Casting Out Demons Again

It staggers me to realise that, after penning this blog for almost 17 years now, I have only featured A. A. Allen’s incredible output once, seven years ago when I posted Crying Demons (now updated), a staple of pretty much every ‘worst records’ list compiled. Crying Demons is a classic noted, on the reverse of one of Allen’s many releases, as ‘one of the most amazing recordings of demons speaking through people who are possessed by them. Recorded in an actual service where A. A. Allen is actually casting out demons and these demons are talking and saying, “I will not come out; you cannot cast me out!” etc. A real lesson and Bible study in demonology. Convinces the worst skeptic that demons are not only real but that God has given His servant power over them. Proves demons are real today!’

 

Crying Demons was just one of the dozens of bizarre releases from Pastor A. A. Allen’s Miracle Revival Recordings label, established in the mid-1950s. Today, I present you with another of these wonderful curiosities, in full: Did God Call the Apostle Paul to Preach the Gospel to the Black Man?, noted as Allen's heartfelt attempt at integration. His shows were open to both Black and white audiences from the start, although in the years before the Civil Rights movement came to the fore, he often had trouble convincing Black audiences that they were welcome to participate, even though he was one of the first white preachers to tour with a Black gospel choir.

In that previous post I skirted over Allen's colourful life, but here is a more detailed version of his rather wild story, should you care to read it.

 

Asa Alonso Allen was born on 27 March 1911 (or possibly 1910) in Sulphur Springs, Arkansas. His parents, Asa and Leona, decided to name him after his father and his father's uncle, a Presbyterian minister. And that’s about all his real origin story and the Legend of Preacher Allen agree on. The Young Asa was brought up with two brothers and four sisters, but the children were neglected – both parents have been castigated in the ‘official’ story of Allen’s upbringing as ‘drunkards’ – and the Allen kids were raised in poverty.

 

According to Allen’s own version of his backstory (or his wife’s anyway: the source for most of his legend seems to come from her 1954 book God’s Man of Faith and Power), his parents made home brew liquor behind their shack, and his mother is supposed to have continued to drink heavily while she was pregnant with Allen. A favourite pastime of his parents was to give Allen and his siblings some of their home brew liquor until they were drunk. Then they would sit back and laugh at their children's drunken antics until they would either fall down or pass out. Allen's mother reputedly filled his bottle with liquor to keep him from crying, and he would go to bed nightly with a baby bottle filled with the home brew.

 

Tobacco was also plentiful, and Allen claimed that he learned to smoke before he was old enough to go to school. His father was a talented musician, and the local church asked him to lead their choir. He usually did so, according to family lore, while drunk. Young Allen caught hold of those talents and sometimes stood on the street comer singing to the crowd for nickels, and dimes.

 

Apparently all this happened before Asa was four years old, as at that point his parents rocky relationship finally broke, and Mrs. Allen took Asa and his siblings off to Carthage, Missouri, where she remarried: another drunkard, unsurprisingly. One of his brothers died young, leaving his mother and stepfather with six young mouths to feed. By the time he was in his teens he left home for good, paying for his own liquor by picking cotton and digging ditches. When the Great Depression hit, he started brewing and dealing in bootleg booze, He returned home to his mother, and the two of them began to operate an illicit speakeasy.

 

After hearing a woman preacher in Missouri in 1934, he began to dedicate his life to God. His marriage to Lexie in 1936 and the arrival of his first child strengthened his conviction and he decided to train for the ministry, with Pentecostal denomination the Assembly of God.

 

It’s the perfect colourful story: a young man on the road to hell finding redemption in the lord and mending his wicked ways, but although there’s no denying Allen’s early life was rough, he clearly embellished the drama to enhance his brand’s value. For Asa Alonso Allen was very much a brand, and this is all grist to the mill when you’re headlining healing shows under a tent that can sit up to 20,000 people at a time.

 

He began work as a healing, singing minister, but found it difficult to support his growing family, and decided instead to take on a permanent role in a church in Texas. Then, in 1950, he attended an Oral Roberts tent revival meeting. Inspired, he began holding his own evangelistic meetings. Soon it was being claimed that people attending his meetings were being healed in their seats as he preached. In 1951 he bought his first tent: his touring ministry was a massive success and by 1953 he was appearing regularly on radio stations across the U.S., Mexico, Cuba, and Latin America.

