13. Aimee Semple McPherson and Pentecostal Preachers
13
Aimee Semple McPherson and Pentecostal Preachers
She is the founder—the controversial founder—of the Foursquare Church. I’ve known about her ministry and have studied her fascinating life on and off for decades. But for this study I needed an update. I typed foursquare into Google. The first items that came up, however, related to social media, not to a church. Foursquare, according to Wikipedia, is “a location-based social networking website for mobile devices.”1 I didn’t know. No surprise. My only mobile device is a twenty-dollar Walmart phone with a prepaid card for eight dollars a month. Someday, I tell myself, I’ll get a smartphone.
I am by no means on the cutting edge of technology. Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the Foursquare Church, was. Today that church continues to utilize the latest technology. From its website we read that the church-wide “Conversation” to “Reimagine Foursquare” will be a local event. How so?
As you prepare for your local Town Hall meeting, download the framework for the Reimagine conversation. . . . Can’t make the stop in your district? We have you covered. We will be streaming live from two locations, including one in Spanish. You’ll still have the chance to ask questions and offer your feedback.2
Aimee would have been proud of the technological progress her church has made. If today’s social media had been available in her day, she would have been in the forefront. But it might have backfired on her. Foursquare, Wikipedia goes on to inform us, has the capability to track people down. “Location is based on GPS hardware in the mobile device or network location provided by the application, and the map is based on data from the OpenStreetMap project.”
If Aimee had taken her smartphone with her when she disappeared back in 1926, law enforcement and the meddlesome media would have tracked her down. The mystery would have been solved in no time. But with no GPS tracking devices, no one knew if she had drowned while swimming in the ocean, her body swept out to sea, or if perhaps she had been kidnapped. Or was she enjoying a little R&R with a lover in a hideaway?
When she walked out of the desert just across the Arizona-Mexico border a month later, she told authorities she had been kidnapped. She told them she had been dropped off in the middle of nowhere and had walked some twenty miles across the hardscrabble terrain, no food, no water—no smartphone. To local officials, she looked fresh, clean, and well dressed for such an ordeal, but that was her story and she was stickin’ to it.
In her absence, the newspapers had a field day of speculation, and it certainly didn’t stop with her reappearance. But Aimee carried on with her ministry despite a long, drawn-out court battle. In subsequent years she continued to preach, and the church continued to grow. But Aimee would always be the butt of jokes. In fact, further online searching took me unexpectedly to lyrics by folk singer and songwriter Pete Seeger, the late Pete Seeger who died in January 2014. The song is a nine-verse spoof at Aimee’s expense. Verse six parodies Aimee and her lover holed up in a cottage, cavorting on a worn-out bed. (If I’d had a hammer, I might have been tempted to conk my dear Pete over the head and ask him why he didn’t use his creative genius in giving us more great songs like “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “If I Had a Hammer.”)
Aimee was far more than merely a joke. Before her alleged kidnapping, she was the most noted American evangelist of her time, a household name. She was likewise one of the first on the West Coast to build a grand megachurch, Angelus Temple. I visited the church on a weekday afternoon many years ago. The auditorium was empty. I tried to imagine Aimee standing at the pulpit. I could almost hear her voice, as I had heard it on taped recordings. She could hold a crowd. As I walked through the vestibule, I noticed what appeared to be glassed-in trophy shelves. Here were mementos people at her healing services had left behind: crutches, casts, neck braces, pill bottles, and everything imaginable that might no longer be needed by someone who had been declared whole.
Who was this woman? Nothing about her seems certain except that she will forever remain elusive. Her numerous biographers tell widely conflicting tales, and her story simply doesn’t die. She was preceded and followed by other Pentecostal women evangelists, including Maria Woodworth-Etter, Florence Crawford, Susie Villa Valdez, Rosa de Lopez, Pandita Ramabai, and Kathryn Kuhlman. But Aimee stands alone.
Trance Evangelist
She was known as the trance evangelist. As many as five hundred people fell into trances during one single meeting. Traveling with a huge tent, she went from town to town, healing and even raising the dead—that is, if her accounts are to be taken at face value. Indeed, whether her accounts are reliable is the main issue confronting scholars who would study her. Unlike the wide array of sources on other religious figures of the era, there is very little published material on her life and ministry—very little that is not taken from her own writings or those of her devoted followers. That she was the most widely traveled and influential woman evangelist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is well established.
