Roland Allen

“He never held important office in church, mission, or academic institutions, yet few men have had such broad and lasting influence on movements for renewal and reform in Christian missions” (Long and Rowthorn 283).

A sketch of his life

Allen was born in Bristol, England, the sixth of seven children of an Anglican priest. His father died in Latin America when Roland was only five, perhaps as a result of alcoholism. Afterwards, his father’s family did nothing to help his widowed mother; she went to live with her own parents. As an adult, Roland was “abstemious, but never a total abstainer” from alcohol. His children, too, drank only moderately, perhaps “partly because their father seems to have warned them about ‘a family tendency’ towards drink and drugs” (Allen 11). We can only guess at the effects his father’s last few years and sudden death may have had on Allen.

Thus, Allen rarely knew his father, or his grandparents, either, for they died before he was ten years old. His mother, Priscilla Malpas, was the principal formative influence upon him. Her parents died within a few years of her husband, so that she was left entirely on her own to bring up her children, except for the indispensable help of her loyal maid, Hannah Clissold. Priscilla was a strong Evangelical and “a very determined, not to say obstinate, person (characteristics which Roland seems to have inherited)” (Allen 12). 

She was known for her serenity and her extraordinary prayer life, which one of her grandchildren described as “the completely natural communion of her soul with the in-dwelling Christ” (Allen 13). Allen himself called this “experimental religion,” by which he meant “religion based upon a personal experience of the reality of such great doctrines as the forgiveness of sins, of the grace of Christ’s presence, of the indwelling of the Holy [Spirit].” He considered this “profoundly true” (Allen 14).

From his mother, also, Allen learned that “in the Church there is a point at which rebellion was justified for the good of the Church, not for any personal end” (Allen 14). He always believed that we must obey Christ, not man, in matters where Scripture spoke clearly.

Because his mother had no money, her sons had to win scholarships to go to school. Allen first attended Bath College School, then Bristol Grammar School, where he studied Classics and participated in the debating society, honing skills that he would use powerfully later. He also distinguished himself in cricket. He obtained a scholarship to St. John’s College, Oxford, where he also won the university’s Lothian prize for an essay on Pope Silvester II, which was published in a learned journal. He was a founder and member of the undergraduate theological study group, the Origen Society. While at Oxford, he came under the influence of the Anglo-Catholic faculty at Pusey House, across the street from St. John’s. In particular, was deeply influenced by F.E. Brightman, an outstanding liturgist of the Anglo-Catholic movement, whom Allen considered “my great father in God.” One of Brightman’s interests was the spirituality of the Eastern churches, which might account for his later church-centered view of mission. 

Through these men he became thoroughly imbued with the ideas of the Anglo-Catholic tradition. 

After Oxford he studied at the (Anglo-Catholic) Leeds Clergy Training School. His motive in entering was simple: “My idea was to serve God in His Temple, that, with the conviction that to be ignorant of God’s love as revealed in Christ was to be in a most miserable state” (Allen 19). In old age he wrote, “When I was about four years old and heard that there were men who had never been told the Gospel, I cried out, ‘Then I shall go and tell them’” (Allen 21).

Winfred Burrows, the principal of the school, described him as being “a refined intellectual man, small, not vigorous, in no way burly or muscular. He is not the sort of man to impress settlers or savages by his physique. Learning and civilization are more to him than most men” (Long and Rowthorn 383; Allen 19). Allen differed from many later Anglo-Catholics. His piety was “sober, restrained, scholarly, immensely disciplined. There is no trace anywhere in him of the preoccupation with secondary matters of ceremony into which” this movement “later degenerated. Moreover, he was always to combine with his High Church emphasis on the Church and Sacraments an Evangelical concern with a biblical foundation of any arguments and, above all, with the central importance of the Holy Spirit” (Allen 19).

In 1892, he was ordained a deacon, and the following year he became a priest in the Church of England. He served as a curate of the Durham diocese and served as a curate in the parish of St. John the Evangelist, Darlington. Soon, he applied to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), but he was turned down because of a heart condition. He then turned to the SPG’s associate mission, the independent Church of England Mission to North China, which accepted him in 1894. He had said, “If, as you say, I have so bad a heart that I am likely to die soon, can you tell me why I should be likely to die sooner in China than in England” (Allen 22). In his application, he had written, “I am simply thirsting to go to the foreign mission field, and I am ready to go wherever and whenever the Society has a vacancy.” 

He was to take charge of a small school in Beijing to prepare young Chinese men to serve as catechists. He spent the next five years equipping himself for that task and learning Chinese, which he did unusually well, gaining such fluency that Bishop Scott later put forward his name for the new position of Bishop of Shandong. “He also oversaw both a day school for non-Christians and a printing press and began a chaplaincy at the nearby British Legation. Though he was involved in many roles, he found time to write articles for the Mission’s quarterly journal, The Land of Sinim” (Payne 12-13). Many of these were “marked by the dry, sometimes acerbic, always self-deprecating humour, which in later years was often to puzzle and bewilder readers accustomed only to high seriousness” (Allen 28).

After the boys’ school was turned over to another missionary, he started on his principal task– opening the school for future catechists and deacons. The curriculum included study of the first three centuries of church history, in which the students took great interest, especially, he wrote, “in certain translations which I am making of portions of the Apostolic Fathers” with help from his Chinese teacher (Allen 29).

