This week in Christian history: First black Baptist minister ordained; Pentecostal preacher vanishes; Presbyterian missionary born
Prominent Pentecostal preacher disappears — May 18, 1926
This week marks the anniversary of when famed Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson went missing for about a month under mysterious circumstances.
A self-proclaimed faith-healer and founder of the heavily attended Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, McPherson disappeared while in Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
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The following month, McPherson was found in Agua Prieta, New Mexico, claiming that she had been kidnapped and forcibly taken to Mexico before escaping her captors.
“When McPherson came home, a throng of more than 50,000 showed up at the train station to welcome her. In a massive parade featuring airplanes that dropped roses from the skies, the evangelist made a grand re-entrance,” wrote Gilbert King of Smithsonian Magazine in 2013.
“The kidnapping remained unsolved, and the controversy over a possible hoax went unresolved. Critics and supporters alike thought McPherson should have insisted on a trial to clear her name; instead, she gave her account of the kidnapping in her 1927 book, In the Service of the King: The Story of My Life.”