Maria (pronounced like Mariah Carey) was an Ohio farmer’s wife, mother of six, who painfully witnessed, one by one, the deaths of the first five. She was in her midthirties by the time she began her revival ministry, initially preaching in nearby small churches. Barely a dozen years later, she had traveled three times coast-to-coast, drawing large crowds despite hostility toward women preachers. Her unique style was compelling. Curiosity seekers and the faithful alike packed the tent. God spoke to her in visions, she testified, while she was in a trance. A vivid panorama of hell (and heaven) had prompted her to begin her evangelistic ministry:
Then the Lord, in a vision, caused me to see the bottomless pit, open in all its horror and woe. There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was surrounded by a great multitude of people who seemed unconscious of their danger; and without a moments warning, they would tumble into this awful place. I was above the people on a narrow plank-walk, which wound up toward heaven; and I was exhorting and pleading with the people to come up onto the plank and escape that awful place. Several started. There was a beautiful bright light above me, and I was encouraging them to follow that light and they would go straight to heaven.3
Because Maria’s husband had not sensed a call to ministry and did not wish to leave the farm, she mostly traveled without him. Then when she was forty-seven, she accused him of unfaithfulness and sued for divorce. A decade later in 1902, she married Samuel Etter even as the invitations to speak declined. She had been wary of the new emphasis on speaking in tongues. Though people in her services fell to the floor in trances, she had regarded tongues speaking to be extreme. By 1912, however, she was back on the big-tent circuit, and if not embracing the new tongues of fire at least accepting them as a valid response to her fiery preaching.
The content of her sermons was drawn largely from her visionary trances. But soon the actual trances also became an awaited moment in her meetings. She would suddenly freeze in a trance, at times lasting for minutes, occasionally for hours. Indeed, so shocking was her demeanor that members of the audience would leave to bring others in just to look at her and sometimes fall into trances themselves. This aspect of her ministry was exaggerated in the telling. Decades later televangelist Kenneth Hagin claimed he had witnessed a three-day trance. His story was repeated word for word by others who denounced such activity as coming straight from Satan.
She was in her 70’s preaching in a tent which was full when right in the middle of her sermon with her hand uplifted to illustrate a point, and her mouth opened, the power of God came upon her. She froze in that position and stood like a statue for three days and three nights. . . . She had no bodily functions for three days and nights. She stood there. According to the newspaper account, it was estimated that more than 150,000 people came by to see her in the three day period. The third night, the Spirit of God released her. She thought it was the same night and the same sermon and she went on preaching at the same place in her sermon.4
Whatever the duration of these trances, she insisted she was experiencing “the power” of the Holy Spirit. Opponents referred to her as the “voodoo priestess” who hypnotized her listeners. They sometimes sought to put a stop to her ministry, more than once attempting to have her locked up on charges of insanity and fraud.5
Throughout her itinerant ministry, Maria kept a detailed record. In 1922, two years before her death, she published Marvels and Miracles God Wrought in the Ministry for Forty-Five Years. Chapter 15 is subtitled “Plots to Destroy My Life, in Imminent Danger of Death.” Here she wrote:
I have been in great dangers; many times not knowing when I would be shot down, either in the pulpit, or going to and from meeting. . . . But I said I would never run, nor compromise. The Lord would always put His mighty power on me, so that He took all fear away, and made me like a giant. . . . If in any way they had tried to shoot, or kill me, He would have struck them dead, and I sometimes told them so.6
As a fiery revivalist, Maria was often hailed in superlative terms. Indeed, fellow evangelist A. H. Argue described her meetings in Chicago as the “mightiest visitation from God of these latter days.”7 During the early years of her ministry, she established more than a dozen churches, and in 1918 she put her mark on a large church in Indianapolis, the Maria Woodworth-Etter Tabernacle, still carrying on today as the Lakeview Church.
SUSIE VILLA VALDEZ AND ROSA DE LOPEZ
Hispanic Evangelists
There are very few historical accounts of Hispanic evangelical women who were active in ministry. Many Hispanic women served with Catholic nuns and became nuns themselves. But very sparse is the historical record of Hispanic women outside the Catholic Church who were involved in evangelistic outreach. Perhaps due to machismo in Hispanic—particularly Mexican—culture, such options were unavailable except in rare instances. Some Hispanic women broke through the barriers and served effectively as evangelists and social activists. That they were typically married, sometimes to supportive men, did not hinder their efforts. Even they, however, are barely footnotes in the history of evangelicalism.
