ABSTRACT
For a tourist visiting Los Angeles in the 1920’s or 1930’s, the typical agenda of sightseeing “musts” would have included Catalina Island, the Ostrich Farm, Hollywood (ill hopes of seeing a star), and Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson at her 5,000-scat-capacity Angelus Foursquare Temple. At the church, visitors might have been startled to see the lady minister, onstage astride a motorcyclc and wearing a traffic policeman’s uniform, jump off the cycle and shout, “Stop in the name of the Lord!” This kind of performance led some of her fellow ministers to denounce the Angelus services as “supernatural whoopee” and “a sensuous debauch served up in the name of religion.” But most of those who visited the church agreed with Harper’s Magazine in 1927 that Sister Aimee provided “the best show in town.”
