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Creedal Faith
Depth

The Modern Church

Pentecostal celebrity evangelists, 1910s-1940s

Aimee Semple McPherson's Angelus Temple and her 1926 disappearance, Smith Wigglesworth's rough methods and legends, Charles S. Price, A.J. Tomlinson and George Jeffreys.

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Between the world wars, Pentecostalism produced its first national celebrities. They filled arenas, used radio and the press brilliantly, and made the movement visible to millions. They also show, early and vividly, the second of this section's threads: a church built around a personality.

Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944) was the most famous woman preacher in American history. From Angelus Temple in Los Angeles (1923), seating over five thousand, she preached through costumed "illustrated sermons", ran one of the first Christian radio stations, fed tens of thousands in the Depression, and founded the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. In May 1926 she vanished while swimming at Venice Beach and was mourned as drowned; five weeks later she reappeared in Mexico with a story of kidnapping. A grand jury investigated evidence that she had spent the time with a married former employee; charges of conspiring to obstruct justice were filed and then dropped. She married three times. She died in 1944 of an overdose of sleeping pills, ruled accidental.

Smith Wigglesworth (1859-1947), a Bradford plumber, became the best-known Pentecostal healer in the world. He was famous for his rough methods - striking or punching sick people where they were afflicted, saying "I don't hit them, I hit the devil" - and for claims that people were raised from the dead in his meetings. Some prophecies now circulated in his name have no contemporary source.

Charles S. Price (1887-1947), a Congregational minister converted at one of McPherson's meetings, held huge healing campaigns in the 1920s. An investigating committee in Vancouver followed up those claimed healed and reported few lasting cures. Late in life Price himself warned against "faith" that is only mental assent and positive thinking.

Others shaped the institutions: A.J. Tomlinson, whose Church of God claimed to be the one true Church restored, and who was removed for financial mismanagement in 1923; and George Jeffreys, founder of Elim in Britain, who later split from his own church.

The historic Church honours zeal and generosity wherever they appear, and these preachers had plenty of both. But it has always held that the Church is not built on any preacher, however gifted, and that a ministry should be accountable to the Church rather than the Church to the ministry.

Verdict: the celebrity evangelist is a twentieth-century form of the old danger the creeds and ordained ministry exist to guard against: the faith carried by a personality rather than by the Church.

What is believed

The movements in this topic share the Pentecostal beliefs described in Topeka and Azusa Street and the healing teaching of the healing movement. What is new here is a way of doing ministry, which its admirers would describe like this:

  • God raises up anointed individuals for each generation, and the anointing is shown by results - crowds, conversions, healings.
  • The gospel should be presented in the language and media of the day - radio, theatre, newspapers, the arena - to reach the masses.
  • Divine healing is a central sign of the full gospel, and the healer's faith and boldness are part of the gift.
  • The true Church is being restored in these last days through such ministries.

Where it came from

Aimee Semple McPherson

Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy was born in Ontario in 1890, the daughter of a Salvation Army mother. At seventeen she was converted under the Pentecostal evangelist Robert Semple, married him in 1908, and went with him as a missionary to China in 1910. He died of malaria in Hong Kong a few weeks later; she gave birth to their daughter there. Back in America she married Harold McPherson in 1912 and had a son. From 1915 she travelled as an evangelist in a "Gospel car" painted with slogans, preaching in tents across the country. Her husband did not share the life, and they divorced in 1921.

She settled in Los Angeles and on 1 January 1923 dedicated Angelus Temple, a domed building near Echo Park seating over five thousand. Services ran almost every day. Her illustrated sermons used sets, costumes and props: she rode a police motorcycle on to the stage to "arrest" sin, and staged scenes from Bible stories with full casts. Her radio station, KFSQ, began broadcasting in 1924. She preached the Foursquare Gospel - Jesus Christ as Saviour, Baptiser with the Holy Spirit, Healer and Coming King - adapting A.B. Simpson's formula. Her commissary fed tens of thousands of people during the Depression, without asking whether they belonged to her church. The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel was incorporated in 1927.

The 1926 disappearance

On 18 May 1926 McPherson went swimming at Ocean Park, Venice Beach, and did not return. She was presumed drowned. Two people are reported to have died in connection with the search.† Memorial services were held. On 23 June she walked into Agua Prieta, Mexico, across the border from Douglas, Arizona, saying she had been kidnapped, held in a shack in the desert and had escaped.

Her account had problems: she showed little sign of a long desert walk, and the shack was not found. Newspapers reported witnesses who said they had seen her with Kenneth Ormiston, a married former engineer at her radio station, at a cottage in Carmel during the weeks she was missing. Ormiston denied it, and later said the woman seen with him was a nurse. Successive grand juries investigated through the summer and autumn of 1926, and McPherson, her mother, Ormiston and others were charged with criminal conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice. In January 1927 the District Attorney dropped all charges before trial, saying that his key witness, a woman who had first testified for McPherson and then turned state's evidence, was no longer credible. McPherson never changed her account. Historians, including her sympathetic biographers, regard the kidnapping story as very unlikely; what happened remains unproven.