After her conversion at the Azusa Street revival in 1906, Susie left behind her job as a seamstress and became a singing evangelist to destitute women and families living in the Los Angeles slums as well as to farm laborers in the migrant camps of the San Bernardino Valley. Her son Adolfo Valdez later reflected on his mother’s work:
I remember her hard but rewarding spiritual-social work with prostitutes and skid-row alcoholics done in the Lord’s name. . . . My mother visited the slums, playing her guitar and singing sacred songs in the poorly lit streets for anyone who would listen. . . . She heard the troubles of many lonely and depressed people and usually introduced them to Christ. Around midnight she would walk . . . home, often arriving as late as 2 AM.8
Rosa de Lopez ministered with her preacher husband, Abundio, at the Azusa Street revival as well as in the open-air Mexican Plaza District. Together they made a joint statement attesting to their Pentecostal fervor. They publicly affirmed that they had been forgiven, sanctified, and baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire.
In 1908, Rosa discovered what she believed to be a life-threatening tumor. Fearing her life and ministry were nearly over, she and her husband sought out Maria Woodworth-Etter. Rosa was seeking a miraculous healing so that she might carry on in the ministry. And so it was. Maria’s Apostolic Faith newspaper reported on the ministry of Rosa, which continued to grow as Spanish-speaking congregations were established in the years that followed.
PANDITA RAMABAI
Founder of Mukti Mission in India
The twentieth-century Pentecostal movement is often said to have begun on New Year’s Eve 1901 in Topeka, Kansas, when Agnes Ozman, a student at Bethel Bible School, spoke in tongues as others were constrained to do likewise. But that was a relatively isolated incident. It was not until the Azusa Street revival of 1907 that the movement began to explode. And it was only after that when Maria Woodworth-Etter became part of the movement. Prior to Azusa Street, however, there were other tongues-speaking revivals, the word of which was spread by a supportive writer and reporter, Frank Bartleman, an early Pentecostal leader who publicized extensively how the movement was “rocked in the cradle of little Wales,” after which it was “brought up” in India, and finally became “full grown” at Azusa Street.9
At the time, Pandita Ramabai would not have realized the enormous part she had played in nurturing a worldwide revival. She had heard about revivals in Australia and Wales and prayed that a similar revival might occur at her Indian orphanage at Mukti. Soon others joined her in prayer that continued for months, climaxing in an “outpouring” of the Spirit. “Little girls,” wrote one observer, “were lost for hours in the transport of loving Jesus and praising Him.” Others reported that thousands were converted amid weeping, tongues-speaking, and miracles.10
The miracle stories were quickly passed along, as was the account of a dry well during a severe drought at Mukti. “Each of the two wells had all its contents used up every day,” Pandita recalled. “But there came a fresh supply in the morning to each well, and it lasted all day.” Perhaps even more significant than such miracles was the increase in evangelistic outreach. Pandita organized many of the girls into bands and sent them out to neighboring villages.11
The Mukti Mission, founded by Pandita in 1889, was very controversial in India. Hindus accused her of turning little girls into Christians with no concern for their religious heritage. She insisted that she taught both Hindu and Christian scriptures and gave the girls freedom to choose their path. Missionaries in turn pounced on her for propagating pluralism. She often felt as though she had been abandoned by virtually everyone except the girls, many of whom were very young widows who had no other place to live.
Controversy was not new for Pandita. Born in 1858 into a privileged high-caste Brahmin family, she grew up amid cultural disputes. Her father was a reformer and a recognized Sanskrit scholar. He advocated education for girls and homeschooled his young daughter in Hindu tradition and languages while encouraging her to cultivate an open-minded search for truth.
Following an economic downturn and a loss of wealth, her father began a religious pilgrimage with the family in tow. When her parents became ill and died, Pandita continued traveling with her brother and then decided it was her duty to pick up where her father had left off. “I am a child of a man who had to suffer a great deal on account of advocating Female Education,” she later wrote. “I consider it my duty, to the very end of my life, to maintain this cause and to advocate the proper position of women in this land.”12 After her brother died, she married a lower-caste lawyer, creating a scandal that did not subside with his death.
Adding to that disgrace was her widowhood. But she was determined to carry on with her call for female education and the prohibition of child marriages. She was one of the early Indian feminists of her day and as such was seeking counsel from anyone who might help her.
