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| Daniel Allen |
Many outstanding Jamaica Baptist Union (JBU) ministers – such as Menzie Sawyers, William Webb, Azariah McKenzie, Arthur Edgar and Luther Gibbs – were from the garden parish of St. Ann. Also from the garden parish was Daniel Emmanuel Allen (1913-1953).
Born in Brown’s Town, St. Ann in 1913, Dan Allen, as he was affectionately called, was only forty when he died. Yet, he packed his years with thoughtful and transformative ministry and he contributed significantly to JBU’s development.
As a child, Allen grew up in the home of a father who was a deacon in the Brown’s Town Baptist Church. His parents ensured that he and his siblings attended church regularly. At church, they came under the influence of Rev. George E. Henderson who was pastor of the church from 1876 to 1916 as well as Henderson's successor, Harry M. Brown. In 1924, Allen professed faith in Jesus Christ and was baptized.
After graduation from Brown’s Town Elementary School, Allen taught at his alma mater, prior to answering the call to the Christian ministry. JBU approved his application and he entered Calabar Theological College for ministerial preparation under the leadership of English Baptist missionary Ernest Price and the Australian theologian, David Davis. When he was graduated in 1934, his former teachers said they were confident that he would be an effective minister of the Gospel.
Thursday, March, 27, 1935 was a special day in Allen’s life. On that day, he and nine other graduates of Calabar College, were ordained and commissioned to the Christian ministry at a service attended by a very large crowd of worshippers. Fifteen ministers officiated at the ordination service over which Rev. C. Orr, the Acting JBU Chairman, presided and at which Rev. W. J. Thompson delivered the charge to the ordinands based on Acts 10:38.
Allen commenced his pastoral ministry in the Bellas Gate circuit of Baptist churches where he served for eighteen months, followed by a fourteen-year pastorate in the Thompson Town circuit. During his time in Thompson Town, Allen led his circuit to plant the Elgin Baptist Church and establish a school attached to it. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace and as Chairman of the Clarendon School Board.
Allen completed the years of his pastoral ministry in the Bethel
Town circuit in Westmoreland, starting in 1950. One of the lasting
contributions of his ministry in Bethel Town was the erection of a Centre for
Domestic Science designed to help certain school leaver attain qualification
for employment.
Wedding bells rang for Dan Allen in 1942 when he took the hand of Joyce Hope Manning, a teacher and social worker, in marriage. The union produced Anthony Allen, who became a distinguished medical doctor and psychiatrist. Anthony also studied theology at United Theological College of the West Indies and Yale Divinity School. He pioneered a Holistic Healing Ministry in the Jamaica Baptist Union.
In 1948, at the age of thirty-five years, Allen was elected JBU chairman (now president). In his capacity as JBU Chairman, he addressed a gathering of 3,000 British Baptists in the Westminster Cathedral in London. Two years earlier, he delivered an address before 40,000 delegates attending the annual meeting in Chicago of the National Baptist Convention. USA.
As JBU chairman, he chose “Christ on the Caribbean Road” as the topic for his charge to the Assembly in 1949. In his address, Allen noted that “the Caribbean is our immediate field,” and likened the West Indies to “giant pebbles thrown about by Hercules in a fabric of the gods.” Allen declared that Christ had won “triumph on the Caribbean Road.”
The first day of August 1838 was a triumph of the Christ on the Caribbean Road…. When Jamaica Baptists in 1842 declared their independence, founded Calabar College and sent missionaries into other islands of the Caribbean, the Christ on the Caribbean Road won another triumph.
We need such a policy
on Religious Unity. A serious threat to unity in the Caribbean is growing
denominational rivalry and overlapping. We Baptists with our “moderation” are
in a happy position to lead the way to the round-table conference to resolving
our denominational differences, arrive at a basis for unity amid diversity and
a common voice against common dangers and necessary witness to the oneness to
the body of Christ. This might be approached through the Christian Council….
Why not appoint a committee to discuss with other Denominations the possibility
of a Theological faculty in the West Indian University?
