like “woman” and “follower.” Once someone has the self-awareness to see their own pieties, change is possible. So, why did McPherson’s example not change the pieties of her followers?
Some argue that perspective by incongruity “will be ineffective if it cannot be incorporated into one’s existing piety” and the roots of one’s character.46 While it can be conceded that someone will not take action or change their mind without believing that choice accords with their character, the very definition of perspective by incongruity is something that does not fit into one’s existing piety, so this explanation falls short. It can be argued, instead, that the true reason behind a failure of perspective by incongruity like this one is the power of an exception to the rule.
What does an exception to the rule mean? It means that one discards a lesser rule in favor of following a greater one. When a person decides to choose mercy instead of punishment, gives someone ill or weak more support than another, or argues that a choice they made is “above the law,” that person is going against one piety (justice, fairness, lawfulness) in favor of a piety they view as more important or more binding (forgiveness, kindness, righteousness). Sometimes, pieties contradict. When this happens, people must choose between them and justify their choice through believing in an exception to the lesser piety. Crucially, such a choice keeps both pieties intact.
This sort of choice and justification allowed McPherson’s followers—and even herself—to believe in her as a minister without changing their views on women in ministry at large. In fact, McPherson also became the exception to the rule when it came to divorce and marrying divorcees with ex-spouses still alive. The Foursquare Crusader condemned such things while also celebrating their pastor’s third marriage—which would also end in divorce.47 What was the greater piety that allowed such exceptions? In this case, it was literal piety: their belief in McPherson’s calling from God.
Believing that McPherson had been called by God to preach created a conflict of pieties within her supporters and her congregation. However, as other scholars have argued, ultimately, the congregants’ piety to God won out: McPherson “drew God’s power, which gave her absolution when going against social or religious conservatism.”48 For her followers, “the abdication of the accepted female role was permissible if it came as a result of God’s calling.”49 God’s sanction of McPherson was enough for her followers to create an exception to their lesser pieties surrounding gender roles and divorce.
In fact, McPherson herself seems to have held this same contradictory view and the same justification for it. Although she cited Deborah, the woman at the well, and other women leaders and preachers in the Bible,50 she also reiterated “the belief that women brought sin into the world and the sins and shortcomings of the male could be traced to the female.”51 In the Foursquare Church, although women could be ordained, they could not be elders52 and were prevented from occupying certain other roles at the church. In fact, after her third marriage ended in her second divorce, “McPherson amended the doctrinal statement of the Foursquare Church to include a clause against the remarriage of persons with a living ex-spouse.”53
McPherson’s own writings point to herself as an exception to the rule because of her calling from God: “Her writings do not indicate a strong conflict between her role as preacher and wife. When she chose the former over the latter, she makes it quite clear to her readers that the choice was God’s, not hers.”54 McPherson had the authority of God behind her choice, and she reminded the public of her calling frequently. “If the Lord chose a woman to attract to Himself those who otherwise might not have come,” she wrote, “who shall question the wisdom of the Lord?”55 Certainly, her followers did not wish to question the wisdom of the Lord, so they would be unlikely to question McPherson as the exception to their beliefs. Though, to my knowledge, McPherson is not explicitly defined as an exception to the rule within the Crusaders—the clear conflict between pieties seems to have gone largely unaddressed—it can be argued that her supporters agreed with McPherson’s own arguments about her exceptionalism. This triumph of a greater piety over a lesser meant McPherson could mitigate her appearance as a “threat” to the gender roles and even male preachers of the day: after all, it was not her own choice to become a preacher—she had yielded to the inflexible will of God and, therefore, managed to uphold traditional gender roles while living in contradiction to them.
By looking at the legacy of McPherson’s ministry, it becomes easy to tell that, as an exception to the rule, she did not dismantle traditional gender roles—even in her own church. Although the Foursquare church continued to ordain women,
in the early years, nearly forty percent of pastors within the Foursquare denomination were women. . . . However, the actual participation of women in the ministry and leadership of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel continued to decline throughout McPherson’s lifetime so that by the time of her death only sixteen percent of pastors were female.56
After McPherson’s death, her son took over the ministry, and the church would be under male leadership for decades. Culture at large has also struggled with McPherson’s legacy: “both religiously conservative evangelical women and secular feminists have found inspiration in McPherson”;57 some viewing her as a devout woman of God and others as a sexually liberated woman leader. The contradiction of pieties at the heart of her ministry left a legacy that is interpreted in a myriad of ways.
Implications for Women in Church Leadership
What does this mean for scholars studying women and other marginalized leaders in the church? In the first place, the case study of McPherson and the Foursquare Crusader indicates how important it is to analyze supporters’ rhetoric, not just critics’ rhetoric, in order to fully understand the reception and legacy of marginalized church leaders. Under the intense pressure of piety, supporters may hold conflicting beliefs that they reconcile through (externally or internally) assigning their leader the label of “exception to the rule.” When they make this rhetorical move, it becomes very difficult to promote substantive change, even through perspective by incongruity. After all, if the leader is only an exception to the rule—a unique member of a group that usually has no business leading—then no structural or cultural change will occur once that person loses power. In fact, leaders themselves may compound the problem by holding those same conflicting pieties. In order to effect change, we must understand the reasoning behind the beliefs that dictate people’s actions. Rhetorical analysis and rhetorical history, combined with the lens of Burkean piety, can help us understand how and why marginalized church leaders create change—or not.