Later life and death

Her later years were marked by conflict. She broke with her mother, Minnie Kennedy, who had managed the Temple's finances, and later with her daughter Roberta, who sued one of her associates. In 1931 she married David Hutton, a singer; they separated within months and divorced in 1934 - a remarriage while her second husband was living that many Pentecostals regarded as a scandal. She faced numerous lawsuits over money.

She died in Oakland on 27 September 1944, during a speaking tour, of an overdose of the barbiturate secobarbital (Seconal), which had been prescribed to her. The coroner found the overdose accidental, complicated by kidney failure.

The Foursquare Church she founded now has several million members worldwide.

Smith Wigglesworth

Smith Wigglesworth was born in Menston, Yorkshire, in 1859, worked in mills as a child, and could not read until his wife Polly taught him. He became a plumber in Bradford and, with Polly, ran a small mission. In 1907, after visiting Alexander Boddy's parish in Sunderland, he received the Pentecostal experience when Mary Boddy laid hands on him. After Polly's death in 1913 he travelled the world as a healing evangelist and was for a time credentialed with the Assemblies of God.

His methods were notoriously rough. Accounts from his own meetings and from admirers record him striking, slapping or punching sick people where they were afflicted - in one account punching a man in the stomach hard enough to throw him across the room - and saying, when challenged, "I don't hit them, I hit the devil." He held that sickness was often the work of demons and treated it accordingly. He would pray for a sick person once and rebuke anyone who came back for prayer as lacking faith.

He and his biographers recorded claims that he had raised people from the dead, including, briefly, his own wife Polly before she died. The number given varies from three to over a dozen in different sources; none was investigated or documented at the time. †

Prophecies attributed to him need care. The South African David du Plessis said that Wigglesworth prophesied to him in 1936 that God would pour out His Spirit on the historic denominations and that du Plessis would have a part in it; this rests on du Plessis's own later account. A much-shared "1947 prophecy" about a coming union of "the Word and the Spirit" first appears in print decades after Wigglesworth's death and has no contemporary source. The historian Desmond Cartwright, himself a Pentecostal, distinguished carefully between what is documented about Wigglesworth and what has grown up since.†

He died on 12 March 1947 in Wakefield, at the funeral of a friend, aged eighty-seven.

Charles S. Price

Charles Sydney Price (1887-1947) was born in England, emigrated to Canada and became a Methodist and then Congregational minister in California, holding modernist views. In 1921, attending one of McPherson's meetings in San Jose to criticise it, he was converted to the Pentecostal experience. From 1922 he held enormous healing campaigns in the western United States and Canada.

After his 1923 campaign in Vancouver, a committee of ministers and physicians followed up those who had been prayed for. Its report found that only a small number showed any lasting improvement that could not be explained otherwise, that many were unchanged, and that some had died or suffered mental breakdown.† Price disputed the report. His campaigns declined in the later 1920s.

In his later book The Real Faith (1940), Price warned against a "faith" that is merely mental assent - believing hard enough that one is healed, and confessing it - and insisted that faith is a gift imparted by God, not a power the believer produces. It reads, in places, as an advance rebuke to the Word of Faith movement that followed. He died in 1947.

A.J. Tomlinson and the Church of God

Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson (1865-1943), a Quaker-born Bible salesman, joined a small Holiness group in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee in 1903 and became its leader. He received the Pentecostal experience in 1908. The group, which became the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), taught that it was the one true Church of God restored in the last days, and Tomlinson was its General Overseer for life from 1914.

In 1923 the church's elders accused him of financial mismanagement and removed him. He founded a rival body, which became the Church of God of Prophecy, claiming that it was the true continuation. Both churches, and several smaller ones descended from them, are still active. The episode is a small, clear example of restorationism: a church that believed itself the one restored Church, divided within twenty years over whether its leader or its council was the true Church.

George Jeffreys and Elim

George Jeffreys (1889-1962), a Welsh miner's son converted in the Welsh Revival, founded the Elim movement in Ireland in 1915 and held some of the largest evangelistic campaigns in British history in the 1920s and 1930s, including at the Royal Albert Hall. He came into conflict with Elim's leadership over church government and reforms he wanted to introduce, and he supported British-Israelism. He resigned in December 1939, returned, and resigned again in 1940, forming the Bible-Pattern Church Fellowship in Nottingham. Elim survived and is now a substantial British denomination.

Pause and thinkPause: why have the historic churches always been wary of a church built around one preacher?

What the historic Church taught

On ministry. The Church honours great preachers - Chrysostom, whose name means "golden-mouthed", Augustine, Bernard, Francis, Wesley. But it has always set them within the Church's order, under her authority, accountable to her teaching. "Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account" (Hebrews 13:17) - the preacher, too, is under rule.

On character. The apostolic qualifications for ministry are chiefly moral: "blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour... not greedy of filthy lucre... one that ruleth well his own house" (1 Timothy 3:2-4). The Didache tells the churches to judge travelling prophets by their conduct: "not every one that speaketh in the Spirit is a prophet; but only if he hold the ways of the Lord" (11.8).

On healing, see Divine healing and the healing movement. The Church has never treated striking the sick as a means of grace.

