The Rev. Hal Banks

Former Alaska resident Hal N. Banks, 87, died Dec. 18, 2008, at Bay Pines Veterans Administration Center in St. Petersburg, Fla.


A memorial service is planned in Anchorage in the spring.
Hal was born Dec. 16, 1921, in Pittsburgh. He came to Alaska in May 1960.


Hal was a retired Presbyterian minister and Pastor Emeritus of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Anchorage, which he organized in 1960. He was the founder-director of the Seminary of the Church, affiliated with Immanuel. He wrote a religious column, "Between the Cross and the Crossroads," for the Anchorage Daily News for eight years, under Larry Fanning as publisher.


He served in the Coast Guard at Ketchikan during World War II and later was the founder/editor of The Barracks Watch of the 12th Naval District in San Diego. He was the author of two books: "Introduction to Psychic Studies" and "Death: A Preface (a continuing journey)".


His family wrote: Hal was a pioneer in his own way, having driven the Alaska Highway with his family in 1960 from California to Anchorage to build a Presbyterian church in East Anchorage, from the ground up. He ministered to many, married a few, baptized children and, wearing his golashes, dodged a few moose en route from his home to the church.


"From an early age, he had a passion for roller skating and indulged in it at the Palmer roller rink before Anchorage had one. He loved books: building his library, talking about his current reads, giving them to others, and most important, passing along the love of reading to his children. The family often took trips to the Loussac Library when it was located downtown where the Egan Center is now located.


"Although it often went unnoticed, he had a beautiful voice in song and sermon. He lived longer than he ever thought possible, was grateful for it, and was happy wherever he happened to be. He loved to walk and run, before it was fashionable, and in his early years, could be found traipsing the trails at Russian Jack Springs. When he moved from Alaska to escape the winters, he always said that Alaska was the place he loved most."


He leaves his wife, Eileen; daughters, Jean Banks and Susan Banks-Terry; sons, Ken and Scott Banks; step-daughter, Linda Scott and step-son Randy Davis; plus grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.

Memorials can be sent to Immanuel Presbyterian Church.

Author Hal Banks - searcher, teacher, heretic

By Ann Lee

Wednesday, January 01, 2003

When you’re a heretic you set about teaching others to be heretics also. That’s the story behind the two books written by Hal Banks.  His first, Introduction to Psychic Studies (now out of print), was not at all what the rank and file would expect a Presbyterian (USA) Minister to write.  But his classes that used his book as a text were well-attended by church people and non-church people as well. It has also been used as a text at colleges in Canada, South Carolina and California.

“Today’s heresy is tomorrow’s dogma,” Banks frequently states.  His mission is to get people to think for themselves, not to swallow everything they are taught.  Question, question, question he firmly exhorts.  Too frequently people take what is handed them theologically and never question it.  Not so in his classes.

His mentor, the late Leslie D. Weatherhead, pastor of City Temple Church, London, England, suggests you put those questions “in a little mental box awaiting further light.” He firmly believes that when you study and search further the light will come to you.

Death - A Preface by Hal Banks

His second book Death: A Preface (A Continuing Journey) has just been reprinted by iuniverse.com.  He intends this book to be a message of hope, to take away the fear of death. Its theme is:  It is impossible to die; there is no death; each of us has eternity to fulfill our destinies. It provides an antidote to the fundamentalist theology of hell-fire, damnation and a mythical devil.

“The best is yet to be as we struggle in this kindergarten of the soul,” he says.  “But the ultimate decision to believe or not is entirely in the reader’s hands.”

His own questions about his faith are what led him to write these books.  With a Doctorate in Sacred Theology (S.T.D.) after his Master of Divinity from Boston University School of Theology and one also from San Francisco Theological University, he still could not reconcile the theology of the sheep and the goats.  From his beginning search in 1965 to the present, he now accepts universalism, the premise that all people are “saved.”

You can imagine what furor that statement provoked.  His weekly column, "Between the Cross and the Crossroads," that appeared on the editorial page of the Anchorage Daily News, was so controversial that pastors of the more conservative churches asked him to stop writing.  He was upsetting their parishioners.  Not so his own Presbyterian church who relished the title of “satan’s church” not because of that identity but because it was making people think.  It let the community know that the church he was serving was open to all beliefs.  Though he has been retired for several years, that church is now known as More Light Church, a revealing designation.

Hal N. Banks now lives with his wife Eileen in St. Petersburg, Florida. He continues to do research trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.

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