Reconciling the Grey Area

Aimee Semple McPherson is a challenging person for me to reconcile.  Her sermons are powerful, at times poetic, and extremely moving.  McPherson’s genius at theological ecumenism allows her sermons to be read by a large audience with little disagreement.  For example, there’s a passage in her sermon “What Shall I do with Jesus” where McPherson describes the passion of Christ in such a real way that I found myself needing to take breaks between words.  I couldn’t read straight through.  Though simply written, the language was beautiful and powerful.  This is the trend I saw across her sermons.  Beautiful sermons with light theology; a sort of paperback gospel.

As a Christian minister how am I to approach figures like McPherson?  She is theatrical, shallow in her institutional and theological commitments, and very much an anti-thesis to the ideal of a parish priest.  And yet, for all her warts and all my opinions of her personal motivations McPherson’s words prove useful.  I could see myself quoting her or pointing a parishioner to a section of her writings.  How does a minister on the traditional side of the mainline interact in the grey area shared by the Evangelical mainstream?  Can McPherson’s relatively successful traversal of the early Evangelical movement point to a way forward?