The verdict

These evangelists brought the gospel to millions who would never have entered a parish church, and their generosity - McPherson's commissary, above all - was real. The four traditions should not be grudging about that.

But the pattern they established - ministries built around a gifted personality, funded by appeals, publicised by spectacle, accountable to no one but the founder, prone to scandal and schism - became the template for the healing revival, televangelism and the megachurch. The historic Church's reasons for an ordained ministry under the authority of the Church, with the creeds and liturgy as the common possession of all, are written across this chapter.

Wigglesworth's legend in particular has outgrown the record. Admirers should know that much of what is told about him rests on his own stories and his admirers', and that some prophecies in his name appeared only long after his death.

How the four traditionsthe Catholic Churchthe Orthodox Churchthe Lutheran Churchthe Anglican Communion responded

Lutheran

Lutheran teaching places the authority of the ministry in the office, not the person: the Augsburg Confession (VIII) teaches that the sacraments and Word are effectual "by reason of the institution and commandment of Christ, notwithstanding they be administered by evil men", and condemns the Donatists who made their validity depend on the minister's holiness. The other side of that coin is that no minister's gifts make his ministry more valid either: the Word and sacraments work because they are Christ's, not because the preacher is anointed.

Luther warned repeatedly against preachers who draw people to themselves rather than to the Word: "I ask that men make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans... How then should I - poor stinking maggot-fodder that I am - come to have men call the children of Christ by my wretched name?" (A Sincere Admonition, 1522).

Catholic

The Catholic Church has had its own celebrity preachers - the radio priest Fulton Sheen in the same decades - but they were priests under a bishop, preaching the Church's faith. The Church teaches that every ministry and charism must be "referred and submitted to the Church's shepherds" (CCC 801) and that "no one can bestow grace on himself" or give himself a mandate to preach (CCC 875).

The Catholic answer to the healer who strikes the sick is the Church's whole tradition of the care of the sick - the sacrament of Anointing, the religious orders of nursing, and the discernment of claimed miracles at Lourdes and in causes for canonisation, where healings are examined by physicians before they are accepted.

Orthodox

The Orthodox Church honours charismatic elders - the startsy - and saints who healed and prophesied. But it surrounds them with safeguards: obedience to a bishop and spiritual father, humility as the first test of genuine gifts, and suspicion of anyone who seeks crowds, reputation or money. St Seraphim of Sarov and St John of Kronstadt drew immense crowds, and both were known for their poverty, obedience and avoidance of display.

The Orthodox would say that the deepest problem with the celebrity evangelist is not theatrical method but prelest: the delusion in which spiritual power is taken as proof of holiness and the gifted person ceases to be accountable. The Fathers taught that the greater the gift, the greater the need for humility.

Anglican

The Church of England has had famous preachers in every age, and has generally kept them within its order: they were priests licensed by a bishop. Article XXVI teaches that sacraments and Word are effectual even when ministered by unworthy men "because they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ's", and adds that "it appertaineth to the discipline of the Church, that inquiry be made of evil Ministers, and that they be accused by those that have knowledge of their offences; and finally being found guilty, by just judgement be deposed".

That last clause is the point here. Independent ministries built around a founder usually have no such discipline: no one above the founder can inquire, accuse or depose.

Key personalities

Maria Woodworth-Etter1844–1924Full profile · 6 min The "trance evangelist" of the 1880s whose 1890 earthquake prophecy failed, and who became a revered elder of early Pentecostalism
Affiliation
Church of God (Winebrenner) evangelist until 1904; independent Holiness, then Pentecostal evangelist; founder of a tabernacle in Indianapolis (1918)
Appears in
The healing movement, 1870s-1910s, Pentecostal celebrity evangelists, 1910s-1940s
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Life

Ohio childhood

Mariah Beulah Underwood was born on 22 July 1844 near New Lisbon, Columbiana County, Ohio, one of eight children of a farming family. Her father, a heavy drinker, died of sunstroke in 1857, leaving the family poor, and she went to work as a girl. At thirteen she was converted and baptised among the Disciples of Christ, the church of Alexander Campbell, and she said she felt even then a call to preach - a call she believed closed to her as a woman, since the Disciples did not permit women in the pulpit.

Marriage and loss

In 1863 she married Philo Harrison Woodworth, a farmer recently discharged from the Union army after a head injury. The marriage was unhappy and the farm failed. Of their six children, five died young, most of them of disease. Maria later wrote that these losses, and her own long illnesses, were God's way of breaking her resistance to her call. She read Scripture for herself and concluded that women were called to preach as surely as men, pointing to Joel 2:28 and to the women prophets of the Old and New Testaments.

The trance evangelist

She began to preach around 1879-80, first among the Friends (Quakers) and then the United Brethren, and from 1884 held a licence from the Churches of God (General Conference), the body founded by John Winebrenner. Her revival meetings in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois drew thousands. What made them famous was the "trance": men and women fell to the ground and lay rigid, sometimes for hours, before rising to describe visions of heaven or hell. She herself sometimes stood motionless on the platform for long periods. Newspapers called her the "trance evangelist" and "the voodoo priestess", and journalists and physicians argued about whether the phenomena were hysteria, hypnotism or something else. In 1885 meetings at Hartford City and Kokomo, Indiana, were among her largest.

