Definition
During the first half of the twentieth century, the upper San Pedro River Valley in the lower corner of Southeastern Arizona was a quiet area of ranches and farms. At a Phoenix tent revival meeting in January 1958, Urbane Leiendecker, a valley rancher, donated 1250 acres to “God’s Man of Faith and Power,” A.A. Allen, an independent Pentecostal faith-healing evangelist. Allen (1911–1970) later purchased another 1250 acres from the Leiendecker family and renamed the area “Miracle Valley.” On 4 mi2 of ranchland in between Bisbee and Sierra Vista and three and a half miles north of the Mexican border, Allen built his “Mecca of the Miraculous;” his ministry headquarters, a Bible College, airstrip, record company, farm, faith, and home complete with miracle healing waters and plans for an utopian Christian city. By the late 1960s, Allen had become America’s “best-known faith healer.”
Allen’s legacy was unique for both its interracial character and for its independent,...
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Barfoot, C.H. (2019). Allen, A. A.. In: Gooren, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions. Religions of the World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27078-4_320
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