Allen was described as “an able and devoted teacher” who was “awake to new ideas and techniques” (Allen 29). He obtained a camera and used photographs in teaching and mission publications. In the process, he learned enough chemistry to develop and print his own work. He also used the “magic lantern” so popular among missionaries and their audiences as an aid to teaching and preaching. And he showed his commitment to participatory education by introducing debates on current affairs, for which the students had to read newspapers, hitherto not part of their educational experience. They acquired skills in analysis, reasoning, and exposition, so that some of them could successfully analyze from memory the first three chapters of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

After a year, the students were sent out into the field for practical work as catechists, so that their education would not just be intellectual, but would actually train them in ministry skills.

Though at first he did not question the propriety of the traditional Western model for training clergy, he later wrote that “during those five years I became more and more uneasy in my mind.” He was troubled, for example, by the remark of another missionary that “the missionary as an evangelist was usually a failure, and so should concentrate on straightforward school teaching,” which he could do better than a Chinese could (Allen 32).

Allen was able to see the rising tide of opposition to foreigners in general and missionaries in particular. More and more Chinese hated the Christian religion, not as a religion, but as something foreign. He wrote, “If Christianity is to be presented acceptably to the Chinese, surely it ought to be through Chinese teachers who have remained Chinese in thought and education, but whose Chinese thought is permeated with Christian doctrine and belief” (Allen 34).

Chinese voiced special ire over the assumption of political rights by Roman Catholic missionaries, especially the French, who not only acquired official status but also interfered in criminal cases when their converts were accused of wrongdoing. Anglicans in China refused to join the Roman Catholics by seeking such privileges, but to the Chinese, all foreigners were alike. Almost equally repugnant was the bad conduct of European merchants and engineers, whom the Chinese regarded as Christians because they came from “Christian” countries.

Allen realized that real danger was brewing for missionaries in Beijing and all Chinese associated with them, and he began to prepare for the worst by urging his teachers to flee. He then managed to get the women and girls away from the mission premises. Reluctantly, he closed the boys’ school. Finally, in obedience to orders from British authorities, he and his close associate Deaconess Jennie Ransome made their escape to the Legation complex, just before the Boxers, aided by government forces, began their furious attacks.

During The Siege of the Peking Legations – the title of his vivid narrative covering the fateful events – Allen conducted himself with extraordinary courage, calmness, and competence. Not only did he carry out the duties of chaplain, such as holding services and caring for the wounded and dying, but he also did his part as one of the members of the besieged foreigners and Chinese who endured constant gunfire and artillery assaults. With the other men, he helped to build barricades and stood watch at night, armed with a pistol. He also assisted in the hospital.

Meanwhile, despite the hatred of the Boxers for all foreigners, his “affection for the Chinese … was undiminished: he used to chat to the Boxers over the ramparts during intervals between their assaults,” and he conversed regularly with Mr. Tang, the Legation’s head waiter. “In his diary of the siege [he] never fails to spotlight the contribution of his Chinese companions” to the welfare of everyone (Allen 50).

At the same time, he served as chaplain to the British Legation, where he was living when the Boxers swept into the capital city in 1900. He wrote down his firsthand experiences of the siege in a diary, which he published as the aforementioned The Siege of the Peking Legations (1901). After they were all rescued by foreign troops, he found that the mission had been totally destroyed. Nothing remained. Like the China Inland Mission, the Anglicans “decided neither to claim nor to accept any compensation from the Chinese Government for “damage to buildings or loss of life,” so funds for reconstruction had to be found from other sources (Allen 56). Proceeds from the published diaries of both Allen and Deaconess Jessie Ransome, which were already being widely sold, were devoted to that project. 

While waiting to leave for England, they visited the Forbidden City, hitherto closed to all but members of the palace household and government, and the Temple of Heaven, which made a profound impression upon Allen. “The mere existence of such a place, of such a ceremony, is a convincing proof of the capacity of the Chinese mind for true religious feeling, and throws into horrid contrast the temples, Taoist or Buddhist, full of tawdry ornaments and hideous idols” (Allen 57).

They journeyed by land and water to Tianjin. Along the way, they saw with sorrow and disgust the unspeakable damage done by foreign – mostly Russian – troops after the uprising. “We shuddered to think of the deeds committed by Christian troops and of the effect which they must have upon the Chinese, and of the undying hatred which was being planted with ever and deeper and stronger roots in their minds” (Allen 57).

The surviving Anglican missionaries went home on furlough. Allen had two main responsibilities: to serve as chaplain to Bishop Scott, whose wife had died en route, and to “be the representative of a very much maligned mission” (Allen 58). Critics were charging them with allowing too many “rice Christians” to ruin the reputation of Christianity.

“Roland Allen challenged this view. In his opinion, ‘When you have got a convert, you have got one, and he will stand by his faith, very often to the death … if you have Christians like that in a Church, that Church will grow. In Peking the Europeans were saved by the native Christians … Christian stands by Christian, racial instincts give way to religious … the conduct of the native Christians shows the power of this motive to make men stand by those from whom they have received spiritual benefits’” (Allen 59).

