Talk:Faith healing ministry of Aimee Semple McPherson

Untitled

For earlier editing history on this page, see Aimee Semple McPherson, from which its first draft was derived. JMDoran (talk) 21:31, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Article reflects references

Removing editorial tag.

According to the reference, the author, Daniel Mark Epstein is describing her attitude and what happened that day (on p210 of his Sister Aimee book):

"The police estimate the crowd was 30,000. Sister Aimee did not keep them waiting. Kneeling at one side of the platform, she prayed , finding the center of her faith: Look down from the open heavens of blue this morning upon us all, she prayed. And: How we have learned to love them! What she had learned was a passion that is beyond love, a compassion for men and women based upon knowledge of disease and sin , the reality of Christ and the transience of the flesh."

Other links: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-04-26/features/1993116164_1_semple-mcpherson-aimee-semple-sister-aimee/2

Daniel Mark Epstein= in an interview while writing his Sister Aimee book stated "I tried to find some evidence in the voluminous newspaper accounts of her healings, of fraud. There is none. Instead I found hundreds of pages of newspaper documentation of reporters who were overwhelmed by what they saw at the healing services. The famous phrase used back then was 'those who came to scoff stayed to pray.

People are describing what they saw and think happened and the article is relating that as per the source authors who write about it.

Epstein takes a much more broader look at the McPherson faith healing phenomena, and Edith Blumhofer goes into quite a bit of detail on a select few of the faith healing recipients, especially Harriet Jordan. Sutton rubberstamps both Blumhofer and Epstein's work on the subject and adds very little of his own research on the subject.

Around the web regarding her faith healing:

http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/Wallace_Jerry/Sister-Aimee.htm http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2009/sep/09/when-sister-aimee-came-town---part-1/# http://www.daytonhistorybooks.com/youngsisteraimee.html

SteamWiki (talk) 16:07, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

@SteamWiki: Thank you for tracking down those quotes. However you still didn't address the issue. The issue was: "This article reads like an editorial or opinion piece." No one was contesting that the statements weren't factual, I saw that the article is quite well-referenced. The issue is with how it reads. Currently it is written like Wikipedia is saying those things. If that is how Epstein or the crowd described her, it needs to be explicitly said. We do not know if she was "filled with sincere passion beyond love for humanity", but the sources do and that is who we must quote or else the article risks sounding like personal opinion not written from a neutral point of view. Also, the language itself is peacocky describing participants as "hopefuls" and using flashy language like "flood forth"; that is not encyclopedic. Opencooper (talk) 23:52, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

@Opencooper:Specifics are much appreciated, and easier to address, thank you. Reworded it so it is more obvious in those areas of concern, it is what Epstein and other sources are conveying.SteamWiki (talk) 23:54, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

That's much better. Thank you for making the changes. While I have no personal opinion on the subject, the more neutrally-written and well-rounded an article is, the more readers are likely to give weight to it, and neutrality is a pillar of Wikipedia. (Also for future reference, you might also want to glance at the article's history pages where editors usually give reasons for their changes like I did, but it really is my fault for not bringing it up on the talk page) Opencooper (talk) 00:33, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Article reflects Sources #2

Probably should redo the lead at least right away. One can convey in an encyclopedic manner that thousands of sick persons attended McPherson's meetings and believed themselves healed as per sources, large amounts of which were period newspapers being consulted by the book authors, without giving the tone of some type of "promo" piece. SteamWiki (talk) 03:39, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Article overly reliant on singular source

The majority of this article comes from a singular book. It would be great to find sources from other authors, especially those who might have different views regarding the veracity of McPherson's works. ForsythiaJo (talk) 06:00, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Various edits have eliminated some of the sources, as time permits, these and associated material can be recovered from the history sections of previous article edits.

Some of this has already been discussed in the archives on the Aimee Semple McPherson page before this section in that article was migrated to its own article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Aimee_Semple_McPherson/Archive_1#Faith_healing_section_added.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Aimee_Semple_McPherson/Archive_1#Tag_work

Specific cases of healing are documented by her biographers most notably Epstein and Blumhofer.

Epstein is by far most comprehensive and notes the vast numbers of healing while Blumhofer includes specific lengthy testimonials. They are in turn agreed on by other such as Sutton, healings alluded to though less detailed in Latley Thomas and some other accounts.

A more recent book is Chas. H. Barfoot

Aimee Semple McPherson and the Making of Modern Pentecostalism, 1890-1926

He is exploring yet another facet documenting the sudden rise of Pentecostalism and the over the top influence McPherson had in getting it out of the storefronts and upper rooms into the mainstream and he includes many instances of what they term as "divine healing." SteamWiki (talk) 19:39, 18 December 2022 (UTC)