Enter Sister Geraldine, an Anglican nun. Their relationship blossomed, and Geraldine invited Pandita to visit her homeland of England and to study the Bible. Once again Pandita stirred controversy, befriending a Christian—and before long becoming a Christian herself. Had Geraldine understood Pandita at all, she should have realized that her new convert would not easily conform to her creeds and conditions. “I am, it is true, a member of the Church of Christ,” she wrote to Geraldine, “but I am not bound to accept every word that falls down from the lips of priests or bishops.” She minced no words: “I have just with great efforts freed myself from the yoke of the Indian priestly tribe, so I am not at present willing to place myself under another similar yoke by accepting everything which comes from the priests as authorized command of the Most High.”13
Geraldine, apparently unschooled in cross-cultural contextualization, was offended—so offended that she told Ramabai she was disappointed that she had played a part in her conversion. Ramabai would have none of it: “I regret that I have been the cause of making you feel yourself wrong for the part you acted in my baptism.” Indeed, her biting sarcasm spilled out: “I wish I knew that your Church required a person to be quite perfect in faith, doubting nothing in the Athanasian Creed, so that he had left nothing to be learnt and inquired into the Bible after his baptism.”14
But the Anglican sister was not about to let the matter drop. She accused Pandita of “clinging to caste prejudice which ought to have been thrown to the winds” because of her refusal to eat such things as pudding made from eggs. Pandita saw right through Geraldine’s sense of cultural superiority. Pandita, to be sure, was a proud Indian. “I confess I am not free from all my caste prejudices, as you are pleased to call them,” she fired back. “How would an Englishwoman like being called proud and prejudiced if she were to go and live among the Hindus for a time but did not think it necessary to alter her customs when they were not hurtful or necessary to her neighbors?”15 Case closed.
To the very end Pandita was a firebrand. Hindus strongly opposed her Christian mission. Christian missionaries criticized her for her respect for Hindu scriptures and making them available to the girls at her school. Even her revival work was often misunderstood. But she refused to be swayed by others and almost seemed to relish the opposition: “I am having a right good time in the storm of public indignation that is raging over my head.”16 Yet even during her lifetime she was honored as a reformer and revivalist as well as a Bible translator. And after her death she was recognized with awards and accolades.
AIMEE SEMPLE MCPHERSON
Pentecostal Superstar
From nuns and abbesses to prison reformers and missionaries, women made incredible sacrifices to spread the gospel. They were as persistent as they were persevering. They pushed against gender and religious restrictions. Their accomplishments were enormous. But fashion was not their forte—except in one case. There had never been a prominent woman in ministry, with the possible exception of Queen Esther, as dazzling and glamorous as Aimee. Indeed, amid the spotlights in Los Angeles, she rivaled the most alluring actresses of her day.
Her Canadian childhood and young adult years offered no clues to her later fame, but such is often the case. In some respects her celebrity parallels that of silent film star Mary Pickford, two years younger than she and also Canadian. Both were reared in poor families with strong Methodist influences. And both were captivated by the new entertainment of the day—the movies. And both, before settling in Los Angeles, would tour across country by automobile with their mothers, Mary to act in third-rate theater troupes and Aimee to preach in trashy storefronts and beat-up tents. Both settled in Southern California, married three times, divorced, and were secretly involved with other men while publicly expanding their popularity and fame. And both combined glamor with a sense of humor.
Aimee launched her revival ministry in Los Angeles in 1919, and within a few short years she had become the star of the revival circuit, picking up steam at the very time that the flamboyant “fire and brimstone” revivalist Billy Sunday had passed his peak. There was plenty of terrain for both Aimee and Billy, but to compete in the sport of revivalism Aimee needed more than a gospel message, patriotism, and glamor. Gimmicks were critical. Billy, a former baseball player, was acrobatic in his presentation but seemed almost dull alongside her. She had every trick imaginable up her sleeve. On one occasion, dressed as a traffic cop, she appeared onstage astride a motorcycle.
But Aimee, unlike Billy and most other revivalists, was determined to be more than a traveling preacher. She was a driven woman, almost unstoppable. In 1922, three years after she launched her revival ministry, she founded her own denomination, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. The following year she built her own church, Angelus Temple, which seated some five thousand, and in 1924, she began a far-reaching radio ministry. In comparison to many preachers of the day, she offered a more welcoming and loving approach to the gospel with fewer hell-raising scare tactics. With the help of media consultants, she honed her skills. And the money poured in.
