Uldine was born in rural Oklahoma to Hattie Ellen Bray and Azle
Herbert Utley. Her family eventually settled in Fresno, California,
where her parents owned a raisin farm. At the age of nine, she was
converted at an Aimee Semple McPherson evangelistic meeting. Within
two years, she began to preach first in small towns and then in
increasingly larger cities across the USA and Canada. Her largest
venue was Madison Square Garden, where at the age of fourteen, she
preached to 14,000 people. When she had been preaching for about a
year, at the age of twelve, Uldine began publishing a monthly
magazine to keep in contact with those who had attended her
meetings. Petals from the Rose of Sharon, later entitled, The
Vision, contained one or two of her sermons, testimonies from
people converted at her meetings, and reports about her upcoming
meetings. As she grew out of childhood and into an adult, her
popularity on the evangelistic circuit waned. She joined a
Methodist congregation in Chicago and was given a Methodist
preacher's license. A Methodist bishop endorsed her book, Why I Am
a Preacher. At the age of twenty-three, she was ordained by the
Methodists, an event noteworthy enough to be written up in Time
magazine's religion page. The article on her ordination was
accompanied by a picture of Uldine in a bathing suit. Her brief
marriage to Wilbur Eugene Langkrop was annulled when she collapsed
mentally. Her remaining fifty-seven years were spent in and out of
convalescent institutions.
- Priscilla Pope-Levison, Professor of Theology and Assistant
Director of Women's Studies at Seattle Pacific University http:
//myhome.spu.edu/popep/profiles/uldine_utley.htm
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