Uldine Mabelle Utley (March 16, 1912 – October 31, 1995) was an American Pentecostal child preacher.[1]
Uldine Utley | |
---|---|
Born | Durant, Oklahoma | March 16, 1912
Died | October 31, 1995 San Bernardino, California | (aged 83)
Other names | Uldine Langkop |
Utley was born in Durant, Oklahoma,[2] the daughter of Azle Herbert Utley and Hattie Ellen Bray Utley.[3] Her father was an electrician, and a farmer and postmaster while the family lived in Colorado.[4][5]
Utley had a conversion experience in 1921, inspired by the preaching of Aimee Semple McPherson while she was living in Fresno, California.[6] Within two years Utley was preaching across the United States,[7] and at the age of fourteen she preached to a crowd of 14,000 people at Madison Square Garden.[8][9] During Utley's appearances at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933,[10] during a heatwave, her program was promoted as having "cooled air" and comfortable seats.[11]
In 1935, she was ordained by the Methodist Episcopal Church.[12] Utley was called "the Joan of Arc of the modern religious world".[13] She was also called a "second Billy Sunday"[14] and, as a young woman, "the ingenue of evangelism"[10] and "the Garbo of the pulpit".[15]
She married salesman Wilbur Eugene Langkop in 1938,[13][16][17] but was committed to a mental hospital shortly after her marriage, and eventually divorced. (He remarried in 1945.) Utley spent the rest of her life in and out of mental institutions.[5] She died in 1995, at the age of 83, in San Bernardino, California. A biography of Utley was published in 2016.[1][18]
Ever since the very first services conducted by the young evangelist, the people have kept asking her, 'Why are you a preacher?' desiring to hear the whole story. No service was devoted to telling it, however until Oct. 31, 1926, when in Madison Square Garden, New York City, following four weeks of meetings held in Calvary Baptist Church...14,000 attended.[ISBN missing]