Photographed at Healing Love Fellowship
Listening to Chaplain Allen Tanner's life story, you might find yourself wondering if the man is summarizing the plot of some long-lost Scorsese film.
Tanner — some call him "Chappy" — moved to Nashville from Florida about a half-decade ago, and he currently leads a nondenominational Christian worship group called Healing Love Fellowship. Two-and-a-half years ago, the group began assembling at Bikini Beach, a biker bar on Antioch Pike where Tanner's wife Eve works as a bartender. He rides, and he found that congregating at Bikini Beach was a way to reach people he identified with. He's since moved Healing Love Fellowship to his home, as members who have struggled with alcoholism find it challenging to convene in a bar. They meet every Sunday.
And if you're to believe his story, the circumstances that led Tanner to find religion are anything but commonplace.
"When I was last arrested, I was wanted in five states and three countries," Tanner tells the Scene from across his kitchen counter. "I was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List for six months. All white-collar stuff — embezzlement, extortion, that type of thing."
Tanner has closely buzzed salt-and-pepper hair and a firm, steady gaze. When he shares the details of his life — from a childhood filled with abuse to his experiences as a runaway teen and his multiple prison sentences — he is clear on every detail, as though he's gone over them time and time again. And whether or not you believe his stories about serving as a Mafia errand boy, having a gun held to the back of his head in a Colombian jungle shack and being flown to Miami on a crime boss's private jet, there is a sincerity in his voice when he speaks of his call to serve others. His eyes well with tears when he plays a video of himself and his fellow bikers delivering Christmas presents to a family in need.
Tanner was born in Connecticut, and after years in an orphanage, he was adopted by a family that he says was "dysfunctional in every sense of the word." "Just about every abuse you can think of, it happened to me," he says. The chaplain says he ran away from home at 13, and shortly thereafter encountered a figure who would forever alter the course of his life — a diminutive Italian-American with a Rolls-Royce who invited Tanner into his home, got him off the streets and offered him work running errands. The man, says the chaplain, was a "Mafia figure."
"I credit him for saving my life and getting me off the streets," says Tanner. "God works in mysterious ways."
From there, Tanner's story grows more and more astonishing: relocating to Florida and embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a hotel chain; working for another high-level criminal; literally escaping from jail. But there's one date that means more to the chaplain than any other: Feb. 13, 1981. That's when, on the verge of a breakdown in his one-man cell, he says he found a small pocket Bible beneath his bunk. He opened it and it fell to Romans 8:28: "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."
Tanner credits that moment and that verse with saving his life and setting him on a path to serve others. "Some people call it 'jailhouse religion,' " he says. "But when I got real, it wasn't jailhouse religion anymore."
He went on to become a chaplain's clerk, earn his GED and, after his release, receive dual master's degrees in theology and divinity from Emory University's Candler School of Theology. From there, he says he worked as a jail chaplain in Lake County, Fla., served as an evangelical missionary in Nigeria and toured with Billy Graham sharing his testimony. But the project that seems to excite Tanner more than any of the twists and turns his life has taken is Acts of Love, Healing Love Fellowship's outreach program, which organizes things like donation drives and charity rides. It's through Acts of Love that he hopes to spread his message and reach people in need, wherever they may be.
"I'm not called to be a pastor," he says. "I'm called to meet people right where they're at. Kinda an in-the-trenches type person."
For more information on Acts of Love, or to inquire about speaking engagements, visit Healing Love Fellowship's Facebook page.
More From the 2016 People Issue
The Celebrity Chef: Maneet Chauhan / The Gold Medalist: Scott Hamilton / The Perception Changer: Kent Wallace / The Blogger: Melissa Watkins / The Biker Chaplain: Allen Tanner / The Man: Charles Kaster / The Islamic Leader: Rashed Fakhruddin / The Tubatroll: Joe Hunter / The Dog: Doug the Pug / The Emancipator Impersonator: Dennis Boggs / The Booker: Kathryn Edwards / The Right Brain/Left Brain: Coke Sams and Clarke Gallivan / The Professional Ass-Kicker: Eric Young / The Watcher: Debbie Field