From the mid-1880s she prayed for the sick, and healing became a major part of her work. Her meetings in St Louis in 1890 provoked a campaign by local physicians, who tried to have her declared insane.†

Oakland, 1889-90

In late 1889 she began a long tent campaign in Oakland, California. During it a prophecy circulated among her followers that San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda would be destroyed by earthquake and tidal wave on 14 April 1890. Many people left the area; the date passed without incident. The press ridiculed her, and the campaign ended in disarray. Her biographer Wayne Warner treats the prophecy as hers and as false; some defenders say it came from followers rather than from her. She later linked it to the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

She divorced Philo Woodworth in 1891, charging adultery; he died the following year. In 1902 she married Samuel Etter, a farmer from Arkansas, who supported her ministry until his death in 1914. The Churches of God withdrew her licence in 1904.

The elder of Pentecost

When the Pentecostal revival broke out in 1906, she was over sixty. In 1912 F.F. Bosworth invited her to Dallas, where a campaign of about five months drew crowds of thousands and attracted many of the young leaders of the new movement. She now identified herself fully with Pentecostalism, and its people honoured her as a pioneer whose ministry had anticipated theirs. In 1913 she was the principal speaker at the Worldwide Camp Meeting at Arroyo Seco, near Los Angeles, the meeting at which the "Jesus' name" (Oneness) baptism controversy first surfaced; she did not adopt the Oneness teaching. The same year she was arrested at Framingham, Massachusetts, on a charge of obtaining money under false pretences in connection with healing; the case did not end in a conviction.†

In 1918 she settled in Indianapolis, where she built a tabernacle in the west of the city and preached there until her death.

Key dates

  • 22 July 1844 - Born near New Lisbon, Ohio
  • c. 1857 - Converted and baptised among the Disciples of Christ
  • 1863 - Marries P.H. Woodworth; five of six children later die young
  • c. 1880 - Begins to preach
  • 1884 - Licensed by the Churches of God (Winebrenner)
  • 1885 - Great meetings at Hartford City and Kokomo, Indiana
  • 1889-90 - Oakland campaign; the failed earthquake prophecy of 14 April 1890
  • 1891 - Divorces Woodworth
  • 1902 - Marries Samuel Etter
  • 1904 - Licence withdrawn by the Churches of God
  • 1912 - Dallas campaign with F.F. Bosworth
  • 1913 - Arroyo Seco camp meeting; arrested at Framingham
  • 1916 - Publishes Signs and Wonders
  • 1918 - Opens her tabernacle in Indianapolis
  • 16 September 1924 - Dies in Indianapolis

Teachings and claims

Repentance and the coming Christ

Her preaching was in the revivalist tradition: sin, judgement, repentance and holiness, with an urgent expectation of Christ's return. She taught that the gifts of the Spirit, lost through the Church's unfaithfulness, were being restored before the end.

Healing

She taught that God heals in answer to prayer and faith, and anointed and laid hands on the sick. She did not reject physicians as firmly as John Alexander Dowie did, but she encouraged reliance on God alone.

Trances and visions

She regarded the trances as the power of God falling on people, and the visions reported in them as revelations, often of heaven, hell or the coming judgement. They became the most frequently cited precedent for the later Pentecostal and charismatic practice of being "slain in the Spirit".

Women preaching

Her defence of women's preaching from Joel 2 and Acts 2 was one of the earliest popular statements of the position in American revivalism, and she lived it out for forty-five years.

Documented controversies

The 1890 prophecy

The earthquake prediction is the best-documented failed prophecy of her career. Warner records that she never admitted that it was wrong.

The trances

Contemporary physicians, journalists and some clergy regarded the trances as hysterical or hypnotic. Her defenders pointed to conversions and changed lives. The debate is one of the earliest public disputes over the bodily phenomena of revival.

Arrests and lawsuits

Besides the St Louis insanity petition and the Framingham arrest, she was the subject of several legal complaints in the course of her ministry. None ended in a conviction.

Divorce

Her divorce in 1891, at a time when many churches regarded divorce as disqualifying a minister, was criticised; she defended it on the ground of her husband's adultery.

Death

She died at her home in Indianapolis on 16 September 1924, aged 80. She is buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Indianapolis.†

Legacy

Pentecostals regard her as a bridge between the Holiness healing revivals of the nineteenth century and the Pentecostal movement, and as a pioneer of women's ministry. Her tabernacle continues as Lakeview Church in Indianapolis. The bodily phenomena of her meetings became a pattern that Kathryn Kuhlman and later healing evangelists followed, and her name is still invoked whenever "slain in the Spirit" is defended as historic. Her books of sermons and testimonies remain in print in charismatic publishing.

Measured against the creeds

Woodworth-Etter's preaching of repentance, faith and Christ's return stood within the common faith, and she held to the Trinity and to the deity of Christ. Her care for the sick and her courage in a hostile press are not in question.

