In the book, the author asserts that the Canadian evangelists were accountable for liberating conventional Protestantism from gloom and developing the current political representation used by the dominant Religious Right. Sutton endorses the common perception that Christ and the American way of life are identical.
A number of books have been documented about McPherson. However, in this book Sutton centers his attention on substantiating why McPherson was the most significant representation for the integration of traditional Christian distinctiveness and American nationalism.
The author points out that in the year 1925, McPherson prearranged an enormous procession and theatrical stage play1. The book warrants special honors for highlighting how McPherson played a crucial role in creating the current politicized evangelical Christianity.
After reading the book, the readers will be able to identify themselves with McPherson’s fantastic world of biblical seers, priests, conquerors, and villains.
While reading the book, the readers would not help but imagine how they would have felt to march with the 30, 000 persons assembled in Los Angeles in the year 1926 shouting joyfully at the view of McPherson following her return2. Through the bibliography, Sutton’s unique storytelling capabilities are illustrated.
By pricking the sensations and scholarly inquisitiveness, Sutton offers the reader with a chance to be grateful for Mcpherson’s initiatives in the same manner an individual would try to negotiate the cultural prospects, drawbacks, and approvals of her day.
At the same time, Sutton provides the reader with an opportunity to experience how it would feel to be among McPherson’s supporters and opponents. Through this, the reader will learn that McPherson was a polarizing personality.
Those who socialized with her were bound to announce publicly their thoughts of allegiance or hatred for the female figure. The author wants the readers not to postpone such opinions and as an alternative cautiously assess the intensity of these reactions against the realisms of the day.
In the book, the author does not only stir up compassion for McPherson but also subject her to colossal and impartial criticisms. His enthusiasm to analyze McPherson in the political and the customary perspective of her era is the reason behind the bibliography’s motivating impulse and executive determinant.
The author was able to achieve the above using a number of inspiring number evangelical studies. Throughout each chapter, Sutton attaches McPherson with some decisive issues that occurred during her lifetime.
Famous among the concerns are race affairs, interregional immigration, urban boosterish, press, national social issues, and wartime enlistment. The above concerns were witnessed in South California amid 1920 and 19403. At the time, McPherson was on her top profession as a community figure.
In the book, the author was trying to allege that by empowering herself in the above concerns, McPherson salvaged conventional Protestantism back from the edges and eventually aided in redesigning the societal, intellectual, and political fate of North American evangelists.
A number of McPherson’s critics perceive her as a media individual eager to gain mass endorsement from her Hollywood friends.
However, the author believes that McPherson’s employed the media as a tool to enhance the weird mixture of Pentecostalism and fundamentalism, which turned out to be the foundation stone of her own value. Many of McPherson’s colleagues reprimanded her for taking up these forms.
To illustrate this, the author pursues a different perspective from McPherson’s critics by alleging that her intentions were genuine. By combining faithfulness and performance, McPherson anticipated to exemplify confidence in front of her friends. In the process, she initiated their interest to typical revivalist themes4.
From the author’s arguments, one will learn that by connecting confidence and the media through this approach McPherson eventually compounded the two. By doing so, she made the spirit of theology indivisible from the mode of its deliverance.
The author’s arguments were authoritative because he managed to illustrate the dramatic elegance of McPherson’s life using key themes in the book to defy suppositions about faith, politics, and traditions.
From the beginning of the book, the author’s descriptions progress gradually toward McPherson’s climax in the year 1926. It should be noted that McPherson focused more on social and political issues between the years 1930 and 1940.
By illustrating this, the author wanted to provide the readers with a multifaceted knowledge of religion and politics prior the World War II.
Before reading the book, readers assume that conventional evangelical Protestants functioned merely on the political edge at the period. However, by studying about McPherson’s bibliography in the book they will dismiss their assumptions.
Through the book, the reader will realized that to understand the American life before the World War II an individual should focus on understanding McPherson’s life.
The author of the book acknowledges this and illustrates a number of ways of understanding and relating to the new thoughts. By doing so, he offered the readers with an exemplary academic representation of substantive historical examination, academic engagement, and inspiring writing.
Reference
Sutton, Matthew. Aimee Semple Mcpherson and the Resurrection of Christian America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Footnotes
1 Matthew, Sutton. Aimee Semple Mcpherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 2-10.
2 Matthew, Sutton. Aimee Semple Mcpherson, 71.
3 Matthew, Sutton. Aimee Semple Mcpherson and the Resurrection of Christian America. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 23-30.
4 Matthew, Sutton. Aimee Semple Mcpherson and the Resurrection of Christian America. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 69.