In the wake of the inauguration in 1958 of the Federal Legislature of the West Indies Federation, a project that enjoyed Allen’s support, Allen saw a crisis looming in the region. Speaking of Jamaica in particular, he said this:
[In Jamaica] we see a
people without a country. Four-fifth of the land is owned by one-fifth of its
people. The bulk of the poor people live on the tiny rocky holdings on the
hillside in slums in the towns, or in the barracks and the small cottages on the
large sugar estates. Home life, the bed-rock of any nation is undermined by the
wretched housing conditions in which the poor live…. If we believe that Christ
came for “the least, the lowest and the last” and for the whole man, can we as
a Christian Church leave the forlorn masses to the expediency of politics and
exploitation of politicians?
Proud of the Baptist heritage, Allen challenged the Assembly to “remember what Baptists have to offer at this crucial hour.”
We have a history that
is inspiring; a heritage of toughness; a vision that pushes back the horizons;
a voice that is bold – of Christ; a spirit that is militant, calling out a
non-violent crusade against social evils and Government blunders; an interpretation
of the Christ and His principles that leaves nothing to question. The only
independent domination in this land, it has stood for “no difference” in our
ranks; for equal opportunity; for setting the premium only on character,
calibre and achievement; a Christ that conquers. It could be said that the
fathers; “as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as
having nothing, yet possessing all things.” For in Christ, they possessed the
wherewithal to conquer in the face of great odds to forge their way up the road
to blaze the Caribbean trail…. [Baptist brought a witness] that marched along
the Caribbean Road, breaking down barriers, building up brotherhood, planting
an idea, inspiring a vision, making a venture, slowly but surely evolving a
Caribbean dream.
At
the same time, Allen asked Baptists to deal with the crisis they were facing
even as they tried to offer leadership in the nation:
We have suffered a
series of reverses; the ravaging storm of 1944; the stern necessities of the
years of World War II; and the inflated cost of living in this post war era.
Allen acknowledged the failure of the Financial Rehabilitation Scheme to achieve its maximum potential and the breakdown of the JBU Central Fund. Yet, he appealed to the Union to “bestir” itself and to launch a constructive and progressive program that reckoned with the assets of the Union possessed. These included: 220 churches “with a sound testimony and loyal set of officers, members and workers; a ministry that declared the whole counsel of God and a standard of layfolk that is as good as any."
According to Allen, JBU needed to launch a campaign “against poverty and its cause,” develop a policy on education, and continue to "offer passionate witness to Christ the king and his kingdom."
This world with its
false estimate of life, wrong scale of values and motive that is materialistic,
must perish. This then is the choice – kingdom or chaos. We must boldly
proclaim to a world undone, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His
righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you…. At such times as
these, we too must find the gospel a necessity laid up on us. We must be
constrained by the love of Christ. We must preach this Eternal Gospel
passionately, audaciously, without apology, without compromise.
While many trace the beginnings of Caribbean theology to the 1970s, it is noteworthy that as early as 1949, Allen conceived his theology and mission thrust in terms of the Caribbean. He had an expansive vision of ministry in Jamaica, the land of his birth, and beyond. In 1951, Allen was elected JBU Secretary (now General Secretary). He forged links to the international church community, and he was a member of JBU deputations to the United Kingdom, United States and Canada. He was still serving as JBU Secretary at the time of his death.
Wanting to contribute to the renewal of Baptist life in his country of birth, Allen edited or co-authored several books. In 1949, Allen edited An Hundredfold, which included chapters by C. G. Whylie, David Morgan and Keith Tucker. In the chapter he contributed to the volume, Allen surveyed developments in JBU over the period, 1842 and 1944. The period commenced with the fourth anniversary of Emancipation and Jamaica Baptists’ declaration of independence of the Baptist Missionary Society. Allen begins by discussing the significance of these historic events. He then celebrates the contribution of Calabar College to the training of Jamaican ministers and teachers. He discusses the JBU mission to Africa, the publication of the Jamaica Baptist Reporter, the formation of the Jamaica Baptist Union, the public advocacy of the Union in such areas as human rights and free education and the establishment of Calabar High School. After mentioning the death of William Knibb and Thomas Burchell, 1845-56, he discusses the Morant Bay Rebellion and the centenary of the JBU. Allen encouraged confident trust in God as the Union looked toward another century of witness.
