Paul Allen

PORTLAND – The Rev. Dr. Paul S. Allen, pastor emeritus of Winnetka Congregational Church in Winnetka, Ill., died peacefully on Dec. 17, 2024, in Portland, Maine, surrounded by members of his family.

Born in Jerusalem of missionary parents, Dr. Allen lived in what was then Persia for eight years, when the family returned to the U.S. and moved to Ohio. After high school, where he edited the school paper and composed the school song, he attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. He and Marilee McRill of Poplar Bluff, Mo., also a student at Wheaton, were married on their graduation day, June 14, 1948. After graduating, he did newspaper work in Mississippi and West Virginia before deciding to enter the ministry. In 1954 he began studies at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.

After graduating with a Master of Divinity, he joined the staff of Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church and served there for eight years. From there he went to the non-denominational Winnetka Congregational Church as senior pastor and served there for 25 years until his retirement in 1991.

In his ministry, Dr. Allen sought to interpret the implications of the Christian gospel for personal and congregational life, and for society at large. When the church celebrated its centennial in 1974, it raised money to remodel part of the church building and to form a low-interest loan fund to help inner-city churches in Chicago. One early borrower was Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago where President Barak Obama and his family were members for a time.

To meet community needs, members of the church and its staff organized The Women’s Exchange to provide life skills education and fellowship during the early years of the women’s liberation movement, and Harkness House for Children to provide day care for preschool children, both thriving independent agencies today.

Later in his time at Winnetka Congregational Dr. Allen arranged for a partnership with Friendship Baptist Church, an African American congregation in the Austin Neighborhood of Chicago pastored by the Rev. Dr. Shelvin Hall. Through their interchanges members of both congregations came to know and appreciate one another better across racial and economic differences.

In 1981 he earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from McCormick and for many years after he taught short courses and advised students in doctoral programs at McCormick as adjunct faculty. The annual Paul Allen Lectures in Pastoral Care at McCormick were endowed by church members in his honor when he retired from Winnetka Congregational.

In retirement he helped organize Interfaith House, a 65-bed agency at 3456 Franklin Boulevard on Chicago’s West Side for healing and restoring homeless persons after hospital stays. He became its first board president when it opened in 1994.

Paul Allen relished encounters with others—the person sitting next to him on the plane, the person who shared the elevator in his building, the person who helped him up after a fall in the park. In later years, as much as he valued his waning independence, he delighted in getting to know the people hired to care for him—he was interested in their history, their family, their hopes and dreams. And he shared his own. By default, he gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. He felt himself and others, no matter differences in beliefs or aspirations, members of one family.

Dr. Allen was predeceased by Marilee Allen in 2011.

He is survived by his sister, Lois Larkin of California; his children Pam Allen of Portland, Maine, and Tim Allen of Phoenix, Ariz.; his grandchildren Caitlin FitzGerald, Ryan FitzGerald, Samantha Allen, Chelsea Allen, and Nicholas Allen; and his great-grandsons Henry Turner and Desmond FitzGerald.