Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 39:1 (Winter 2025)
Article: The Upside-Down Queendom: Aimee Semple Mcpherson And Gendered Rhetoric In The 1930s "Foursquare Crusader"
Author: Caylie Cox

PP 39:1 (Winter 2025) p. 3

The Upside-Down Queendom: Aimee Semple Mcpherson And Gendered Rhetoric In The 1930s Foursquare Crusader

Caylie Cox

Caylie Cox is pursuing her PhD in rhetoric and composition at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. She earned her BA in English at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Her research focuses on storytelling and composition pedagogy. Her family has been involved with CBE for three generations.

Aimee Semple McPherson was many things to many people, and she was always a sensation. Perhaps the most prominent evangelist of the 1930s, McPherson preached to thousands of people every week and trained hundreds of young men and women for ministry and missionary roles. She was also married three times, liberally enhanced her sermons with spectacle and drama, and disappeared for a week under circumstances that remain mysterious to this day. Apart from her importance to the development of North American Christianity, McPherson has much to teach women in ministry, if only they look close enough.

McPherson’s ministry and the public’s response to it illuminate how difficult it is for women in Christian ministry to truly change the culture of their organizations. Although McPherson was revered by her followers, she not only faced criticism from outsiders, but also a more subtle form of resistance: the gender role ideals of her followers. In order to gain a better understanding of the difficulties facing marginalized leaders, we must analyze the rhetoric not only of a leader’s critics, but also of her supporters.

In this case, a rhetorical analysis of certain articles from the Foursquare Crusader—the newsletter of McPherson’s church—reveals a congregation that embraces two mutually exclusive ideals: support of a strong woman pastor and adherence to traditional gender roles. Looking at these articles through the lens of rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s theory of “piety” allows for an understanding of how a leader’s supporters can adhere to ideas that contradict what that leader symbolizes. Burkean piety theorizes why it is so hard for people to speak or act against the norms of the culture around them: there is always pressure to conform—to be “pious” to cultural ideals and therefore blend into the crowd.

Seen through the lens of Burkean piety, McPherson’s supporters are caught between a rock and a hard place: They must remain “pious” with regard to gender roles while still supporting the woman they revere. According to Burke, such a contradiction should result in “perspective by incongruity,” in which someone realizes the gap between their beliefs and their actions or words, leading them to change. However, gender role stereotypes persisted in the Foursquare...