Though their immediate goal was to raise money for the reconstruction of all the mission stations that he been destroyed, in the process Allen addressed “far more fundamental issues” (Allen 59), beginning what became a life-long campaign to challenge reigning church and missionary practices and to call for a return to New Testament principles. For example: he saw that “English-style theological colleges, such as the clergy school he had himself been in charge of in Peking, were inappropriate: they ‘do not turn out apostles or evangelists, but deacons.’” He added, “I saw that if the Church in North China was to have no clergy at all except such as could pass through my little theological school and then be financially supported, the Churches will not multiply rapidly” (Allen 59). He also warned, “If the Church bears the mark ‘Made in the West’ too prominently stamped upon her, many will turn away from her who would not turn away from Christ … Opposition to Western civilization will be opposition to ‘the white man’s Gospel’” (Allen 60).

Further, he insisted the new churches should be given the liberty to make mistakes and fail, and that only the Holy Spirit can guarantee orthodoxy.

Soon, he was declaring that “The first work of the missionary should be to train his converts in real independence,” by calling them to fulfill their responsibility as members of the church, refusing to introduce any foreign elements (such as vestments, building design, etc.) into the new churches, and always seeking to become dispensable as soon as possible (Allen 61).

Among his fascinated listeners at this time was Miss Mary Beatrice Tarleton (1863-1960), whose father was an admiral in the Royal Navy. As young people, Beatrice and her sister Edith “lived on the fringes of court society,” but they later moved out of their house and into their own place. They became very intimately involved in the North China Mission Association. By 1896, Beatrice was on the Association’s central committee, and she had become Honorary Secretary and Treasurer of its Peking Medical Mission. Her sister Edith was no less devoted to the mission. 

Over objections from some members of her family, who thought that she was “marrying beneath” her social station, Beatrice and Roland met, fell in love, and became engaged in 1901. Beatrice was almost forty years of age, five years older than Roland. Beatrice and her sisters made all the wedding arrangements themselves. Bishop Scott attended the ceremony, which was officiated by Allen’s “father in God,” the Rev. Dr. F.E. Brightman. After a short honeymoon, Allen continued his very effective work of preaching and lecturing widely for the mission.

In 1902, they returned to north China, where their first child was born. Their old friend Deaconess Jessie Ransome was there to greet them, though, sadly, she died of acute dysentery only a few months later (not, as some said, from a broken heart that Allen had married someone else!). Allen served as priest-in-charge of a small rural mission in Yungching [Yungchung], but soon became ill and the family had to be sent home. 

Still, during those few months, as one colleague wrote, he “did great things for Yung-Ch’ing. [His] keen enthusiasm to some extent infected the Christians, and the results were immediately apparent in several directions … a real revival of personal religion … a beginning in the direction of self-government … and an effort to take up work at Ch’i Chou started by the Rev. Norman.” With the full backing of Bishop Scott and most members of the mission, his assignment there “allowed him to put into effect some of the missionary principles he and his comrades had been advocating. ‘I urged upon my evangelists that their business was not to induce people to accept a book [referring to the Book of Common Prayer] or a system as a whole, but to understand the principles’” (Allen 71-72).

First, he persuaded his bishop that the usual grant for the upkeep of the mission station be withheld. Overseeing the work of three of his former students, he “persuaded the local Christians to elect church councils, under the leadership of church wardens [the Anglican equivalent of Baptist deacons] – one of whom would be appointed by the congregation, and only one by the foreign missionaries; he arranged for these councils to send representatives to a ‘common council’, to which he handed over almost all the responsibility, for instance, for missionary evangelism, and for church government and discipline” (Allen 72-73).

He refused a request from the Chinese to found a school and a teacher for them; instead, he insisted that they open the school themselves, which they did. Over their objections, he instructed the local leaders of a church to discipline an erring convert. Receiving excommunication from his own people, rather than from a foreigner, induced the man to repent. Following what he thought were the principles and practices of St. Paul, he taught evangelists how to found churches that met in homes, recited a simple creed, and were overseen by a traveling Chinese catechist. He believed that the foreigner should withdraw from a new church after no more than a year. “I consider the presence of a foreigner rather a disadvantage than otherwise,” he wrote later (Allen 74). One of the catechists he had trained said to him, “Well, Sir, if you go on like this you will found a native church,” which was, of course, exactly what he wanted! (Allen 74).

After only nine months back in China, poor health required that he return to England, a move that deeply disappointed him. While he recovered, he threw himself into work on behalf of the mission, as did Beatrice, who served as Secretary of the St. Faith’s Associates, supporting the Deaconesses’ work among Chinese women. Allen longed to be allowed to return to the mission field, but permission was denied because of his health. Instead, he was given charge as an ordinary vicar of the small rural parish of Chalfont St. Peter in Buckinghamshire.

A new direction

At first, the extremely limited scope of this work depressed him, but, as he wrote later, he soon “began to study the methods of the Apostle St. Paul. From that day forward I began to see light” (Allen 75). What he first considered a massive waste of his energies turned out to be the inauguration of a brilliant career of writing about biblical patterns of church ministry that proved to be his greatest contribution to the church and to overseas missions.

