MCPHERSON, AIMEE SEMPLE (1890–1944), American Pentecostal evangelist and divine healer. McPherson was born Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy on a farm near Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. Raised in the Salvation Army, she was converted to Pentecostalism through the preaching of Robert James Semple, whom she married in 1908 and accompanied to China, where they served as missionaries until Semple's death in 1910. Two subsequent marriages ended in divorce.

In 1917, McPherson embarked upon an evangelistic and divine healing career in the United States that quickly brought her national and international fame. In 1923, she settled in Los Angeles and built the five-thousand-seat Angelus Temple, a center of welfare services, and in 1927, she incorporated her large network of churches as the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. She also founded a ministerial institute, later named the Lighthouse of International Foursquare Evangelism (LIFE) Bible College.

McPherson's turbulent personal life, involving her alleged kidnapping, rumors...