The Ambiguity of Play
Jun 2009 · Harvard University Press
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About this ebook
From the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth Rock to Christian Coalition canvassers working for George W. Bush, Americans have long sought to integrate faith with politics. Few have been as successful as Hollywood evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. During the years between the two world wars, McPherson was the most flamboyant and controversial minister in the United States. She built an enormously successful and innovative megachurch, established a mass media empire, and produced spellbinding theatrical sermons that rivaled Tinseltown's spectacular shows. As McPherson's power grew, she moved beyond religion into the realm of politics, launching a national crusade to fight the teaching of evolution in the schools, defend Prohibition, and resurrect what she believed was the United States' Christian heritage. Convinced that the antichrist was working to destroy the nation's Protestant foundations, she and her allies saw themselves as a besieged minority called by God to join the "old time religion" to American patriotism. Matthew Sutton's definitive study of Aimee Semple McPherson reveals the woman, most often remembered as the hypocritical vamp in Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry, as a trail-blazing pioneer. Her life marked the beginning of Pentecostalism's advance from the margins of Protestantism to the mainstream of American culture. Indeed, from her location in Hollywood, McPherson's integration of politics with faith set precedents for the religious right, while her celebrity status, use of spectacle, and mass media savvy came to define modern evangelicalism.
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About the author
Brian Sutton-Smith was born in Wellington, New Zealand on July 15, 1924. He studied education at Wellington Teachers College. He received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in educational psychology from Victoria University of Wellington. In the late 1940s, he taught at a primary school in a Wellington suburb. In 1952, he traveled to the United States as a Fulbright scholar. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked with the psychologists Bruno Bettelheim and Fritz Redl. He received a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of New Zealand in 1954. In 1956, Sutton-Smith moved permanently to the United States. He taught at several universities including Bowling Green State University in Ohio, Columbia University Teachers College, and the University of Pennsylvania. He was a developmental psychologist who was one of the first people to bring the study of play into the academic arena and was considered the field's foremost scholar. His books included Child's Play written with R. E. Herron, The Study of Games written with Elliott M. Avedon, How to Play with Your Children (and When Not To), Toys as Culture, and The Ambiguity of Play. He also wrote three novels for young people. He helped found the Association for the Study of Play and received lifetime achievement awards from that organization and from the American Folklore Society. He died from complications of Alzheimer's disease on March 7, 2015 at the age of 90.
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