Aimee returned to the United States where she married Harold McPherson, a grocery clerk. Shortly after the birth of their son, Aimee, with her new husband in tow, resumed her career on the revival circuit. Energetic, attractive, and a show woman at heart, she drew huge crowds with her faith-healing performances.

Other evangelists berated McPherson because they did not believe in women speaking from the pulpit, especially a woman as flamboyant as Aimee Semple McPherson. But she was not deterred, even when husband Harold tired of the traveling tent show life, and ordered her to settle down. Instead she went on without him, and he later divorced her for desertion.

In 1918, Aimee set up headquarters in Los Angeles and became a media superstar. She wore Paris gowns, dyed her hair blond, wore jewelry, makeup, and put on performances that can only be described as spectacles. For one, billed as Sister Aimee preaching on the consequences of breaking God's law, she entered the church on a motorcycle in a police man's uniform, driving down the center aisle to the pulpit.

But Sister Aimee wasn't simply a show-woman. She was also an organizer with an eye on building a monument to herself. The money she took in enabled her to build her own massive concrete church, the Angelus Temple, where she held forth to ever-growing crowds. She also established an evangelical and training institute even before her temple was dedicated, and she quickly drew her followers into the formal association that eventually became known as the Foursquare Gospel Church, of which she was president.