J.C. Michael Allen didn’t consider himself religious. But that was before he found himself interviewing a controversial Episcopal priest as a writer for Look magazine.
The priest was James Albert Pike and he spoke of racism, abortion, birth control and exploitation of workers.
Allen was taken with Pike’s activism and told him: “If I could believe in God, I’d become a priest.”
Allen was baptized soon after. He went on to become an ordained Episcopal minister and the dean, or head priest, at Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral in downtown St. Louis.
I remember Mike Allen quite well. Listening to him preach was one of the first indicatons I got that the Episcopalians were headed down the path they have since traveled.
I grew up in Dean Allen’s church – he never went by Mike btw – and it’s a conflicted mixture of feelings I have looking back on things. Perhaps I was just a naive child, at the time everything he said seemed so reasonable. In hindsight though, not entirely….