Religion: Sisters v. Satan

While thousands of earnest young Catholic, Jewish and Protestant theological students were at their books last week, looking forward to a quietly devotional commencement time next spring, in Los Angeles 200 ministers-to-be were graduated with Christendom’s dizziest rites from a seminary called the Lighthouse of International Foursquare Evangelism, or simply LIFE. Before admiring parents and friends a drop curtain whizzed up revealing the graduating class clad in shiny armor, brandishing swords and spears, manning a huge, realistic fortress. Below its battlements capered Satan, in multi-colored garments, and a horde of red devils bent on storming the “Fortress of Faith.” Massed brass bands blared, everybody burst into song and with tremendous enthusiasm the “Defenders of the Faith” rushed down and scattered the forces of evil. More quietly but with smart military precision the graduating class deployed, reformed ranks, ran through a series of drill maneuvers. Then Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of LIFE, appeared on the stage of her Angelus Temple, sermonized until long after midnight.

This commencement was part of the 14th International Convention of Sister Aimee’s Foursquare Gospel Church. Delegates from 357 U. S. and Canadian churches, foreign missionaries and 12,000 Los Angeles faithful heard Mrs. McPherson preach thrice daily, attended a Pentecostal Fire Rally lasting from 6 a. m. until midnight and involving shouting, ”speaking in tongues,” sermons on such subjects as Fires of Hell, Sodom Fire, Fire of Pentecost, Avenging Fire, Fiery Furnace, Cleansing Fire. Finally they beheld a 14-scene pageant, “March of the Monarchs,” made up like the graduation service by Sister Aimee, in which accordion, saxophone and bell music was interspersed with appearances of Pharaoh, Herod, Attila, Napoleon, Edward VIII, Darwin, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Uncle Sam and Jesus Christ, the latter arriving before the massed cast in a turbulent burst of sound and color to demonstrate His superiority to the other rulers and to inform the audience that He would return again one day.

Angelinos rated Sister Aimee’s 14th convention as one of her quietest; this year there was no street parade. Mrs. McPherson, hard as she works and well-gowned, flashing-eyed and well-preserved as she is at 46, is no longer the sole, monopolizing evangelist of California’s poor in spirit. A plague of quarrels and lawsuits has rained upon her the year past, with her onetime lawyer, her one-time publicity woman, her onetime business manager, her daughter Roberta, her “Ma,” Mrs. Kennedy, and finally with the equally flashing-eyed woman whom she hired as associate nearly four years ago, Mrs. Rheba Crawford (“Angel of Broadway”) Splivalo (TIME, Feb. 27, 1933).

Ousted from Sister Aimee’s pulpit last autumn, Sister Rheba has filed a slander suit for $1,080,000 against her onetime colleague. Last week Rheba Crawford was battling Satan on her own hook, speaking over the radio, packing 1,600 people at a time in her new, small International Interdenominational Church, sermonizing on such subjects as “I Turn My Back” and “Tomorrow’s Headlines” while her aged mother, a Salvation Army Lassie, strummed the guitar.