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Now that Oklahoma's Oral Roberts has joined the Methodist ministry and de-emphasized the curative aspects of his high-decibel revivals, Allen is probably the best-known faith healer in the nation. Although ignored by mainstream Protestant churchmen, he has a large and enthusiastic following among fundamentalist Christians in the South and Southwest. Last year alone, A. A. Allen Revivals, Inc. grossed $2,692,342—not counting the salaries of Allen and his two associate preachers, who take their cut directly from "their ministry."
Miracle Valley. Born in Arkansas, Allen was converted from Methodism to Pentecostalism in his early 20s, when he heard a woman evangelist preach in a country church, eventually became a minister with the Assemblies of God. By 1953, he was already concentrating on faith healing—and prospering. Three years later, the Assemblies of God dismissed him for failing to appear at a church trial resulting from a Tennessee drunken-driving arrest, but Allen hardly seemed to care. The same year, he organized his own Miracle Revival Fellowship, which claims to be nondenominational, but has become in effect an independent sect, headquartered in Allen's own blossoming desert town, Miracle Valley, Ariz.
Located on 1,250 acres of desert land in Arizona's Cochise County, Miracle Valley today is a teetotaling, nonsmoking oasis of evangelistic fervor and hard-nosed business. At the Miracle Valley Bible College, 100 students from as far away as the Philippines (his "special" mission territory) study the Allen brand of evangelism. In its busy headquarters building, squads of secretaries, mail clerks and printers attend the banks of file cards, automatic typewriters and offset presses that allow Allen to print and mail out more than 55 million pieces of literature every year. TV and radio technicians stand by to prepare Allen's daily radio broadcasts (58 stations) and weekly television programs (43 stations). There is a record company (47 albums of sermons and gospel music), an airstrip (Cessna 150 at the ready), and a barnlike, 3,000-capacity church to hold the faithful who come by train, plane, bus and auto to attend each of Allen's twice-yearly, 17-day camp meetings. For those who want to stay, there is even a subdivision called Miracle Valley Estates, where the modest homes are dominated by Allen's own twelve-sided house of wood and cut stone, with a swimming pool under a simulated stained-glass canopy.
On the Road. Most of the time, though, Allen, his assistant ministers, and a handful of trusted aides are on the road, moving from meeting to meeting in a caravan of five huge moving vans brightly labeled "A. A. Allen Revivals." Advance men have prepared the way for them, enlisting local ministers, mostly from Pentecostal churches, to share the stage with Allen, rejoice in the cures, and give a little pitch for their own services. Allen's specialty, along with the cures, is the $100 pledge, and the hard sell is usually made by one of his assistants. "The Scriptures say you got to vow and pay, vow and pay, vow and pay," Brother Don Stewart exhorted the Crouch Temple crowd last week. "You got to promise God, and you got to keep the promise. If you want him to lift your pain, to make you whole, to bring you joy, you got to have faith. Faith. And faith is to vow and pay."