Comic, author, and singer Steve Allen, a professed agnostic, had a strong connection to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Allen, who died Oct. 30 at age 78, frequently attended services at Bel Air Presbyterian Church (see link #4 below) in Los Angeles but never formally joined the congregation, according to Presbyterian News Service.
Allen contributed to productions by the Presbyterian Media Mission, hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas programs.
During a crises in the 1980s in the Middle East, he produced radio and television spots that kept the plight of the hostages, including Presbyterian missionary and former General Assembly moderator Ben
Weir, in the nation's consciousness.
He was the featured speaker at the Presbyterian Media Luncheon at the Fort Worth General Assembly last year, discussing his personal campaign to eliminate vulgar language, sex, and violence from television and movies.
"I am an agnostic and all that means is that I really don't know," Allen said in his last interview with National Public Radio.
"I assume there's a God because I can't figure out how
anything, much less the whole universe, could have gotten here with no cause at all."
Allen is best known for his comedy, and was the first host of The Tonight Show, where he told jokes, played the piano, and chatted.
"To me, the whole world seems like one endless straight
line," he once said.
"There is an essential absurdity to human life and to humanity itself. One good result of that mindset is
it keeps your humor ever fresh because there are new outrages and new absurdities always. We'll never run out of them."