Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Angelus


I began my own nerdy version of Los Angeles tourism this week when I went to check out a site that all of my fellow classmates are most likely completely unaware of. After moving to downtown L.A. for the month I've been checking out my map on my iPhone for any interesting nearby sites. I noticed one which was not too far away that I immediately wanted to check out.

When I've gone home to Battle Ground for various breaks in the last four or five years I've almost always worshipped with some close friends at the Foursquare church in town. So I have a certain sense of connection with this denomination which is more officially known as the "International Church of the Foursquare Gospel," which is sort of your run-of-the-mill charismatic denomination. It turns out that this denomination was started by a woman in the 1920's named Aimee Semple McPherson. The denomination had its start at the Angelus Temple, a church building constructed under the direction of McPherson in downtown Los Angeles in 1923.

So I noticed that the Angelus Temple was not too far from where I'm currently living and working so it was high on my list of places to check out. I did just that this week. There wasn't actually much to see and the building was locked up so I couldn't go inside. It was hard to get a good picture of the whole building so here are some photos of some plaques I found kind of interesting:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Matt, if you send me your email, I'll send you a picture of "Amiee". A great many of my family graduated from L.I.F.E Bible College, even have transcrips from 1935.

Let me know OK?
native CA here in SC.
Frying pan to fire perhaps.

Grandmother

Matt said...

Hey Grandmother, Happy to see you commenting on my blog. That's interesting that you have a lot of connections with L.I.F.E. Bible College. I know a guy who went to the Foursquare church in Battle Ground who also graduated from this Bible college. I'd be interested to see your picture. My e-mail is:

rodan90@hotmail.com

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Hi Matt,

It strikes me that you believe the majority of your classmates at Loma Linda are unaware of the Angelus Temple. Is this because of denominational reasons? Or are Loma Linda students not as actively Christian as I have assumed?

I hope you are enjoying peds;)


~Scarlet Pimpernel

Matt said...

Hey SP...
I guess it's mainly for denominational reasons. But I bet if you asked the majority of worshippers in Foursquare churches they wouldn't know what the Angelus Temple is either.