Aimee Semple McPhearson was born on October 9, 1890 in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. Her parents were farmer named Mildred and James Kennedy. McPhearson met her first husband Robert James Semple at a revival. He was a Pentecostal evangelist. After the wedding they began missionary work all over the world, including china in 1910. Unfortunately, Robert contracted malaria and died the same year while Aimee was pregnant. McPhearson decided to go to the United States with her daughter where she met her second husband Harold Stewart McPherson, who she had a son with in 1913. McPhearson began evangelizing all over the country. She became very popular and even one of her revivals had an attendance of over 30,000 people. In 1923, she went to Los Angeles where she opened the Foursquare Church. In 1924 she became very interested in public radio. It was a place where she could tell her message to millions of people at one time all over the country. She was the first woman in history to preach over the radio. She died in 1944 of an accidental drug overdose (This Is My Task)
During this time in the United States, women did not have a lot of rights and were still treated as second class citizens. Women did not receive suffrage until 1920. Women were expected to just stay at home and obey their husbands. The United States was also in World War I at this time, where women were only allowed to participate by serving as nurses or preparing food for the soldiers. The 19th amendment of the Constitution gave Women the right to vote after the war. In most cases women were not allowed to preach the gospel (Anonymous, 62). Aimee Semple McPhearson became the first women to challenge this. She began to preach her religious beliefs throughout the country until she became a household name. She inspired many other women to preach. In one 150-day period she toured the country, traveled more than fifteen thousand miles, visited forty-six cities, broadcast on forty-five radio stations and delivered three hundred and thirty-six sermons, sometimes as many as five in a single day (The Foursquare Church). She was one of the first women to change the face of religion in America.