With Rev. David A. Morgan, he co-authored Jamaica Baptists: Whence and Whither. Both ministers also co-authored Baptist Witness in the Pearl of the Antilles, in which Allen expresses his love for his homeland. Claiming that Jamaica “is a land beautiful beyond description,” he described his country as “brightest jewel in the British Crown … the loveliest Island in the Tropics… the land of perpetual spring, the Western Eden… [and] a land to be desired.” However, at the time of writing, he claimed that Jamaica was at a crossroads, “facing poisoning paganism in a subtle new guise from without, and disintegration from within.” He lamented the fact that churches from nineteen different Christian denominations existed in the small community of Savanna la Mar, with a population of only about 3,000 inhabitants. “The absurd overlapping and sub-dividing of the churches of Jamaica naturally result in the weakness of all and the strength of none,” he complained.
In Baptist Witness in the Pearl of the Antilles, Allen celebrates the ministry of George Liele.
Be it to the immortal
glory of George Leisle (sic), a man with a pioneering and adventurous spirit,
the spirit of “Missions,” and with a powerful personality and passion for the
souls of men, that the origination and orientation was his. It was he who,
constrained by the love of Christ, caught the vision, “went out and looked upon
the burdens of his brethren” in Jamaica, blazed the trail for their deliverance
from bondage and great and glorious heritage and future.
Allen praised the struggle waged against slavery:
Under the dynamic
leadership of Leisle, the native Baptist churches of Jamaica became militant
and engaged in the ‘Death Struggle’ against slavery.
He acknowledged the contribution the British Baptists made in Jamaica in the field of education and in the fight for emancipation.
The fight so nobly
begun by Leisle and climaxed by Knibb was won. On August 1st 1838,
the slaves in Jamaica received full freedom.
Concerning Baptists in Jamaica, Allen lamented the Calabar Impasse 1931-1937. He blamed “the pettiness and play for power that made men mad and plunged the glorious Baptist Cause in Jamaica in a retrogression from which there has since been no retrieve.”
Influenced by both the Gospel and the teachings of Marcus Garvey, Allen put forward his prescription for progress in the world of his day.
Twenty
years ago, [the] Gospel came into my boy-life, broke the power of cancelled
sin, set me free and sent me out to study, suffer and serve my Saviour and my
fellowmen, enduring hardness as a “good soldier for Jesus Christ.” It has been
the joy of my life. I know its efficiency and sufficiency. “I am not ashamed!”
We
must remember and remind the world that there is a power efficient and
sufficient for its every ill and its every need. We must remind the nations
that they dare not leave the Prince of Peace out of their councils with
impunity: “for there is none other name under the heaven given among men
whereby we must be saved.” We must “tell it out among the nations that the Lord
is king.”
It is my profound conviction that the Negro race has a great part to play, a distinctive contribution to make in this world crisis and paralysis. To play its part well, to make its contribution towards the peace and practicability of “One World” – the coloured groups of the world over must become “One People.” They must unite; they must make Common Cause; they must work determinedly together towards a determine goal. This is our one hope. We must pool our resources, share our savings as well as our sufferings. We must realize “One World” within the “Negro Realm.” Though we differ here and there we must agree towards the main issue and ultimate goal; though we have assimilated different cultures and economies, we must achieve unity amidst diversity.
During the JBU Assembly at the East Queen Street Baptist Church in February 1953, delegates were advised that Dan Allen was seriously ill. After a short illness, Allen died in the Montego Bay Hospital. A very large group of worshippers attended his funeral service that took place in the Bethel Town Baptists Church in March 1953. Joyce, his widow, Tony, his son, and his two sisters, Mrs. A. Christian and Mr. Ethel Thomas, were on hand to hear the tributes paid to this outstanding leader among Jamaica Baptists.
Rev. Sidney H. Helwig officiated at the funeral service; Rev. Keith Tucker represented the Chairman of the Jamaica Baptist Union. Rev. D. A. Morgan presented a eulogy and Rev. S. H. Greaves, Lennie Brown and Fergus Lewis were among the other ministers who took part in the conduct of the service.
In a tribute to her deceased husband, Joyce Allen described him as “an erudite and cultured gentleman, a very effective preacher, an outstanding leader, a loving pastor, a true friend and confidant to many, a beloved husband and father and above all, a consecrated and faithful minister of Jesus Christ.”
Daniel Allen provides an example of a minister who was deeply committed to Christ and who joyfully placed his God-given gifts at the disposal of the church and the community. He did not need many years to make a sound contribution to JBU’s development. May his witness and example provide rich encouragement to contemporary ministers of the Gospel. May we be inspired to not not limit our possibilities by the number of our years.
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