At the age of forty-one, Beatrice bore Roland a second son, christened Iohn (not “John”), in 1904. Their years at Chalfont St. Peter were the happiest in Beatrice’s life, but they ended suddenly when, in 1907, Allen resigned in protest against the rule of the established church that he must baptize any child presented for the sacrament, regardless of whether the parents had any Christian commitment. He could not conscientiously perform religious ceremonies “even for undeserving persons who habitually neglect their religious duties, or openly deny the truth of the Creeds, or by the immorality of their lives openly defy the laws of God” (Allen 78). Many of his fellow clergy supported him, though they did so anonymously, and more than two hundred of his parishioners expressed their gratitude for his ministry by presenting him with an “elegant tea-service of sterling silver” (Allen 81).

In later life, his daughter said that she thought he sacrificed his family’s happiness for his “perceived mission,” and could do so only because he could live off Beatrice’s income, but Beatrice stood firmly behind him and sought to help him in any way, principally by “managing the household and serving as his amanuensis whenever he had need” (Allen 82). In any case, Allen was indifferent toward money, even refusing to receive compensation for preaching in others’ churches.

He spent his time reading, writing, and occasionally preaching for his friends when they were ill. He also did deputation work for overseas missions.

Home life

Roland and Beatrice brought up their two children in a way that was far from orthodox, to the extent of being eccentric. Neither of them had had much experience of young children, so from an early age they tended to treat them as adults … Both of them learned to play chess at an early age. Moreover, outdoor recreation was much more likely to be a cycle ride to explore medieval country churches, than participation in any active games… . [They] were expected to behave with adult patience and decorum, not to say stoicism. Every plateful of food had to be cleared of its contents, no matter how disagreeable.

Prisicilla and Iohn’s elderly and intellectual parents tended to keep themselves and their children aloof from most neighbors. And they seemed to assume that their offspring would share their contempt for pointless athleticism (Allen 83-84).

Early writing

Allen spent his time reading New Testament studies and writing. His first major essay in missionary theology, entitled “Foundation Principles of Foreign Missions,” appeared in 1910, the year of the great World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. He had already begun questioning traditional forms and principles of both church and missionary work, centered as they were upon a highly trained and ordained clergy. This conference “epitomized all Roland’s worst misgivings about the current attitudes of Western missionaries – their conscious and unconscious paternalism, their clericalism, their colonialism” (Allen 85-86). So, as one friend said, “he turned back to the Christian Book of Instructions” – the New Testament, especially Acts (Allen 86). 

Allen’s views were confirmed by a trip to India in 1910, where he met many mission and Indian church leaders.

He began his prophetic literary work in 1912, with the publication of “his most enduring work,” Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?”. Missionary Principles followed the next year in 1913. It was a “return to first principles,” his daughter said later (Allen 87). As he wrote, “St. Paul preached in a place for five or six months and then left behind him a Church, not indeed free from the need of guidance, but capable of growth and expansion” (Allen 87). The volume met with much praise, but he was disappointed because even men whom he greatly admired “seemed impervious to the need for change. ‘I could not understand how wise men could see what I saw and not change their whole manner of action,’” he wrote (Allen 88).

The next year, he “supplemented Missionary Methods with a shorter treatise, entitled Missionary Principles, which still has such validity that in recent years it has been described as a ‘simple text book on how to be a missionary of Jesus Christ – and not only in the overseas mission fields but equally useful in Britain in the training of the “house church” in the housing estate, or the “cell” in the industrial or commercial corporation’” (Allen 88). In it, he argued that “what missionaries need is … a faith in the Gospel which they preach … a deeper trust in the Holy Spirit to guide their converts … The wisest of us is ignorant: the Holy Spirit alone knows. The Gospel is the administration of the Spirit, rather than the inculcation of Law,” especially ecclesiastical law (Allen 89).

His sharp criticism of contemporary practices naturally made him less and less welcome as a speaker, but at this time he met two men who changed his life: Sidney J. W. Clark, a wealthy businessman, and Dr. Thomas Cochrane, a Presbyterian who had served in China. Clark recruited him to help work on a proposed Survey Application Trust and its publishing arm, World Dominion Press (Long and Rowthorn 384). Long became his patron and friend for most of the rest of his life. “All three” thought that much missionary work was misguided, and “all three shared ‘a deep concern for the place and pre-eminence of the Holy Spirit in all the work of the Church everywhere, and in the practical activities that this conviction involved’” (Allen 92-93).

Allen helped with some of the survey work of the Trust but didn’t think that surveys had much value, so he focused primarily on writing books and articles that challenged existing patterns and principles of church and missionary work.

World War I interrupted his work with the Trust, as he was called up to serve as chaplain on a hospital ship. His military service ended abruptly, however, for the ship was wrecked in a violent storm, forcing him to swim ashore in cold waters. He contracted pneumonia and had to be released.

Interlude

It took time for Allen to recover from pneumonia. He stayed at home in Harpenden in Hertfordshire, where he acted for many months as the temporary curate-in-charge of a church there. From autumn of 1917 to the end of the war in 1918, he worked as senior Classics teacher at the King’s School, Worcester. His family lived not far from the school, and he also preached in various cathedrals.