 

Two years later, Allen was pulled over for drink driving in Knoxville, Tennessee. He would later claim that someone had put something in his drink at the local restaurant. The Assembly of God organisation asked him to pull out of ministry for a period, and recommended that he be dropped from their church. Allen claimed that he resigned from the AoG before they had opportunity to ask him to leave, but the truth of the matter was that he was defrocked by the AoG for ‘conduct unbecoming a minister’. Allen’s expulsion was based on the fact that he jumped bail: according to a spokesman for Knox County Criminal Court, Allen had been arrested by the highway patrol on a charge of driving while under the influence of an intoxicant, but ‘the case did not come to trial because Allen failed to appear, forfeited his $1,000 bail and left the State. If ever enters Tennessee again, he can arrested and tried on the charge.’ Allen simply told the press that ‘you cannot believe everything some jealous preachers say!’

 

From here on in Allen would continue as an independent minister. He started his own publication, Miracle Magazine, which by the end of 1956 had over 200,000 subscribers. He began the Miracle Revival Fellowship aimed at ordaining ministers and supporting missions, and founded his own record label, Miracle Revival Recordings. He became one of the first preachers to appear regularly on national television: at his peak, he appeared on fifty-eight radio stations daily as well as forty-three TV stations.

 

But controversy was never far away. He remained a heavy drinker, yet Lexie would insist that the frequent attacks on her husband were ‘communistically inspired’. She took umbrage with newspaper the Sacramento Bee, whose investigation of her husband’s ministry following his arrest for drink driving was scathing. It found one of the people Allen had ‘healed’, a man who, it had been claimed, had only weeks to live as he had been invaded by ‘a cancer demon’. This man, brough to Allen in a wheelchair as he was unable to walk, was in fact revealed by his doctor to be perfectly mobile and, although he was indeed suffering from cancer, had several years of life left in him.

 

Lexie Allen was apoplectic: the paper was in league with the devil, she stated, and was trying to quiet Allen for the paper's own ‘Communist purposes,’. She claimed too that the newspaper was under ‘Communist control.’ Her ire was magnified by a quote which appeared in the newspaper from the American Medical Association, which made reference to the many faith healers who carried ‘shills’ as part of their entourages who would be miraculously healed in the tent service, dramatically throwing away their crutches and praising Allen for his incredible healing powers.

 

Allen’s staff backed up their claims of their boss’s powers by stating that he had caused an earthquake in California after being refused use of a civic auditorium there. They warned the editors of the Bee that they should watch out for the vengeance that was coming their way.

 

The Bee continued on its mission, calling Allen’s travelling show ‘a burlesque, and a parody of true religion… redolent with claims of healings which are purely imaginary.’ Their work caused many headaches for the Allen organisation, but they recovered from them. In 1958, in Phoenix, a local rancher gifted his 1,280 acre ranch to Allen: at the time of his death, following further donations of land, Allen’s Miracle Valley headquarters covered 2,400 acres of Arizona and even had its own airfield. 

 

Nothing seemed to touch him. In 1959 he was sued for unpaid taxes by the IRS, but successfully petitioned that his organisation A. A. Allen Revivals, Inc., was exempt as a corporation ‘organised and operated exclusively for religious and educational purposes with no part of its net earnings inuring to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.’

 

In 1965 – three years after his divorce from Lexie - the charismatic Allen visited Britain to host a series of revival meetings. It did not go well. He had his fans, but newspapers castigated his showy approach. The following year, after further shenanigans in Toronto, Nottingham’s Evening Post and News reported that as well as laying hands on the sick for healing, Allen ‘sends out blessed handkerchiefs or pieces of his old revival tent which are said to bring health and prosperity to those receive them. An advertisement in Allen’s Miracle magazine asks for pledges of $100 or $1000 for “a prosperity cloth cut from the old white Miracle Tent”. Another ad in the same magazine assures the reader that, through faith, he can get anything he wants from God by clipping a coupon and sending it, with a donation, “to Brother Allen for prayer in my behalf”. You could even buy the sand scooped up from apart of Allen’s revival tent ‘where several people saw Jesus walking’.  

 

Allen died on 11 June 1970, in a hotel room in San Francisco, officially of ‘acute alcoholism and fatty infiltration of the liver.’ It has been reported that police found his body in a ‘room strewn with pills and empty liquor bottles,’ although perhaps unsurprisingly some – including family members - have claimed that the coroner falsified the report after receiving a bribe. Followers tried to keep the business going, but by the end of the decade the Allen organisation was declared bankrupt. 

 

Here, in its entirety, is another one of the many controversial albums issued by Miracle Revival Recordings, 'A. A. Allen's Famous Sermon On Integration', Did God Call The Apostle Paul To Preach The Gospel To The Black Man? Issued in the mid-60s, side two features Allen's regular singer, the rather excellent Gene Martin who, following Allen's death, toured the US with his own ministry the Gene Martin Action Revival.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Side One HERE  

Download Side Two HERE