Evangelist A. A. Allen had a fierce love for the oppressed and he lived to help people find Jesus as their Savior.
For years he’d moved his young family from town to town, pastoring and evangelizing. In the early 1950’s he’d gotten a tent and went on the campaign trail to swoop up souls for the Kingdom of God.
He found his message resonating with wonderful folks whose families had literally come out of slavery. They had no idea how to live victoriously in God. They only knew how to live in bondage. Something was stiring in Allen’s heart. He didn’t want to help people barely sneak into heaven at the end of time. He wanted them to possess the mindset needed to go out and transform the world for Jesus – to be disciples for Him.
By the mid 1950’s A. A. Allen had not long been an associate of Gordon Lindsay’s Voice of Healing when he began openly refusing segregation in his tent meetings across the country periodically… even though it was illegal to do so. This was around the time Rosa Parks refused to get off the bus when told she was not allowed to remain due to the color of her skin. He saw injustice and determined to be a white person who refused to partner with the unrighteousness of white people’s mass sin. His growing prominence gave him a platform across the country and he was determined to make a difference. Evangelism was always the key objective, but he discipled the masses with his teaching. This led him in 1958 to found the town of Miracle Valley, Arizona where he could base his ministry headquarters at the Miracle Revival Training Center.
Evangelist A. A. Allen had a fierce love for the oppressed and he lived to helped people find Jesus as their Savior.
One day it all changed during the Atlanta, Georgia tent meeting campaign of May 4-29, 1960. It was the first time the huge 20,000 seat “big top” (aka tent cathedral), was raised.
During one of the services, the praise was getting lively. A young boy knocked over one of the segregation signs in his dance furver. A. A. Allen saw the workings of the Holy Ghost and promptly danced his way over to the other remaining sign to knock it over as well. The tent meeting erupted in fully integrated praise and the ministry never looked back. Despite regular Klu Klux Klan and police threats of violence and imprisonment in cities across the country for years, Allen always refused segregation from that day on.
In that same Atlanta, Georgia campaign, Martin Luther King Jr. attended his first A. A. Allen meeting, which stirred him to have private discussions about how Allen and King could work together to impact the nation. Historians note that Martin Luther King Jr. went on to quote a line from an Allen sermon in one his speeches. (His famous speech, “I have a dream”, was three years later.)
Yet another important thing took place in that Atlanta, Georgia campaign. The kids of Allen’s right-hand man H. Kent Rogers were standing in one of the praise services, when they heard a young man singing, incredibly! They ran to tell their dad, “You’ve got to check this guy out!”. Twenty-one year old Gene Martin was discovered, invited and joined the A. A. Allen ministry to minister the Gospel with praise. You can hear the story in Gene’s own words…
By this time, it had been just a few short years since Miracle Valley had been established in 1957, yet it had doubled in residence, a post office was being set up in the ministry headquarters to cope with the 18 million incoming and 55 million outgoing pieces of mail yearly. The record label was thriving and all LPs being pressed and sent from the property, letting Gene Martin, the Haynes and many more spread Gospel music far and wide. The publishing house, and national tv and radio programs were being used by A. A. Allen to spread teaching across America and even globally, with challenging words on how to live free and wholeheartedly for God. People work coming from all over the world to be trained and equipped!
Miracle Valley, Arizona and Allen’s ministry headquarters were undoubtedly critical in helping him support the start of the civil rights movement. Something which the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office unanimously agreed with when they in May 2023 deemed the historic buildings and property eligible to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places as a Historic District.
Allen was giving other ministers and those of different backgrounds the courage to stand up for justice across America. His teachings being printed in Miracle Valley by the millions and being sent across the country and beyond were truly changing the nation. 10,000-15,000 ministers were ordained under Allen and countless churches and ministries were planted. Still others became good upstanding citizens, holding positions in public service as teachers, police, and more.
*Clipped from A. A. Allen’s Miracle Magazine September 1969, after 14+ years of refusing segregation.
Miracle Valley and A. A. Allen was studied in universities across America.
A January 1965 article in The American Journal of Sociology by Howard Elinson called the “Allen movement” study, “of considerable relevance to an understanding of the approximately two million adherents to the various Pentecostal and Holiness groups in the United States“. He found “The Allen movement [to have] implications in all three senses for intellectualism, politics, and race relations.”
Time Magazine called A. A. Allen one of the most influential men in America in 1969. But, that is simply what was being said in the news. What about home?
A. A. Allen didn’t just have Gene Martin as a “token black person” to look good on camera. No! His Miracle Revival Training Center Bible school was one of the first fully integrated Bible colleges in America. People shared dorm rooms who had different colors of skin. Women and people of many races were employeed among the 250+ staff in the ministry.
Robert Yates was a member of the ministry Board of Directors as a wonderful black man who Allen helped to publish through the publishing house.
David Edwin Harrell Jr. said it well in his (out of circulation) book, White Sects and Black Men published in 1971 by Vanderbuilt University Press:
“In a revival in 1968, Allen made an almost unprecedented statement on the race issue. He revealed to his audience, and to the readers of Miracle Magazine (May 1968), a divinely inspired prophesy which he had recently received:
I [God] say unto thee, divide not thyselves into flocks that are segregated unto thine own call. For I say unto thee that segregation is not the call of God. Yea, whether it be in My Church or yea, whether it be on the street. I say unto thee, this is a boil, yea, and a sore evil in my sight. … I say unto thee, segregation shall not stand, for I the Lord thy God shall come upon the scene and ride speedily.”
Allen obviously considered racial tolerance a key issue in his movement. An Allen worker who reported that the revivalist was “one of ten most influential ministers in the world today” in 1969 listed among his outstanding accomplishments,
He is no doubt the first evangelist on a national and international scale to preach integration to mixed multitudes in both North and South, and be successful in integrating the races in worship under his huge gospel tent. It has been declared by leaders that the Allen Campaigns and his preaching have done more to make all people one than any other single effort in the nation or world. Believers worship, sing, shout together, and all new converts are baptized in the huge baptistry under the tent.”
A. A. Allen laughed once from the pulpit in sheer joy as he retold the story of how they baptized 300 people in under TWELVE minutes. He’d “preached the paint off the walls” and the crowds had rushed to be baptized in water. The speed at which people rushed into the batismal pool under the big top tent with conviction was so speedy that when everyone took a breath and looked around, they found that every race of people had jumped in together. The bottom of the pool had dentures and jewelry. The water had wigs floating. Nobody cared. They’d been set on fire by Jesus!