His manner of preaching was arresting and inspiring … [One person said that] as a preacher Mr. Allen is unconventional, frank and daring… His experiences in Peking have made him impatient of nearly all formal and nominal Christianity. Moreover, people used to say that when he spoke it often seemed to them that he was addressing concerns, which they thought were their private worries. [Years later, in Kenya, a settler wrote to him, saying], “You say that you, yourself, cannot comprehend God, and yet to me you are the only person I have met who is so near comprehending what God is.”

Roland kept meticulous notes, with quotations in Greek or Hebrew or even in Chinese, though he preached from memory. Allen possessed a remarkable memory. He could quote most of the Book of Common Prayer, the Bible, and long passages from Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin, as well as much English poetry.

Despite wartime duties, some of his best thinking and writing took place at this time. After studying modern educational theories, he believed more firmly than before that St. Paul’s methods were effective among people whose culture differed mostly widely from ours, for they relied not only on the communication of essential truths, but on the transforming work of the Holy Spirit to make these verities a new and vital force in the converts’ inner being. Pentecost and the World (1917) and Educational Principles & Missionary Methods (not published until 1919) expressed this simple message powerfully. Indeed, though he wrote often and powerfully about the need for indigenous churches, his main theme was the Holy Spirit. The essence of his message flowed from “the high and lofty significance which Allen ascribed to the Holy Spirit,” and from a preoccupation with certain methods of establishing “three-self” churches (Allen 103).

Writing about the miracle of “tongues” at Pentecost, Allen says: “The fact, clear and unmistakable, is that the Apostles, when the Holy Spirit descended upon them, began at once to address themselves to men out of every nation and language, and that the Spirit enabled them so to speak that men understood. Thus, at His first coming, the Holy Spirit revealed His nature and His work as world-wide, all-embracing. He revealed His work as enabling those to whom He came to preach Christ to men of every nation” (Allen 106).

Harry Boer, a prominent interpreter of Allen’s ideas, wrote that his “deepest and abiding significance lies in the perspectives that he opened by taking seriously the scriptural teaching that Pentecost is the source of all true missionary power and advance” (Allen 106). One such perspective was that Christian disunity was absurd, because all true Christians possess the same Holy Spirit and are thus spiritually one.

Post-War ministry and writing

After World War I, he continued a long association with the Survey Application Trust and World Dominion Press. With the help of the Trust, he published other books and pamphlets elaborating his re-conception of Christian mission, notably The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It (1927), and The Case for Voluntary Clergy (1930).

“These small books contain a radical criticism of missionary policy and practice current at that time and set forth an alternative vision of what might be done to establish truly indigenous, self-supporting churches” (Long and Rowthorn 383).

The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church (or, as he referred to it among his family, Sponx), was the only one of his books to have been widely read in his lifetime. “In it, [he] pursued still further his constant theme that Christ came to bring, not Law, but the Holy Spirit” (Allen 107). In other words, Christianity is not a new code of ethics, much less a system of church order, but the revelation of a new way of knowing and serving God. That means, among other things, that we must not seek first to educate people, build buildings, and construct machinery for evangelization and church life, but to hand over to them only four essentials: The Creed, the Bible, the Ministry, and the Sacraments (of baptism and the Lord’s Supper). Then, we should leave “the church’s further growth to the Holy Spirit, without seeking constantly to train and to control” (Allen 107).

Why? Because “the wind bloweth where it listeth [wishes, wills; John 3:8], said Christ, and spontaneous activity is a movement of the Spirit in the individual and in the Church, and we cannot control the Spirit” (Allen 108).

Responding to those who feared that giving authority to uneducated converts too early might open the door to heresy, he responded, “Am I not right in saying that in the early centuries of the Christian era the dangers to the Fathers, the dangers of unity, arose not from the illiterate bishops, but from the highly educated?” (Allen 108).

Because the gift of the Spirit was the core benefit of salvation, and it came through preaching, Allen maintained that the primary task of every missionary should be the propagation of the gospel. He did not deny the value of other ministries, such as education and medicine, but “for the missionary as evangelist … those tasks must be secondary” (Allen 108).

After the war ended, S.J.W. Clark provided for Allen and his family a house called, “Amenbury,” in Beaconsfield, a small town west of London, along with an annual honorarium that allowed him to devote himself entirely to the study of foreign missions.

Relatively older when they married, the Allens “did not find it easy to ‘socialize’ outside their own family, aside from a few friends from her youth,” whose children were among Priscilla and Iohn’s closest friends, as were their young first cousins, the children of Priscilla’s sister. One of those wrote, “Roland was a very kind and lively and amusing uncle to have” (Allen 109). Aside from occasional visits to Beatrice’s brother, “the family lived a somewhat reclusive existence on a rather elevated intellectual plane. Almost all their close friends were theologians” (Allen 109-110).

Responding to this adult atmosphere, Priscilla “to the end of her days felt that she had been let down by her parents” (Allen 111). Her mother was a strict disciplinarian, and Priscilla thought that her father’s total devotion to his work, which she admired, “often led him unthinkingly to subordinate his family’s happiness to his mission” (Allen 112). As a result, Priscilla and Iohn felt isolated from others outside their family and became socially awkward and lonely.

Their modest income was supplemented by funds from Priscilla’s parents’ estate, and then by fees that Roland earned by tutoring young people in Latin. His first student, “Winkie,” later married Iohn.