The difficulties lie elsewhere. The historic churches have never treated bodily phenomena - falling, trances, rigidity - as a sign of the Spirit's work; the Spirit's fruit is "love, joy, peace" (Galatians 5:22), and Paul's rule for public worship is that "God is not the author of confusion" (1 Corinthians 14:33). Visions received in trance are not a source of doctrine and must be tested by Scripture and the Church's faith (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21; 1 John 4:1). A prophecy that fails, by the biblical test, was not spoken by the Lord (Deuteronomy 18:22), and the refusal to acknowledge it is a more serious matter than the error itself.

On women's preaching, the four traditions differ among themselves today, and their own practice has changed; but none of them accepts the principle, implicit in her ministry and in much revivalism since, that a personal sense of call is enough to authorise a public ministry without the Church's testing and sending (Romans 10:15; Acts 13:2-3).

Major writings

  • Life and Experience of Mrs. M.B. Woodworth (1885)
  • Acts of the Holy Ghost (1912)
  • Signs and Wonders God Wrought in the Ministry for Forty Years (1916)
  • Marvels and Miracles God Wrought in the Ministry for Forty-Five Years (1922)
Alexander Alfred Boddy1854–1930 The Anglican vicar whose Sunderland parish was the centre of early British Pentecostalism, and who never left the Church of England
Affiliation
Priest of the Church of England; vicar of All Saints, Monkwearmouth, Sunderland (1886-1922), then of Pittington
Appears in
Topeka and Azusa Street, Pentecostal celebrity evangelists, 1910s-1940s
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Teachings and claims

Visited the Welsh Revival in 1904 and T.B. Barratt in Oslo in 1907, and invited Barratt to Sunderland, where tongues broke out in his parish that September. Hosted the Whitsuntide Conventions (1908-14) and edited Confidence (1908-26). Urged Pentecostals to remain in their own churches and opposed forming new denominations.

Documented controversies

Supported the British war effort in 1914-18, which divided him from pacifist Pentecostals. Lost influence as independent Pentecostal denominations formed after the war. His bishop did not discipline him.

Death

Died at Pittington on 10 September 1930, aged 76.

Legacy

Remembered as the father of British Pentecostalism and an early example of what later became the charismatic renewal within historic churches.

Smith Wigglesworth1859–1947Full profile · 5 min World-famous Pentecostal healer, known for punching the sick and for claims of raising the dead
Affiliation
Bradford plumber and mission leader; Pentecostal from 1907; for a time credentialed with the Assemblies of God
Appears in
Pentecostal celebrity evangelists, 1910s-1940s, Topeka and Azusa Street
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Life

A Yorkshire childhood of labour

Smith Wigglesworth was born on 8 June 1859 at Menston, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, into a poor family. His father was a farm labourer. From the age of six he worked in the fields pulling turnips and from seven in a woollen mill, and he never went to school; he could not read until his wife taught him, and said afterwards that the only book he ever read was the Bible. His grandmother, a Wesleyan Methodist, took him to chapel, and he was converted at about eight. He was confirmed in the Church of England, and as a youth was involved with the Methodists and the Salvation Army.

Plumber and mission leader

He learned plumbing and in 1880 set up in business in Bradford. In 1882 he married Mary Jane "Polly" Featherstone, a Salvation Army officer and a gifted preacher, who taught him to read. Together they opened the Bowland Street Mission in Bradford in 1889, where Polly preached and Smith, shy and halting, made the altar calls. For some years his faith cooled while his business prospered, and Polly's prayers and example brought him back.

Healing

In the 1890s he was introduced to divine healing at the Leeds Healing Home, run on the model of the American faith-cure homes. He was healed, he said, of haemorrhoids and later of appendicitis without surgery, and he threw away all medicines. He began praying for the sick at Bowland Street.

Sunderland, 1907

In October 1907 he went to All Saints, Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, where the Anglican vicar Alexander Boddy was hosting Pentecostal meetings after a visit from T.B. Barratt. Wigglesworth at first argued with those who were seeking tongues. On 28 October, as Mary Boddy laid hands on him in the vicarage, he had a vision of the empty cross and Christ exalted, and spoke in tongues. He returned to Bradford a changed man and began to preach with new confidence.

Polly's death and world ministry

Polly died on 1 January 1913. By the family's account Smith commanded death to give her back; she opened her eyes, told him her time had come, and he let her go. After her death he travelled widely as an evangelist, often with his daughter Alice and son-in-law James Salter. Between the wars he preached across Britain, in Scandinavia and Switzerland, in the United States and Canada, in South Africa, India, Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand. His campaigns in New Zealand (1922) and Australia were especially well attended and led to new Pentecostal churches. He held credentials for a time with the Assemblies of God in America and was associated with the British Assemblies of God and Elim.

His sermons, taken down in shorthand, were published as Ever Increasing Faith (1924) and Faith That Prevails (1938).

Key dates

  • 1859 - Born at Menston, Yorkshire, 8 June
  • c. 1867 - Converted; working in the mills
  • 1880 - Plumbing business in Bradford
  • 1882 - Marries Polly Featherstone
  • 1889 - Opens the Bowland Street Mission
  • 1890s - Healed at the Leeds Healing Home
  • 28 October 1907 - Speaks in tongues at Sunderland
  • 1 January 1913 - Polly dies
  • 1914-39 - International campaigns
  • 1922 - New Zealand campaign
  • 1924 - Ever Increasing Faith
  • 12 March 1947 - Dies at Wakefield

Teachings and claims

Only believe

His watchword was "Only believe!" He taught that faith is acting on God's Word without regard to feelings or circumstances, and that a believer who truly trusts God will see healing. "I am not moved by what I see. I am moved only by what I believe."

