Frank Allan led church through challenging times

From Atlanta-


In the late 1960s, while rector at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Macon, the Rev. Frank Allan, who’d later become the eighth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, stood squarely at a crossroads. St. Paul’s already had a smattering of black members. But during a sermon one Sunday, Allan told his congregation that further integration and shifts were imminent and critical.

He was interrupted in mid-sentence by a woman named Hazel Burns, who reportedly stood up and asked, “Are you saying that [as an all-white church) we’ve been wrong all these years?”

He abandoned his sermon and engaged Burns in a dialogue that other parishioners joined. Though she wasn’t present that day, Allan’s longtime friend and colleague, the Rev. Martha Sterne, said the congregation “discussed, argued, discussed some more and some even cried.”

More here-

https://www.ajc.com/news/local-obituaries/frank-allan-led-church-through-challenging-times/NvlPALGDpMYnFg6DySQQwL/