Conclusion
Aimee Semple McPherson’s life and ministry left a complex legacy. Through rhetorical analysis of the Foursquare Crusader, I have shown how her followers, although devoted to McPherson, sidestepped perspective by incongruity and maintained their piety surrounding gender roles by believing that she was an exception to the rule. Believing that they were staying true to a greater piety—their belief in God—allowed them to keep both pieties intact. McPherson herself explicitly claimed her own exceptionalism to partially avoid confronting the strict gender roles of her day. Her rhetoric and that of her supporters provide a fascinating case study that illustrates just how hard marginalized church leaders must work to change the hearts and minds of their followers if they hope to effect lasting change.
Still, all is not lost. An understanding of why people hold contradictory beliefs is the first step toward understanding how to bring to light those contradictions and work toward changing damaging pieties, not merely creating exceptions to those pieties. Once someone understands why they believe what they believe, they can begin to question and even change those beliefs. Although we cannot change people’s minds for them, scholars can at least illuminate the cultural pieties at work and give others the information they need to make clear and conscious choices. Once someone knows where they are, it is easier to decide where they are going.
Notes
1. Kristy Maddux, “The Feminized Gospel: Aimee Semple McPherson and the Gendered Performance of Christianity,” Women’s Studies in Communication 35/1 (2012) 44.
2. Maddux, “The Feminized Gospel,” 46.
3. Maddux, “The Feminized Gospel,” 46–47.
4. Aimee Semple McPherson, In the Service of the King: The Story of My Life (Boni and Liveright, 1927) 151–52.
5. Maddux, “The Feminized Gospel,” 49.
6. Estrelda Alexander, “Gender and Leadership in the Theology and Practice of Three Pentecostal Women Pioneers” (PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, 2002) 77.
7. Alexander, “Gender and Leadership,” 76–77.
8. Maddux, “The Feminized Gospel,” 52.
9. Matthew Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Harvard University Press, 2009) 56.
10. Leah Payne, “The Roar of Thunder and the Sweetness of a Woman: Gender Construction and Ritualized Acts in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century American Revivalism,” Journal of Ritual Studies 31/1 (2017) 33.
11. Payne, “The Roar of Thunder,” 33.
12. Sutton, Resurrection of Christian America, 9–11.
13. Semple McPherson, In the Service of the King, 109.
14. Aimee Semple McPherson, This is That: Personal Experiences, Sermons, and Writings (The Bridal Call Publishing House, 1919) 63.
15. Semple McPherson, This is That, 95.
16. Semple McPherson, This is That, 96–98.
17. Semple McPherson, This is That, 109.
18. Semple McPherson, This is That, 103.
19. Sutton, Resurrection of Christian America, 13.
20. Sutton, Resurrection of Christian America, 13.
21. Semple McPherson, This is That, 102.
22. Sutton, Resurrection of Christian America, 29.
23. Maddux, “The Feminized Gospel,” 44.
24. Maddux, “The Feminized Gospel,” 58.
25. Barbara Campbell, “Underneath this Prim Exterior: The Passion of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Construction of Public Self in Women’s Ministry” (MA thesis, California State University, Fullerton, 1997) 69.
26. “Temple Pastor Weds,” Foursquare Crusader (Sept 16, 1931), 1.
27. “Temple Pastor Weds,” 1.
28. “Temple Pastor Weds,” 1.
29. “Temple Pastor Weds,” 1.
30. Aimee Semple McPherson, “Mother, Home, and Heaven,” Foursquare Crusader (May 7, 1927) 4.
31. Wesley Cooksey, “The Glorious Appearing,” Foursquare Crusader (Nov 1942) 7.
32. “Galilean Call Resounds in Twentieth Century,” Foursquare Crusader (Aug 24 1938) 7.
33. Elmer Gottschalk, et al., “The Christian View of Marriage,” Foursquare Crusader (Nov 1942) 22.
34. Gottschalk, et al., “The Christian View of Marriage,” 24.
35. Gottschalk, et al., “The Christian View of Marriage,” 24.
36. Aimee Semple McPherson, “Men Wanted,” Foursquare Crusader (Aug 24, 1938) 1.
37. Semple McPherson, “Men Wanted,” 6.
38. Semple McPherson, “Mother, Home, and Heaven,” 4.
39. Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose (University of California Press, 1984) 74.
40. Ann George, Kenneth Burke’s Permanence and Change: A Critical Companion (University of South Carolina Press, 2018) 35.
41. Burke, Permanence and Change, 77.
42. George, Critical Companion, 31.
43. George, Critical Companion, 37.
44. Jordynn Jack, “‘The Piety of Degradation’: Kenneth Burke, The Bureau of Social Hygiene, and Permanence and Change,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90/4 (2004) 461.
45. Burke, Permanence and Change, 119.
46. Jack, “The Piety of Degradation,” 461.
47. Elmer Gottschalk, et al., “The Christian View of Marriage,” Foursquare Crusader (Nov 1942) 23.
48. Campbell, “Underneath this Prim Exterior,” 54.
49. Frances Dalton-Rheaume, “Aimee Semple McPherson: ‘The Forgotten Evangelist’” (MA thesis, Concordia University, 1996) 66.
50. Dalton-Rheaume, “Forgotten Evangelist,” 60.
51. Dalton-Rheaume, “Forgotten Evangelist,” 66.
52. Alexander, “Gender and Leadership,” 158.
53. Alexander, “Gender and Leadership,” 154.
54. Dalton-Rheaume, “Forgotten Evangelist,” 62.
55. Semple McPherson, In the Service of the King, 151.
56. Alexander, “Gender and Leadership,” 166.
57. Sutton, Resurrection of Christian America, 273.