Experiencing what might today be diagnosed as postpartum depression, McPherson was hospitalized and given a hysterectomy. As she fought to regain strength, Hoffman writes that McPherson heard a divine voice telling her “GO! Do the work of an evangelist: Preach the Word.” McPherson waited until Harold was out of the house one night, grabbed her children, and left. For the next five years, she toured the country as a tent revivalist, sharing the good news.
In McPherson’s age, preaching—not unlike the work of an influencer today—was a way for people, especially women, to gain social power and financial success without working a conventional job. McPherson also had the smarts to control the means of production. For instance, while canvassing the American South in her “Gospel Car,” she published and sold her sermons in her proprietary magazine rather than letting other companies print them. As Hoffman writes of the rise of the steam-powered printing press: “The creation of a mass media opened up the public sphere—suddenly anyone could be famous.”
But just because anyone could be famous didn’t mean anyone would be. McPherson distinguished herself by creating her own feminine, even romantic, brand of proselytizing. “Her tone was often girlish and innocent,” Hoffman writes about McPherson’s magazine, The Bridal Call. “Her prose was amorous, adjective-laden, and woozily swooning.” McPherson “emphasized her fallibility, always—she was prideful and prone to make foolish mistakes, but all of this made her more adorable and magnetic.” As a mother, she was relatable to many women, and her habitual white nurse’s costume conveyed both a purity and a medical training that she did not possess. Over the top yet self-aware, giddy, and relatable, McPherson was what today’s TikTok user might call a “Gospel Girly.”
As McPherson’s fame grew, she eventually decided to settle down in a city that she could tell was on the rise: Los Angeles. Although McPherson often encouraged a return to a simpler, more traditional way of life—she spoke in her sermons about her wholesome upbringing on a farm—she wanted to be in the middle of the cultural and technological revolution sweeping Southern California. In L.A., McPherson became one of the first women to hold a radio license in the United States. Using giant radio towers perched above the Angelus Temple, the megachurch she founded, she gave sermons, administered faith healing over the air, and invited powerful political figures to join her in bemoaning the degeneracy of modern life. Broadcasting content about how good things used to be on a thoroughly modern communication platform represents a paradox readers might find familiar—consider the rise of the social-media tradwife.