Los Angeles has always been a city that prefers reinvention to tradition, making it the ideal incubator for new religious movements. From the beginning, its distance from the centers of institutional ...

Aimee Semple McPherson became a star evangelist while living in L.A. Despite a mysterious disappearance that tarnished her reputation in 1926, her legacy lives on in the city. (Bettmann Archive via ...

In Claire Hoffman’s first book, “Greetings From Utopia Park,” she describes growing up as a follower of Transcendental Meditation. Her second book, “Sister, Sinner” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a ...

Our culture supports so many types of celebrity—online influencers, YouTube stars, Hollywood actors, reality-TV contestants—that it is easy to forget how recent this market saturation is. In the early ...

Sister Aimee Semple McPherson — Long before Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham, there was Sister Aime Semple McPherson. The Los Angeles-based faith healer took the nation by storm in the 1920s and '30s.

Journalist Hoffman (Greetings from Utopia Park) offers a vivid biography of Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944), an evangelical leader and radio pioneer whose ascendance to near-sainthood was shattered ...

A valuable new biography of Aimee Semple McPherson. Several years ago, I spent an afternoon on tour with my church as we retraced the life of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson. Normally, I am very ...

Los Angeles has always been a city that prefers reinvention to tradition, making it the ideal incubator for new religious movements. From the beginning, its distance from the centers of institutional ...

There are two kinds of Angelenos: Those who’ve heard of Aimee Semple McPherson and those who should. She was a showperson, a radio star, a publisher and writer, a beloved figure and a celebrity — hard ...