Non-Professional Missionaries

“One of the first activities of the Survey Trust for which Allen now worked was to issue a new journal, entitled World Dominion, to which Roland was a principal contributor throughout the 1920s” (Allen 119). Some of his articles were also published as pamphlets. He was also working on the surveys that the Trust leaders considered his prime responsibility, but he didn’t believe in the value of such surveys. He did make use of Trust monies to travel to Canada, Southern Rhodesia, South Africa, and India, and he did produce detailed studies of the work of the church there, but these were not for the purpose of publishing surveys. Instead, he was gathering material for his great project, an understanding of the reasons for the lack of growth in the Anglican Church in those areas.

The leaders of the Trust refused to publish his findings, so he issued them himself as “Non-Professional Missionaries,” under his own name. It has since been reprinted in The Ministry of the Spirit. In it, he expressed admiration for the work of many missionaries, but lamented the waste of resources by their lack of focus on the main task: Evangelism. “He waged war against everything that missions had tried to bring apart from [the Bible, the Creed, the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, and the Ministry] – the whole apparatus of a professional ministry, institutions, church buildings, church organizations, diocesan offices and all the rest of it – everything from harmoniums to archdeacons” (Allen 121).

Not only did he criticize the over-reliance on what he called “professional missionaries,” but he also attacked the assumption “that the administration of the sacraments of the Church could and should be restricted to a narrowly defined class, set apart as ‘professional clergy’” (Allen 122). In fact, he spent most of the rest of his life on this question of “voluntary clergy.” By this he meant “men in the group, of the group, ordained without giving up their present means of livelihood and giving their services freely” (Allen 122).

He was equally upset by the practice of “ordaining only callow youths straight out of college: ‘The Apostolic writer did not advise Timothy (nor Titus) to seek for young men … He told them to look for men who had already proved that they possessed the qualifications desired, men already married, whose households were such as they ought to be … Men who had experience of the world outside the Christian religious community … not “men of the world” (God forbid!) but men of God in the world’” (Allen 123).

Only by the widespread use of these “voluntary clergy,” or ministers, could the church meet the need of the churches, both at home and overseas, he maintained. The current system of a professional clergy distinct from the “laity” was a “pestilent distinction,” inherited from the Middle Ages, “which is closely linked to the priestcraft system” (Allen 125).

Fundamentally, Allen did not oppose “stipendiary clergy” per se; what he vehemently opposed was the idea that only a small caste of highly educated, fully paid men could administer the sacraments of baptism and especially the Lord’s Supper. The traditional system of theological education and fully paid clergy ensured that small gatherings of believers could not celebrate these rites, simply because they could not afford to support a full-time ordained minister or a church building in which to hold meetings. According to the Bible, where “two or three” are gathered together in the Lord’s name, there is a church; and where a church is, there must be the regular observance of the sacraments, including the Lord’s Supper. To deprive them of these means of grace simply because they couldn’t pay for a professional clergyman struck at the heart of the church since, for Allen, “church” must include the sacraments. “Any definition of a church must include the power to administer the Sacraments” weekly, not just when an ordained man happens to be in town (Allen 126). “The frequent celebration of the Eucharist as a corporate act of worship is regarded as the normal pattern in the local Church” (Allen 126). Only such a church could grow.

Further, according to Paul, elders, that is, presbyters or priests, were not qualified by a lengthy education in academic theology, but by the presence of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, moral probity, and a good testimony in their home and in the society. Find such men, teach them the Creed – that is, the basics of biblical doctrine – and how to read and understand the Bible, pray for them with the laying on of hands, and set them free to care for the flock over which God has given them charge. Yes, they will need further teaching and encouragement, but they have all that is required to serve as shepherds. 

“Travelling Salesman”

Under the auspices of the Trust, Allen visited and surveyed the church situations in Canada, South Africa and Rhodesia (1926), and Southern India and Assam (1927-1928). In each place, after learning what he could, he challenged the clergy, and even bishops, to “repent” of making local converts dependent upon them, keeping them from true reliance on the Holy Spirit, and tying them to Western money. Some responded to his “new” ideas; many found them too disturbing and revolutionary. Ordinary Christians – “laymen” – expressed appreciation for his courage and insight. 

Everywhere he went, “he was horrified by the distortion wrought by the Church’s constant need for money to support the stipendiary system: to build upon money is to build on a foundation is not of the Gospel; it is to bind the Church to the chariot wheels of Mammon” (Allen 143). “We think, he said, ‘in terms of one (highly educated ordained) man, one parish’… . We have to learn to think in terms of a college of priests in very small churches” (Allen 143).

In one, last great effort, he sent a copy of Voluntary Clergy Overseas to every bishop attending the 1930 Lambeth Conference. Despite some positive comments and small actions, “the meagre outcome was a bitter disappointment for him” (Allen 145). “Much time in his declining years was spent in profound depression” (Allen 145). 

One reason for this lack of acceptance of his views was that, in conversation he spoke off the cuff and tended to be belligerent, alienating potential friends. His books, though much more carefully composed and worded, also tended to be stern in tone. As his ideas met with a cold reception, he felt increasingly isolated and discouraged. One friendly bishop reproved him thus: “You must show more of Christ’s spirit in your dealings with people … Your words too often hurt without healing.” He cited another critic who said, “Mr. Allen seems to disapprove of everybody in the world except his family” (Allen 148). Others complained that he overlooked very real obstacles to the implementation of his proposals, such as the reluctance of most laity, who preferred to rely on a paid professional to do the work of ministry.

