Allen became an early advocate of establishing Churches that from the beginning would be self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing, adapted to local conditions and not merely imitations of Western Christianity. These views were confirmed by a trip to India in 1910 and by later research in Canada and East Africa. With this background, Allen wrote his book Missionary Methods, which was first published in 1912. It is possible that his thought was influenced in part by the earlier primitivist writings of Anthony Norris Groves and by the Brethren movement.Dann R B: The Primitivist Missiology of Anthony Norris Groves, pp. 227–9
