Bishop Carlton Pearson dies at 70 (2024)

Carlton Pearson, a high-profile Tulsa megachurch pastor whose later rejection of the doctrine of hell made him an outcast among evangelicals but brought him a wider audience and inspired a feature film, died Sunday of complications from cancer.

He was 70.

Services are pending with Keith D. Biglow Funeral Home.

A onetime Pentecostal preacher and protégé of the legendary Oral Roberts, Pearson founded Higher Dimensions Family Church and helped build it into one of Tulsa’s largest congregations, with around 6,000 members at its peak in the 1990s.

Pearson’s embrace of universalism — which rejects the idea of hell or eternal punishment — also led to his professional downfall, at least in the evangelical world where he’d enjoyed celebrity status.

Pearson, a former gospel recording artist, as well, related the story of this painful journey in books and on national radio and television. It was also the basis for the 2018 movie “Come Sunday.”

Pearson later moved to Chicago but returned to Tulsa in 2015, where he continued his close relationship with All Souls Unitarian Church, serving on its ministerial staff.

The Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, senior minister at All Souls, said: “In an era of division, Bishop Pearson stood out as a voice of unity and reason, and his brave journey toward a theology of universal love and acceptance resonated deeply with All Souls’ values and tradition of inclusivity and compassion.

“He broke barriers by embracing a message of unconditional love that has been a beacon of hope and inspiration for many within our congregation and throughout the world. He helped people of all cultures and faiths know that God loves us all beyond belief.”

A native of San Diego who came to Tulsa to attend Oral Roberts University, Pearson found himself at the zenith of his evangelical career in 2000.

His Higher Dimensions congregation, one of the city’s best known charismatic churches, boasted thousands of members and $60,000 a week in contributions.

His Azusa Street conference drew 50,000 people annually to ORU, where he was a member of the Board of Trustees.

He had a national audience as a guest host on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. He was even one of a handful of national Black religious leaders advising President-elect George W. Bush.

But as Pearson would later describe it, it was then that he had an epiphany.

Promoting what he called “the gospel of inclusion,” Pearson began to preach that Christ’s death and resurrection had purchased salvation for all people and that because of that everyone would go to heaven.

A form of universalism, his new theology contrasted sharply with traditional Christian beliefs.

The blowback was swift. Causing a stir in evangelical circles nationally, Pearson’s departure from orthodoxy cost him church members and his relationship with his alma mater, ORU, which severed ties and barred him from campus.

Within a few years, the congregation had dwindled to a few hundred, and he lost the church building in foreclosure.

In 2006, Pearson was accepted as a minister in the United Church of Christ, one of the nation’s most liberal denominations, and he and his congregation began holding services in the Trinity Episcopal Church building downtown. They later began holding services at All Souls before finally, in 2008, he shut down his church, folding it into All Souls.

It officially ended his 27 years as a senior pastor in Tulsa. The downfall that had begun just eight years earlier was now complete.

“I thought, what did I just do? What just happened? That’s not my property any more; that’s not my ministry,” he recalled in a later interview.

“It all happened so fast. I was just dizzy. The room began to spin.”

At the same time, Pearson was finding new allies and, with them, new opportunities and encouragement.

His popularity growing among progressive Christians and non-Christian faiths, he appeared on several national news programs and spoke at a variety of progressive and interfaith organizations. Book and movie offers came in.

Pearson later moved to Chicago, where he was a minister at Christ Universal Temple, before eventually returning to Tulsa.

In 2016, he became the first Pentecostal preacher to have his personal archives accepted into the Andover-Harvard Theological Library at Harvard University.

The 2018 film “Come Sunday,” which chronicled Pearson’s fall, starred Martin Sheen as Oral Roberts and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Pearson. Pearson consulted on the film.

Pearson was raised and ordained in the Church of God in Christ, a historically Black Pentecostal denomination.

He arrived at ORU in 1971 and developed a close bond with Roberts, whom he came to think of as a second father.

While ultimately sacrificing his career and everything he built, Pearson maintained that he had no regrets over his choices.

Even with the new direction religiously, Pearson was a difficult man to box in.

He jettisoned some of the most basic beliefs that define Pentecostals and other evangelicals. But as a preacher with a Pentecostal background, he still laid hands on the sick, spoke in tongues and talked about the anointing of God changing lives.

According to his family, Pearson was successfully treated for prostate cancer in 2001. He learned of a recurrence of the cancer only a few months ago.

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