Sickness and the devil

He often treated sickness, especially cancer, as the work of a demon to be rebuked, and taught that the believer has authority to command it to leave.

Medicine

He refused medical treatment for himself and his family, including for painful kidney stones that he passed over several years, and told the sick that doctors and medicines showed a lack of faith, though he did not always forbid them to others.

Raising the dead

He claimed that God had used him to raise a number of people from the dead, including briefly Polly in 1913.

Documented controversies

  • Rough handling of the sick. He struck, slapped and punched sick people where they were afflicted, saying "I don't hit them, I hit the devil." One account records him punching a man with stomach cancer hard enough to knock him across the room; the man was said to have been healed. Others were hurt or humiliated.†
  • Unsubstantiated claims of resurrection. Figures for those he is said to have raised vary from three to more than a dozen; none was documented at the time with medical evidence.
  • Harshness to the unhealed. He prayed for the sick once and rebuked those who came back as lacking faith.
  • Legend and later prophecy. Prophecies attributed to him - especially a "1947 prophecy" of a coming revival - first appear long after his death, and his biographer Desmond Cartwright found no contemporary record of them.

†

  • Legal trouble. He was prosecuted in England for practising medicine without a licence and was acquitted, and in Sweden in 1920 the authorities restricted his public meetings after crowds gathered for healing.

†

Death

Wigglesworth died on 12 March 1947 at Wakefield, Yorkshire, aged 87. He had gone to the funeral of a friend, Wilfred Richardson, and collapsed in the vestry of the church while asking after the father of a sick girl he had prayed for. He was buried in Bradford.

Legacy

Wigglesworth is a towering figure in Pentecostal and charismatic memory, often called "the Apostle of Faith". His books of sermons remain in print, and later healing and Word of Faith preachers cite him as a model. The legend around him has grown far beyond the documented record; Cartwright's biography (2000), written from within the Pentecostal tradition, is the main attempt to separate the two.

He was also, by every account, a man of deep prayer, generosity and simplicity, who never sought wealth and lived plainly.

Measured against the creeds

Wigglesworth's devotion, his love of Scripture and his compassion for the sick are not in doubt. His teaching nonetheless carried several errors of the faith-cure movement: that healing is always available to those with enough faith, that sickness is commonly demonic, and that using medicine is a failure of faith. The Church has always prayed for and anointed the sick (James 5:14-15) and also honoured the physician (Sirach 38), and has recognised that God may permit suffering for His purposes, as with St Paul (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

Striking the sick contradicts the gentleness Christ showed to the suffering, who "laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them" (Luke 4:40). And claims of raising the dead, made without witnesses or evidence, ask for a faith in the evangelist rather than in Christ, whose own resurrection the Church has always proclaimed on the testimony of witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).

Major writings

  • Ever Increasing Faith (1924)
  • Faith That Prevails (1938)
  • Sermons printed in Confidence (Sunderland), Redemption Tidings and The Pentecostal Evangel
Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson1865–1943 Leader of a church that claimed to be the one true Church restored, until he was removed for financial mismanagement
Affiliation
Quaker-born Bible salesman; General Overseer of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), 1909/1914-1923; founder of the Church of God of Prophecy
Appears in
Pentecostal celebrity evangelists, 1910s-1940s, Restorationists and date-setters
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Teachings and claims

Taught that the Church of God he led was the true Church of the Bible, restored in the last days (he dated its restoration to 1903). Received the Pentecostal baptism in 1908. Built a centralised church with himself as General Overseer for life from 1914.

Documented controversies

Removed by the church's elders in 1923 after accusations of financial mismanagement. Founded a rival body claiming to be the true continuation, later the Church of God of Prophecy; litigation over the name followed.

Death

Died at Cleveland, Tennessee, on 2 October 1943, aged 78.

Legacy

The Church of God (Cleveland) and the Church of God of Prophecy are both large international Pentecostal denominations.

Charles Sydney Price1887–1947 Healing evangelist whose 1923 Vancouver campaign was investigated, and who later warned against "faith" as mental assent
Affiliation
Methodist, then Congregational minister in California; Pentecostal healing evangelist from 1922
Appears in
Pentecostal celebrity evangelists, 1910s-1940s
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Teachings and claims

Converted to the Pentecostal experience at an Aimee Semple McPherson meeting in San Jose in 1921, having come to criticise. Held mass healing campaigns across the western United States and Canada. In The Real Faith (1940) taught that true faith is imparted by God and warned against confusing it with mental assent or positive confession.

Documented controversies

A Vancouver committee of ministers and physicians investigated those claimed healed at his 1923 campaign and reported very few lasting cures, with some deaths and mental breakdowns among those prayed for. Price disputed the findings.†

Death

Died on 8 March 1947 at Pasadena, California.†

Legacy

His Golden Grain magazine and The Real Faith remain read in Pentecostal circles; the latter anticipates critiques of the Word of Faith movement.