Finally, his prophetic message made many ashamed of themselves, because he showed up “the worldliness of the Church – a worldliness that affects most of us” (Allen 149). He raised “with ruthless persistence precisely those theological issues which are most easily evaded because they call into question current practice” (Allen 150).

East Africa

In 1932, he moved permanently to Kenya to be near his son Iohn, who put his father’s principle into practice, helping in churches while working as an educator. Their daughter Priscilla joined them and was her parents’ close companion until Beatrice’s death in 1960. 

At first, he was invited to preach occasionally, and wrote letters to the local press, until his bishop ordered him to stop. European Anglicans just tolerated him, but Africans warmed to his proposals. To them, he seemed to understand their culture. He helped in some churches and did some translations from English. He composed some works in English that were not widely read. In his mid-sixties, he learned to read the very difficult literary language of Swahili, eventually making English translations of Swahili epic poetry and historical writings (Allen 162). Meanwhile, his son Iohn had also become “a notable Swahili scholar” who could engage in friendly and learned dialogue with Muslim scholars.

The Allens settled comfortably into a home near Nairobi and were often visited by their children and grandchildren. During the early years of World War II, he spoke and wrote against the unquestioning patriotism of English settlers and their hostility towards Germans living in Kenya. He often visited an internment camp of “enemy” nations and would read Shakespeare with them. He represented their interests to the British authorities frequently.

He became a master player of chess, from whom his grandchildren to learn to play. Though often very sick, he continued to think and write up to the end of his life.

He died in Nairobi June 19, 1947.

Legacy

Allen’s ideas had little effect on the churches and missionary societies of his day but as he himself predicted, his work was rediscovered (in the 1960s) and has exercised a growing influence on missiology and ecclesiology in many places, not least in China.

Leading ideas

In Roland Allen: Pioneer of Spontaneous Expansion, J.D. Payne has summarized the principal themes of Roland Allen’s writings:

The Way of Jesus

Jesus taught his disciples by word and deed, not in an academic setting like the rabbis. He instructed them to preach the gospel, heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons. They were to go without taking provisions, to accept hospitality, and to turn away from those who openly refused to accept them. Disciples were to be incorporated into an earthly society, the church, with a focus on baptism and the Lord’s Supper. This way of Jesus was to be “an archetype of mission for the Apostolic Church,” for “the same Holy Spirit which descended upon Christ was to descend upon the apostles” (25-26).

The Apostolic Approach

“There is a great gulf between our idea of direct social service as the work of a missionary of the Gospel and [Paul’s] conception of his work as a missionary of the Gospel” (29). His methods succeed, while ours have failed. Paul’s approach to establishing churches was based on four things: An elementary Creed; the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; Orders – that is, an ordered ministry of deacons, priests, and bishops (Allen was an Anglican); and the Bible.

Once Paul had delivered these to his converts, he went to another place and left them to grow the church on their own. This approach depended on two principles: Paul did not lay down a church constitution but focused on the gospel of Christ. Then he moved on, without providing an elaborate church machinery.

Ecclesiology

Allen’s ecclesiology was based on two principles: “he held the Eucharist and the other rites in high esteem, and second, he emphasized the indigenous concept” (37). The weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper was the “essential centre” of the new church’s common life (38). To observe these, no “priest was necessary because Christ is the Priest … The Christian Eucharist is the great bond of fellowship. No Christian should be forbidden to sing it,” and it is a great witness to the world, one that every Christian should bear (39).

Allen believed also that every Christian lives by faith, with gifts sufficient for church life, so that every church had the power of Christ to itself as a complete church. Furthermore, nothing alien, especially Western, should be imported to a local church. The apostolic church “managed their own internal affairs under the leadership of their own officers, administered their own sacraments, controlled their own finances, and propagated themselves. Of course, no outside source must be allowed to control it.

Pneumatology

Building on the work of Henry Venn, Rufus Anderson, and John Nevius, Allen looked on missions in the light of the Holy Spirit. One person said, “Allen’s understanding of the Spirit ‘was probably [his] most important contribution to missiological theory and the most distinctive thrust of his thought.’ Another wrote, ‘the gift of the Holy Spirit to believers was something which was to govern Allen’s entire concept of mission, particularly that of the indigenous church’” (47).

He noted that in Acts 1:8, Luke focused on the internal Spirit, rather than on the external command to go and make disciples. The Spirit “created in [the early Christians] an internal necessity to preach the Gospel” (49). The Holy Spirit motivates the church to action.

The Place of the Missionary

“The focus of the missionary was to be on three priorities: evangelism, apostolic approach, and the ministration of the Spirit” (51).

As a consequence of a lower view of the Bible, the 1910 Edinburgh Conference and then the Jerusalem Conference in 1928 replaced the biblical focus on evangelism with a new priority – social action. Medical and educational ministries had their place, but evangelism must be supreme, for it meets the fundamental needs of all people. 

