The Very Rev. Allen
James Hitchcock on the Passing of Bishop Pike's Celebrated Convert
In mid-September 2013, two voices from the past were briefly heard again in St. Louis. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, in terms that could only be called gushing, the death of J. C. Michael Allen, who from 1976 to 1998 was dean of Christ Church Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. The gush was not, of course, over his death, but over St. Louis's good fortune in having once had him as a spiritual leader.
The reporter consistently referred to the former dean as "the Very Rev. Allen," which was itself odd in a day when so many clergy liked to be known simply as Bob or Mike. But the use of the rather stilted title confirmed the desired impression that the dean had indeed been a man of stature.
A Confusing Conversion Account
The Very Rev. Allen arrived in St. Louis in the American Bicentennial year, with his credentials more than merely in order: born and partly raised in Europe, the son of a prominent journalist, Harvard degree, reporter for Look magazine when it was a major publication, rector of a historic Manhattan parish, dean of a seminary.
Among the numerous things in the obituary that seemed to require clarification was the claim that the future dean's father had been "blacklisted by the Catholic Church" for "reporting on the deaths of thousands of people at the hands of the fascists in the Spanish Civil War." The claim gave the Very Rev. Allen yet further stature, in that anti-Catholicism is now a staple of much of liberal religion. But the American media were overwhelmingly on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, usually to the point of ignoring atrocities perpetrated by the Left, so it is difficult to understand why the senior Allen was singled out, or exactly how he suffered.
What would have caught the public's eye in 1976, and what was resurrected in 2013 for the dwindling number of people with a nostalgia for that era, was the report that the future Very Rev. Allen had been an agnostic, perhaps even an atheist, until, while interviewing him for Look, none other than Bishop James A. Pike of California converted him!
"Converted" was perhaps not quite the word, since, once again, the obituary left unanswered questions. Supposedly, the future Very Rev. Allen had been so impressed by Pike's outspokenness on racism, abortion, and workers' rights that he said, "If I could believe in God, I'd become a priest," to which Pike replied, "We'll work on that."
How exactly such a response managed to convert the future dean, and how exactly the two "worked on it," were not specified. Intentionally or not, the obituarist implied that Pike's position on certain issues was itself a kind of proof of God's existence. But that, too, was confusing. In the heady sixties, Pike was scarcely the only man in America to hold such views, nor were they confined to the clergy. But the reporter, by his silence, seemed to imply that religious beliefs were not important to the Very Rev. Allen, that he was attracted primarily to the bully pulpit that the ministry could provide for people like himself. If he ever preached on uniquely Christian themes, such as the saving power of Jesus, the obituarist did not find it necessary to mention it.
Confusion About Children
Christ Church Cathedral is a magnificent gothic structure built during the Civil War, and it must sometimes have seemed to its new dean to be exactly the kind of anachronism that was holding the Episcopal Church back.
James Hitchcock is Professor emeritus of History at St. Louis University in St. Louis. He and his late wife Helen have four daughters. His most recent book is the two-volume work, The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life (Princeton University Press, 2004). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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