Fifty years after her death, Aimee Semple McPherson continues to fascinate. Readers may recall Matthew Sutton's Church History article “‘Between the Refrigerator and the Wildfire’: Aimee Semple McPherson, Pentecostalism, and the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy” (72:1 [March 2003]: 159–88). His book focuses more on McPherson's relationships with popular culture and politics. He details McPherson's very early use of radio, her flirtation with film, and her mastery of public relations.

Sutton offers a skillfully balanced picture of McPherson's complex persona. For example, in politics McPherson opposed the teaching of evolution but avidly backed Franklin Roosevelt. She supported the Equal Rights Amendment and women's ordination yet upheld Victorian ideals of women's behavior. She welcomed Klan members but also reached out to African Americans and Latinos.

Sutton's treatment of religion, however, is problematic. McPherson was pentecostal. Yet Sutton describes speaking in tongues as “babbling” and “jabbering” (38, 40). Sutton also calls her a fundamentalist. Certainly pentecostals and fundamentalists shared many theological perspectives as well as social and cultural stances, but “Fighting” Bob Shuler's opposition to McPherson, well-documented by Sutton, should have given the author pause. He attributes McPherson's substantial social service work to a Social Gospel theology. It more likely represents McPherson's background with the Salvation Army. Sutton's references to McPherson as “evangelical” are anachronistic.

Readers would do well to also read Edith Blumhofer's Aimee Semple McPherson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994) and Daniel Mark Epstein's Sister Aimee (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993).