About
Aimee Semple McPherson
Aimee Semple McPherson, née Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy, (born October 9, 1890, near Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada—died September 27, 1944, Oakland, California, U.S.), controversial American Pentecostal evangelist and early radio preacher whose International Church of the Foursquare Gospel brought her wealth, notoriety, and a following numbering in the tens of thousands.Aimee Kennedy was reared by her mother as a Salvation Army daughter but began to question that religious movement at a young age. She preached her own brand of the Christian gospel at age 17 and in 1908 was married to a Pentecostal evangelist, Robert J. Semple. Under her husband’s influence, she converted to that belief, and she did missionary work with him in China. After his death in Hong Kong in 1910 she returned to the United States. In 1912, while working with her mother and the Salvation Army in New York City, she married Harold S. McPherson; the marriage later ended when she turned to full-time itinerant evangelism and healing.Aimee McPherson’s first official sermon occurred at Mount Forest, Ontario, in 1915. From the beginning, she worked in faith healing and encouraged speaking in tongues and other common attributes of fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christianity.
International Church of the Foursquare Gospel
The Foursquare Church, officially named the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, is a Pentecostal denomination that resulted from the dynamic evangelistic ministry of Aimee Semple McPherson, who opened the historic Angelus Temple on Jan. 1, 1923. Following the opening of Angelus Temple, our founder did not take time to rest on her laurels. The first “branch” church from Angelus Temple had its beginnings in Oct. 1923 in Long Beach, Calif. Other Los Angeles-area church plants rapidly ensued in Pasadena, Santa Monica, and Santa Ana; all four churches are still open today. As time passed, Foursquare branched out to the rest of the United States; we now have churches in most of the 50 states, including Hawaii and Alaska. The launch into foreign ministry fields also began in the 1920s. In 1927 Sister McPherson commissioned Vincente and Teodora DeFante as missionaries to the Philippines. Foursquare is still alive and well in the Philippines, which has a very strong national church presence. A former missionary herself, our founder’s desire to go around the world with the Foursquare Gospel led to The Foursquare Church’s being known as a missionary movement. At this time we have approximately 100 missionary units deployed throughout the world. From our earliest days, foreign missions were a primary emphasis—and remain so today. Another early Foursquare initiative was establishing an educational institution to train Foursquare ministers and missionaries. The Echo Park Evangelistic and Missionary Training Institute opened in 1923, not long after Angelus Temple opened. The institute’s name was changed in 1926 to L.I.F.E. (Lighthouse of International Foursquare Evangelism) Bible College. Today the school is known as Life Pacific College in San Dimas, Calif.; it is a WASC accredited college