
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 25, 1994                   TAG: 9405250040
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PASTOR HONORED FOR HIS DECADES OF SOCIAL SERVICE

Once, when the Rev. James Allison showed up at a meeting of clergy to discuss segregation and racism in Roanoke, he found he was the only white minister there. A black minister asked why he had come.

Allison quoted the Bible: ``He that loveth the Lord and hateth his brother is a liar and the truth is not in him.''

For decades, Allison melded faith and social activism - fighting racism and poverty in the Roanoke Valley and beyond.

On Tuesday, Allison was recognized for his efforts. Total Action Against Poverty honored him with its third annual Noel C. Taylor Distinguished Humanitarian Award.

Allison was pastor at Raleigh Court Presbyterian Church for 31 years before retiring in 1990. The church is in one of the city's more affluent neighborhoods, but Allison never let that stop him from working to help people with less money and fewer advantages.

Church Elder Laddie Fisher remembers a time in the early 1960s when Allison stood before his congregation with tears in his eyes. He told of a family the church had turned away, because it was believed the family had been trying to manipulate the charity system.

But soon after, Allison told the congregation, tragedy had struck ``and today that family is spread all over the newspaper.''

``Maybe if we had helped,'' Fisher remembers Allison saying, ``it might have made a difference.''

``He really cared,'' Fisher says. ``He worked one-on-one with people as well as on issues.''

Allison was born in Tazewell County and raised by his grandparents in Pulaski County. He served as a military chaplain and the pastor of an Augusta County church before coming to Raleigh Court Presbyterian in 1960.

Soon after his arrival, Allison joined black ministers in fighting to get the city to clean up its rat-infested dump in Washington Park, in the center of Roanoke's black community. He served on the Roanoke School Board from 1979 to 1985, during some of the board's most tumultuous years.

In the mid-1980s he traveled to Central America and returned home to speak out against atrocities attributed to U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

He acknowledged that some positions that mainline Presbyterian clergy had taken on ``social justice'' issues had not always been popular. But he has said that ministers have a responsibility to follow the values set down in the Bible and to lead their congregations in the same direction.

Allison has served on the boards of the American Red Cross, Total Action Against Poverty and other community organizations.

The Noel Taylor Award is named for the former mayor of Roanoke, a minister who was the award's first recipient in 1992. The 1993 award was given to businessman Lawrence H. Hamlar.

by CNB