George Jeffreys1889–1962 The greatest British Pentecostal evangelist, who left the church he had founded
Affiliation
Welsh Pentecostal evangelist; founder of the Elim Pentecostal Church (1915); later of the Bible-Pattern Church Fellowship
Appears in
Pentecostal celebrity evangelists, 1910s-1940s
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Teachings and claims

Converted in the Welsh Revival; founded Elim in Ireland in 1915. Preached the "Foursquare Gospel" of Christ as Saviour, Healer, Baptiser and Coming King, and held huge campaigns including at the Royal Albert Hall.

Documented controversies

Came into conflict with Elim's leadership over church government and reforms he wanted, and supported British-Israelism. Resigned in December 1939, returned, and resigned again in 1940, founding the Bible-Pattern Church Fellowship in Nottingham. Kensington Temple, which he had bought with Elim funds and held in trust, was kept by his trustees until after his death.

Death

Died on 26 January 1962, aged 72. The Bible-Pattern Church Fellowship declined after his death.

Legacy

Elim is now one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in Britain.

Aimee Semple McPherson1890–1944Full profile · 6 min The most famous woman evangelist in American history, whose 1926 disappearance became a national scandal
Affiliation
Pentecostal evangelist; founder of Angelus Temple (1923) and the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel (1927)
Appears in
Pentecostal celebrity evangelists, 1910s-1940s
Profile
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Life

Salvation Army girl in Ontario

Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy was born on 9 October 1890 on a farm near Salford, Ontario, Canada. Her mother, Minnie, was a devoted Salvation Army worker who had dedicated her daughter to God's service before her birth; her father, James Kennedy, was a Methodist farmer much older than his wife. As a teenager Aimee questioned her faith after reading about evolution at school, and wrote to a Canadian newspaper about it.

Robert Semple and China

In December 1907 she heard the Irish Pentecostal evangelist Robert Semple preach in Ingersoll, was converted, and soon after received the baptism in the Spirit and spoke in tongues. She married Semple in August 1908. They worked with William Durham's North Avenue Mission in Chicago, and in 1910 sailed for China as missionaries. Within weeks of arriving in Hong Kong both contracted malaria; Robert died on 19 August 1910. A month later Aimee, aged nineteen, gave birth to their daughter, Roberta, and returned to America.

Harold McPherson and the call

In New York she worked with her mother for the Salvation Army and in 1912 married Harold McPherson, an accountant; their son Rolf was born in 1913. In Providence, Rhode Island, she suffered illness and depression, and became convinced that God was calling her to preach. In 1915 she left with the children for Canada and began preaching at a tent meeting in Mount Forest, Ontario. Harold joined her for a time, but the marriage failed; they divorced in 1921.

The gospel car

From 1916 to 1918 she crossed America in a "Gospel Car" painted with slogans such as "Jesus is coming soon - get ready", holding tent revivals on the East Coast and in Florida with her mother as manager. She edited her own magazine, The Bridal Call (from 1917). In 1918 she drove to Los Angeles, where supporters gave her a house. Over the next years her campaigns in Baltimore, San Diego, Denver, Wichita and elsewhere drew tens of thousands, with healing services for the sick that filled stadiums and auditoriums.

Angelus Temple

On 1 January 1923 she opened Angelus Temple in Echo Park, Los Angeles, a domed church seating about 5,300, built with money raised in her campaigns. It held services every day and three on Sundays. She preached "illustrated sermons" with costumes, sets, and props - once riding a motorcycle onto the stage dressed as a traffic officer to arrest sin. In 1924 she opened radio station KFSQ, one of the first religious stations in the country. She founded L.I.F.E. Bible College (1923), a prayer tower with continuous prayer, and a commissary that fed, clothed and found work for tens of thousands during the Great Depression, regardless of creed or race. In 1927 her churches were incorporated as the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

The disappearance

On 18 May 1926 she disappeared while swimming at Venice Beach and was presumed drowned; two people died searching for her body. On 23 June she reappeared at Agua Prieta, Mexico, saying she had been kidnapped and held in a shack in the desert and had escaped. Investigators found no shack and noted that her shoes showed little sign of a long desert walk. Newspaper witnesses claimed she had spent part of the time with Kenneth Ormiston, a married former radio engineer of the temple, at a cottage in Carmel-by-the-Sea, which he denied. She, her mother, Ormiston and others were charged with criminal conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice; the charges were dropped in January 1927 when the prosecution's key witness was judged no longer credible. The case was never resolved.

Later years

After 1926 she broke with her mother (1927) and later with her daughter Roberta (1937), in disputes over control of the temple and its money; she faced dozens of lawsuits. In 1931 she married the actor and singer David Hutton, which the Foursquare Church's own teaching on remarriage made controversial; they divorced in 1934. She suffered a breakdown in the early 1930s. In her last years she worked with greater calm, sold war bonds during the Second World War, and handed leadership to her son, Rolf.