A significant aspect of her ministry was healing. People came by the thousands to be rid of their canes and crutches and casts. There was no malady, physical or psychological, that was not allegedly healed by God, through the touch or reach of this Pentecostal queen. But she touched more than illness. She ministered to the whole body—to whole families—and was known for her emphasis on social welfare. Her touch was not confined to the needy in her congregation only. The hungry and poor from miles around knew they could come to Angelus Temple for help, no questions asked, leaving with their dignity intact.
In the minds of many, Sister Aimee was above reproach. She could do no wrong. So when the news broke that she had gone missing, the apprehension was palpable. She was larger than life, and her followers could not imagine carrying on without her. They loved her, but at a distance. Indeed, with all her success, Aimee had developed few close friends. Her mother was often in the picture, but the two had a rocky relationship at best. Few people, if any at all, knew that beneath the surface, she struggled with depression and loneliness.
The date was May 18, 1926, the setting, a beach between Ocean Park and Venice along the waters of Santa Monica Bay. It was there where Aimee, according to her secretary Emma Shaeffer, had gone into the surf for a swim while she herself ran errands. When she returned, Aimee was nowhere to be found. The news was unsettling. By this time Aimee was an internationally known celebrity. Her mother, preaching at Angelus Temple that evening, told the crowd that Aimee had drowned—had gone to be with Jesus. Her followers were beside themselves, holding vigil along the beaches while searchers in small planes flew overhead and ones in watercraft dotted the bay.
The story quickly took on a life of its own. Neither did it die down when Aimee appeared on June 23, having allegedly walked some twenty miles through the desert after being released by kidnappers near the Mexico border. How could that be when she was wearing a perfectly clean dress and shoes? Or was she bedraggled and dirty? There was no demand for ransom. The story simply did not make sense. The news reports and rumors were contradictory. Was the kidnapping claim a ruse? Did she actually run away with the married Kenneth Ormiston, her radio manager? Reports of sightings proliferated, sometimes in very different locations at nearly the same time. Why hadn’t anyone reported to law enforcement and collected the widely advertised reward money?
In an odd turn of events, Ormiston admitted that he had actually run off, not with Aimee, but with an unidentified woman who was not his wife. So where then was Aimee? The rumor mill was churning out an endless cycle of accusations that ranged from a secret abortion to plastic surgery. And no wonder. Her story of the kidnapping and torture was contradictory and full of holes. The Los Angeles district attorney did not take the matter lightly, and Aimee was charged with perjury. After all, her story was not merely fodder for tabloids. Two people had died in the Santa Monica search effort, and the cost to law enforcement was enormous.
In 1927, the court case was dropped. But Aimee’s reputation was forever damaged. Four years later she did further damage to her name when she remarried and then after three years divorced again. When she died a decade later in 1944, just before her fifty-fourth birthday, the rumor mill churned out accusations of suicide.
Those who imagined that her ministry and the denomination she founded would collapse with such scandals were wrong. Growth continued not only in California and throughout America but worldwide. Despite her flaws and failures, her followers would defend her as their founder and leader, if not a full-fledged saint. Testimonials of her healing power and her concern for the poor would outweigh scandal. Actor Anthony Quinn’s word spoke for many:
During the Depression . . . the one human being that never asked you what your nationality was, what you believed in and so forth, was Aimee Semple McPherson. All you had to do was pick up the phone and say, “I’m hungry,” and within an hour there’d be a food basket there for you.17
KATHRYN KUHLMAN
Woman in Angel White Chiffon
At the time of Aimee’s death in 1944, Kathryn Kuhlman had been preaching for some sixteen years. Like Aimee and Maria, she started out as an itinerant evangelist, often going from one small church to another, but moved on to the big time, making effective use of media. Her radio broadcasts were widely aired, and she advanced into the television age with her own syndicated show, where she promoted her best-selling books. Like Aimee, she loved to dress in exquisite white chiffon gowns and pricey jewelry, and she had a taste for fine dining and first-class travel. As was true of both Aimee and Maria, Kathryn’s divorce was saturated with conflicting accounts.
Kathryn first became involved in ministry as a tenth-grade teenager by giving her testimony at revival meetings while traveling with her sister and brother-in-law, an itinerant evangelist. After that she joined with Helen Gulliford to serve five years in a mission church in Boise, Idaho, often traveling and conducting revivals. From there, she and Helen moved on to Pueblo, Colorado, and then Denver, where she held services for months at a time in vacant buildings, often featuring local musicians who were eager to test the waters.
