OKLAHOMA CITY — The founder of a former megachurch in Oklahoma who used to be branded a heretic and misplaced one target market — however won a brand new one — after he rejected the speculation of hell and supported homosexual rights has died, his agent mentioned Monday.
Bishop Carlton Pearson died Sunday evening in hospice care in Tulsa because of most cancers, mentioned his agent, Will Bogle. Pearson used to be 70.
Early in his ministry he used to be regarded as a emerging famous person at the Pentecostal preaching circuit and ceaselessly gave the impression at the Trinity Broadcasting Network, bringing him to a world target market.
From a ministry he began in 1977, Pearson in 1981 based Higher Dimensions Family Church in Tulsa — later referred to as New Dimensions Church, whose club numbered about 6,000 by way of the flip of the century.
Membership plummeted to a couple of hundred by way of 2008 after Pearson started instructing what he referred to as “the gospel of inclusion,” a type of universalism, which doesn’t acknowledge hell.
Bogle mentioned Pearson instructed him that he didn’t imagine he had made a mistake along with his theological trade.
“People were forced to question what they were saying” about salvation, Bogle mentioned. “And as polarizing as Bishop Pearson has been his whole life … he was a really good guy, he didn’t take himself seriously, he cared about people.”
In 2007, Pearson helped lead masses of clergy participants from around the country in urging Congress to move landmark hate crime and task discrimination measures for homosexual other people.
Pearson used to be kept away from by way of different evangelical leaders, branded a heretic and later turned into a United Church of Christ minister. Higher Dimensions in the long run misplaced its development to foreclosures and Pearson preached his ultimate sermon there in September 2008as the church used to be absorbed into All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa.
He is now indexed as an associate minister with All Souls.
After the cave in of his outdated ministry, his tale used to be chronicled in a long episode of public radio’s “This American Life,” which turned into the foundation for the 2018 Netflix film, “Come Sunday,” starring Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Pearson’s ideals additionally resulted in his resignation from the board of regents of his alma mater, Oral Roberts University, and a cut up with the college’s founder and his mentor — evangelist Oral Roberts.
Pearson ran unsuccessfully for Tulsa mayor in 2002, a defeat he blamed on public response to his teachings.
He maximum lately used to be a existence trainer with New Dimensions with a weekly are living broadcast on Facebook and YouTube.
Pearson, in August, posted a social media video from what looked to be a sanatorium room and he mentioned he were combating most cancers for twenty years.
In a September video he mentioned used to be recognized with prostate most cancers 20 years in the past, however used to be recognized with bladder most cancers over the summer season.
“I am facing death … I’m not afraid of death, I’m not even afraid of dying,” Pearson mentioned.
“I don’t fear God and if I was going to fear anybody, I’d fear some of his so-called people because they can be some mean sons of biscuit eaters, as my brother used to say,” Pearson mentioned.
In 1995, Pearson referred to as (*70*) of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” for preaching the other of Martin Luther King Jr. and criticized the approaching “Million Man March” to Washington, D.C., that Farrakhan arranged to advertise African American solidarity and circle of relatives values.
Pearson in 2000 used to be amongst a bunch of 30 clergy who steered then President-elect George W. Bush on faith-based social systems.
Pearson additionally authored books, together with “The Gospel of Inclusion: Reaching Beyond Religious Fundamentalism to the True Love of God” and used to be within the documentary movie American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel.
Pearson is survived by way of his mom, a son, a daughter and his former spouse, Bogle mentioned.
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