Missionaries must not be working toward an external result, but upon “the unfolding of a Person” in the lives of spiritually needy people. We must seek above all for people to have a “revelation of Christ” in their hearts. Neither is church growth paramount, but the presence of Christ among believers. Missionaries should not stress supposed similarities among religions, or pursue social improvement, but center on the revelation of Christ in previously darkened minds. “We cannot degenerate into social reformers” (57). “For Allen, the revelation of Christ was evangelism” (57).

Making disciples was the priority, but not the focus, of missions: Christ was the focus. “The missionary was responsible for making Christ known so that others might believe” (58). As we have noted, Allen believed that we could, if we imitated Paul’s methods, pass on to new converts the Creed, the sacraments, the Orders (that is, church leaders), and the Holy Scriptures. Leaders must come from within the congregation, not from the outside.

Devolution

In Allen’s day, missiologists were talking about devolution, by which they meant the transfer of church authority to the new converts. But Allen affirmed that, first, outsiders had no such authority to transmit, and second, that the new churches already had all the authority they needed to govern themselves, because they possessed the Holy Spirit and the other three essentials mentioned above. They must be set free to control their own funds, take responsibility for evangelism, and take responsibility for the care of churches which they had planted.

He defined the church as “an organized body of Christians in a place with its officers” (70). Above it was the universal church. No other body, including a foreign missionary society, had the right to rule over the local church.

Missionary Faith

“Encompassing all the missionary practices was missionary faith.” Not a salvific faith, but “a faith in the Spirit’s ability to sustain His churches without  the missionary’s domination and without devolution” (77).

There would be problems, of course, including the corruption of doctrine and life, but (1) Paul knew such also and (2) our churches do, too!

“Proper missionary faith was the bond that held together the various responsibilities of the missionary” (81).

Leadership education

“The common missionary practice of his day was the importation of Western pedagogical systems into non-Western contexts … The methodology fostered a dependency on external resources for church education [and] was training and equipping the people to maintain foreign systems and organizations, which were imported by the missionaries. For Allen, native education was to develop out of the indigenous Church in that region” (84).

The current practice had major problems: It was costly, and schools admitted unbelievers for positions of influence in their country, not ministry in the church.

In addition: It created a dichotomy between the education of the church leaders and the local church and its concerns and need; it produced a dichotomy between the Christian education and the native life; over time, the original purpose of creating leaders for the church was supplanted by other goals, such “evangelization of nonbelievers, improving the country socially and morally, and influencing people’s minds in preparation for the gospel” (87). Finally, the nonbelievers who received such education often became enemies of the church.

Voluntary clergy

“Because missionaries received a stipend from the missionary societies, they could not help but propagate the same stipendiary systems on the mission field” (89). They created two classes of converts, those who were paid agents of the missionaries, and those who were not. Then, the maintenance of buildings and money to support of clergy became the chief duty of other converts.

Allen listed at least fourteen problems with this system of stipendiary clergy! Among them were: It ended up denying the Lord’s Supper to many believers, since only a paid clergyman could administer them. It fostered a system of having believers pay evangelists rather than doing evangelism themselves. To local people, it “displayed a religion without power,” since the focus was on money, and locals saw ordained clergy as hirelings. Note: Allen was not against paying pastors of local congregations by the members of the local church. 

This system “fostered unbiblical qualifications for the clergy,” rather than those listed by Paul in the Pastoral Epistles (95). It delayed the organization of the church, since it depended on having highly educated men and the financial means to support them. It separated the clergy from their people and their struggles. It often produced the impression that the mission held the purse strings, forcing men to please the missionary to remain employed. It hindered the spontaneous expansion of the church by requiring people to wait until they could afford a paid ministry.

Non-professional missionaries

Allen knew no sacred-secular distinction. He thought that all converted people should be evangelists while remaining in their current occupation, and that some of these should go overseas as foreign missionaries by working in government, education, business, medicine, etc., rather than as professional missionaries. By teaching that zealous converts should join the special caste of missionary, the church was robbing the church of its best evangelists in the community and even the world.

“The professional missionary preaches by his example that the way to convert the world is to forsake the common life of men and to live in a special class doing a special work. It is neither necessary nor desirable that all Christian men should follow his example … But if a Christian who lives among non-Christians and consciously seeks by his life and conversation to reveal to others the secret of Christ’s grace is a missionary, then indeed every Christian ought to be a missionary and do missionary work” (107).

Naturally, such an approach involved very real dangers, for the more mature missionaries could not control the spontaneous expansion of churches that would result. Allen combated this fear with his conviction that “missionaries were to manifest a proper faith in the Bridegroom, instead of focusing on the imperfections and immaturities of the Bride. In essence, the missionaries were to yield control to the Spirit who indwelled the new believers” (115).

Evaluation

In his own day, Allen was a voice crying in the wilderness, with very few accepting his ideas and even fewer acting on them. He was calling for a radical paradigm shift that took decades to transform missionary thinking. The explosive growth of indigenous churches in the Global South, especially China, has demonstrated that he was right.

Today, he is considered a true prophet; his once-revolutionary proposals are seen to be Scriptural and workable. He has become “mainstream.”

One big question remains about his proposal for non-professional foreign missionaries, however. How are people to receive the needed language and culture training for cross-cultural work, and how are they to be adequately supported and guided in another country?

Nevertheless, even missionary societies regard his missiology as biblical and necessary to implement in other cultures.