For Kathryn, this era of her life was distinguished most notably by poverty. She and Helen often spent days cleaning the vacant building before posting handmade signs to advertise their meetings. Their accommodations for a time were a scrubbed-down chicken coop. But Kathryn had dreams of the stage and the bright lights. She networked with traveling evangelists, an effort that would launch her own revival ministry.
While in Denver in 1937, she first became acquainted with Burroughs Waltrip, a handsome itinerant evangelist, husband, and father of two children. The following year he divorced his wife and married Kathryn, despite the strong objections of Helen and other associates who angrily left the ministry. Forced out of Denver, Kathryn and Burroughs moved to Iowa and then began traveling from town to town, but the scandal-soaked social media moved faster than they did and their ministry tanked. In 1944, Kathryn left him, and four years later, he divorced her. Though stymied by stories of her failed marriage, she moved to Pennsylvania and soon reestablished herself through a radio ministry, which opened other doors for her. It was in this setting that she began her healing ministry.
She was hounded by a host of detractors throughout her ministry—those who opposed women preachers, those who claimed her healings were bogus, those who pointed to her divorce, those who thought she was cozy with Catholics (even reveling in her private audience with Pope Paul VI), those who sued her for breach of contract, and many others. Yet during the mid-twentieth century, she became the most celebrated female evangelist in North America. Aided by a team of musicians and lively music, Kathryn attracted people from miles around who came to be healed and “come under the power.”
Like Aimee, she was in the limelight and was often accused of living a double life. And like Aimee, she healed others but struggled with an assortment of ailments herself. In 1975 she died at the age of sixty-eight after undergoing open-heart surgery.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
In contemplating these female evangelists, I wonder if there are any inferences we can draw from their lives. A brief survey such as this does not offer a valid statistical sampling, but we learn by making comparisons and contrasts. Maria, Aimee, and Kathryn carried with them the baggage of failed marriages at a time when divorce was not nearly as common as it is today. The same was true of Carry Nation, who was on the evangelistic circuit before and concurrently with Maria Woodworth-Etter. Pandita Ramabai continued in ministry for many years without such scandal. That she hailed from a very traditional Indian culture may have been a significant factor. Likewise, she was not tempted to become a stage celebrity as the others were.
Each of the four major women in this overview had a distinguishing style. Maria was known for her trances onstage during which time she typically froze with her hand raised and received visions that often provided content for her sermons. A cynic might wonder if that time provided an opportunity for her to gather her thoughts and proceed with the sermon. Aimee Semple McPherson utilized high drama and flair to draw crowds, and she was known for her healing powers and humanitarian outreach. Katherine Kuhlman was also celebrated for healing, as well as for her lilting voice and long white dresses.
Pandita did not have the bearing or the stage presence possessed by the others, nor the flattering fans. Those who knew her recognized first her keen mind. She was not one to be pushed around, nor did she fawn over missionaries and the culture and lifestyle of the West. But she too had a charismatic flair, and she could count miracles as numerous as any other Pentecostal evangelist on the circuit or in a settled ministry.
Of Susie and Rosa we know too little to take away lasting impressions. Perhaps one day their stories and those of other Hispanic women in ministry will be available in more detailed accounts.
QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT
Have you ever imagined yourself as an evangelist speaking to large crowds? What kind of evangelism do you regard as most effective: stadium crowds listening to a celebrity speaker, or one of many varieties of friendship or personal evangelism?
Do you believe that celebrity evangelists encounter more sexual temptations than do pastors or Christians working in offices, in academia, or in other fields? Would you compare the failed marriages of celebrity stage evangelists with those of Hollywood or Broadway actors?
How do you assess miracles, particularly those claimed by well-known evangelists? Have you ever known anyone to go into a trance onstage? How might you have regarded Maria? Have you ever witnessed a mass healing service? Have you or anyone you know professed to be healed by someone who drew crowds based on miraculous cures?
Had you been a missionary to India, would you have joined with other missionaries in being critical of—or at least very concerned about—Pandita’s calling herself a Hindu (or culturally Indian) Christian? Do you see yourself as a culturally American Christian (or whatever your own nationality is)? Do you ever think about how much Western Christianity is influenced by culture in general and consumerism in particular?
Are you more inclined to be accepting of great healing miracles (and raising someone from the dead) or more skeptical? Would you be inclined to accept Aimee’s account of her kidnapping, or would you be suspicious?
If you were able to spend a day with Maria, Pandita, Aimee, or Kathryn, which one would you choose? Which one would be most at ease at your church potluck or in a Bible study or book club?