The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles by Gary Krist

Author:Gary Krist
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Politics & Social Sciences, Sociology, United States, Urban
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2018-05-15T03:00:00+00:00

But what really drew the multitudes to her revivals—at least at this stage in her ministry—were the astounding reports of Sister’s faith healing. The evangelist would later try to downplay this aspect, claiming that her meetings were “99 percent salvation and one percent healing.” She also tried to minimize her own role in these latter-day miracles. “Jesus is the healer,” she would often say. “I am only the office girl who opens the door and says, ‘Come in.’ ”

Even so, the power of these acts to move her audiences was undeniable. Ailing people by the hundreds swarmed her revivals, eager for the evangelist’s healing touch. Accounts of these sessions—even those from hard-nosed, cynical journalists—sound miraculous: Sister rubs a deaf woman’s ears with oiled hands, whispering prayers into each ear, louder and louder, until the woman flinches and cries out that she can hear. Sister massages the twisted limbs of a crippled ten-year-old boy, who then rises to his feet for the first time in his life. “Look, mama, look,” he shouts, “see how I can run! Oh, mama, see! You’re crying….But look, mama, I can run and it doesn’t hurt me either!”

Naturally, many outsiders were skeptical. Some claimed that the sick and disabled at these sessions were outright fakes, or else victims of hysterical illnesses “cured” by the emotional jolt of McPherson’s charismatic personality. Others pointed to healings that turned out to be temporary, lasting only as long as the sufferers were under the influence of her “religious hypnosis.” But many more were legitimately convinced, despite their initial suspicions. As one Presbyterian minister professed, “I cannot blame anyone for not believing things that can and will be told of these meetings, for I probably would not believe them myself had I not seen them, but I have seen them.” In August 1921 the San Francisco chapter of the American Medical Association secretly sent representatives to the healing sessions at one of Sister McPherson’s Oakland revivals. After witnessing several sessions and examining the beneficiaries of her ministrations, they issued a report approving of the evangelist’s work and declaring her healings “genuine, beneficial, and wonderful.”

Whatever was truly happening to those people throwing away their crutches and wheelchairs, Sister’s acts of healing were effective as a recruiting device—as she herself was the first to admit. “Quite apart from their wonderful success in the relief of suffering,” she wrote in one of her autobiographies, the healings “are immensely valuable as attractions to bring the throngs within sound of the Word. Obviously, when people hear of these things, it is impossible for the curious to refrain from coming themselves to see them, and when they see them, the curious become converts.” And so the numbers of her followers multiplied. As one contractor responsible for organizing her revivals told her, “The crowds you are drawing to your meetings almost scare us.”

Now, thanks to the largesse of these crowds, Sister McPherson finally had a magnificent temple of her own to serve as a home base—a place where, so to speak, the mountain could be brought to Mohammed.

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