Key dates

  • 1890 - Born near Salford, Ontario, 9 October
  • 1907-08 - Converted under Robert Semple; marries him
  • 1910 - Missionary in China; Robert dies; daughter Roberta born
  • 1912 - Marries Harold McPherson
  • 1915 - Begins preaching in Mount Forest, Ontario
  • 1916-18 - Gospel car tours; The Bridal Call
  • 1918 - Moves to Los Angeles
  • 1921 - Divorces McPherson
  • 1 January 1923 - Opens Angelus Temple
  • 1924 - Radio station KFSQ
  • May-June 1926 - Disappearance and reappearance
  • 1927 - International Church of the Foursquare Gospel incorporated
  • 1931-34 - Marriage to David Hutton
  • 27 September 1944 - Dies in Oakland, California

Teachings and claims

The Foursquare Gospel

Inspired, she said, by a vision of Ezekiel's four-faced creatures during an Oakland campaign in 1922, she summed up her message as the "Foursquare Gospel": Jesus as Saviour, Baptiser with the Holy Spirit, Healer and Coming King. It closely adapted A.B. Simpson's Fourfold Gospel, replacing "Sanctifier" with "Baptiser".

Pentecost without excess

She kept the Pentecostal doctrines of Spirit baptism and divine healing but presented them in a dignified, accessible style, discouraging the wilder manifestations that had given Pentecostalism a bad name. Tongues were encouraged in an upstairs "tarry room" rather than in the main services.

Christian America

She preached a patriotic, conservative message, opposing evolution in schools and the "modernism" of the mainline churches, and saw America as a nation with a Christian destiny.

Women in ministry

She held that the Spirit calls women as well as men to preach, and ordained women in her church.

Documented controversies

  • The 1926 disappearance, the conspiracy charges and the doubts that never went away.
  • Three marriages, including remarriage while her second husband was living, which troubled many of her own followers.
  • Family disputes and lawsuits over money and control, with her mother and her daughter, reported widely in the press.
  • Showmanship. Critics, among them H.L. Mencken and many fellow ministers, saw her illustrated sermons and publicity as entertainment rather than worship.
  • Healings. Claims of healing at her campaigns were questioned; she herself moved away from large healing meetings after the 1920s.

Death

On 26 September 1944 she preached at a rally in Oakland, California. The next morning she was found unconscious in her hotel room and died that day, aged 53. The coroner found an overdose of secobarbital (Seconal), a prescribed sleeping medication, and ruled the death accidental, complicated by kidney failure. She was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.

Legacy

The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel has grown to several million members in some 150 countries. Aimee Semple McPherson was the most famous woman evangelist in American history, a pioneer of women's ministry, of religious radio and of large-scale social relief, and an early example of the celebrity evangelist that later televangelism made common. She helped make Pentecostalism respectable in the eyes of many Americans.

Measured against the creeds

Her charity in the Depression and her preaching of Christ's love brought many to faith, and she affirmed the Trinity and the historic doctrines of Christ. Her Foursquare Gospel, however, made a separate Spirit baptism and healing in the atonement part of the core of the gospel, which the historic Church does not teach.

Two further issues stand out against the Church's tradition. Remarriage after divorce while a former spouse is living is not permitted in the Catholic and Orthodox churches (the Orthodox allowing it only by economy, with penitence) and was resisted by most Protestants of her day; it troubled her own church. And her ministry depended heavily on her own personality and stagecraft. The four traditions hold that worship is the offering of the whole Church to God, ordered by the liturgy, not a performance centred on a preacher.

Major writings

  • This Is That: Personal Experiences, Sermons and Writings (1919, revised 1923)
  • In the Service of the King: The Story of My Life (1927)
  • The Story of My Life (1951, posthumous)
  • Editor, The Bridal Call (from 1917), later The Foursquare Crusader

Every personality in this section

Answering a modern Christian

"Aimee Semple McPherson was a great woman of God." She was a gifted evangelist who fed the hungry and preached Christ to millions, and that should be acknowledged. The whole record also includes the 1926 disappearance and the grand jury, three marriages and a divorce while her husband lived, years of lawsuits and quarrels with her own family, and an accidental overdose. Admiring what was good in her does not require ignoring the rest - and the rest is a warning about building a church around one person.

"Smith Wigglesworth raised people from the dead." He and his admirers said so. None of those claims was investigated or documented at the time, the numbers vary widely between sources, and some prophecies now circulated in his name appeared decades after his death. A Christian can admire his faith and zeal while being honest that the legend has outgrown the evidence. His habit of punching sick people is not something any church should imitate.

"The anointing is what matters, not the institution." Paul faced Christians who said "I am of Paul" and "I am of Apollos", and asked: "Is Christ divided?" The Church's order exists so that no one depends on one person's anointing. The stories in this chapter show what happens when a church does: when the founder fails or dies, the church divides or collapses.

Work with it

Check yourself

What happened in May and June 1926?

Check yourself

How did Smith Wigglesworth explain striking sick people?

Check yourself

What did Charles S. Price warn against in The Real Faith (1940)?

Objection drill

The old churches were dead. People were starving for God, and these evangelists reached them. You are judging them by their failures when God used them mightily.

Memory work

Turn each card over, then say honestly whether you knew it. Cards you miss come back sooner.