Bishop Carlton Pearson Death and Legacy: Remembering A Gospel Pioneer

Bishop Carlton Pearson, a renowned preacher, singer and composer, known for his Live At Azusa albums, died on November 19 after a battle with cancer in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

His theology, known as the “gospel of inclusion,” preached against homophobia and embraced the LGBTQ community, but cost him his congregation and approval within the evangelical community. However, his message of inclusion and his denial of hell has become a model, and his impact in gospel music continues to inspire new generations of artists.

“He has an album of hymns that people would sing in the Black church for communion like ‘I Know It Was The Blood,’ or his version of ‘Precious Memories,’ gospel artist and former Destiny’s Child member Michelle Williams tells Rolling Stone, referring to Pearson’s Live At Azusa 2: Precious Memories album from 1997. “He amplified those songs and made them mainstream for church.” 

Pearson was born and raised in San Diego, California, where his father and grandfather were preacher men in a storefront “heaven or hell” Pentecostal church. After graduating high school, he attended Oral Roberts University, an evangelical Christian University, where Oral Roberts, a white preacher who had the leading religious television broadcast in the Seventies, was the school’s founder. Roberts mentored Pearson as he navigated the ministerial realm. 

Pearson left the school before graduating in 1977, starting his own church, Higher Dimensions. With over 6,000 members, it would make him one of the first Black mega church pastors, bringing  Black churches into a mainstream space in the Nineties and 2000s. 

“In the Seventies, here in the West, the church was on a decline,” says Larry Reid, a pastor, media personality and friend to Pearson. “You had evangelistic campaigns all over the U.S., but it was fading away and Black people were not leading it. We were the musicians and the singers. But Carlton Pearson created a stage called Azusa and brought Black Christians in and the white stations would play clips from his platform.” 

Pearson’s Azusa Conferences, which were inspired by the 1906 revivals that took place on Azusa Street in Los Angeles, were a hybrid of preaching and music. It gave preachers, like Joyce Meyers, Michael Pitts, Bishop T.D. Jakes, and gospel heavyweights, such as Donnie Mcclurkin, the Clark Sisters, and the late Lashun Pace,  agency and a platform to showcase their talents and introduce them to a wider audience of people. The conference, which was held at Pearson’s old university, Oral Roberts, would host thousands of guests. For those who could not attend, they were taped and sold via VHS, which gave way to many successful careers in television ministry and gospel music. 

“I had always known his music for many years before I became an artist,” says Ricky Dillard, a renowned gospel artist and composer, known for his choirs and directorial abilities. “He had a choir with him and that was influential to me. He was out here doing it at an A-1 level, so everyone was a fan. If you’re a gospel music lover, there’s no way that you could not have heard the music of Bishop Carlton Pearson.” 

Pearson’s album The Best of Azusa…Yet Holdin’ On is a staple in the Black community. On the 14-track album, featuring songs from his Azusa conference days, he has an oratory track called “Mother Sherman Story,” in which he recounts a question an elderly mother from his home church would ask him, even as dementia began to set in: “You yet holding on?” —The album’s title. 

“That meant many things,” explains Williams. “It meant keep holding on to your faith and also meant keep holding on to your morals and your standards.”

In the late Nineties, Pearson — who not only studied his bible but also studied its roots, foundations, and original language of Hebrew — came to a realization that would shake the foundation of his faith and his social standing within the church. 

“When my little girl was an infant, I was watching the evening news and the Hutus and the Tutsis were returning to Rwanda from Uganda,” Pearson recalled on an episode of This American Life from December 2005. “I’m watching these little kids with swollen bellies, their skin is stretched… Their hair is kind of red from malnutrition and they have flies on the corner of their eyes and mouths.” 

Pearson thought of his baby, who is now 27 year-old Majeste Pearson — a pop and gospel singer — and his big screen television and the plate of food he was in the middle of eating. Knowing the culture of the people on the screen and assuming they were not all Christian, he said, “God, I don’t know how you can call yourself a loving, sovereign God and allow these people to suffer this way and just suck them right into hell.” Pearson heard a voice saying “Can’t you see they’re already there? That’s hell. You keep creating that for yourselves, I’m taking them into my presence.” Pearson had a realization: “We do that to ourselves and to each other,” he recalled in the podcast episode.

The next Sunday, he shared his revelation to his congregation, urging them to stop telling people that they weren’t “saved.” Instead, he wanted them to send a message that they were “safe with God.” 

But this new theology of inclusion and universalism marked his downfall within the evangelical mainstream. Congregants left the church. Preachers like T.D. Jakes spoke out against him;  Jakes told Charisma Magazine, a popular Christian publication, that Pearson was wrong and had incorrectly interpreted the Bible. Many churches and leaders turned their backs on him. He lost his church, both its members and the building. He was banned from hosting the Azusa conference at the Oral Roberts institution and Roberts, his former mentor, remained silent. At the time, Pearson  was also running for the Mayor of Tulsa, the city with the worst race riot in 1922 known as the Black Wall Street massacre. He lost. 

“I told Carlton that if he told them he believed there was no such thing as hell and damnation, he will reduce this weapon of fear based religion, which is the foundation of religious institutions money,” said Bishop Yvette Flunder, a friend of Pearson and a same gender loving preacher and singer who sung with The Hawkins Family. “His colleagues and the College of Bishops that he was a part of put him on blast and said he was a heretic and excommunicated him.”

Charisma Magazine didn’t let the issue rest. According to Reid, they wrote about Pearson for two years, demonizing his theology and teachings. 

“He was deeply hurt and felt betrayed,” his children Majeste and Julian Pearson wrote in an email to Rolling Stone. But Pearson stood by his beliefs. “He internalized a lot of it, resulting in him becoming physically sick. Around that time, he had his first bout with cancer. We were nine and 11 when we knew it was our last service.” 

While no longer popular in the mainstream church, Pearson’s ministry continued through his church New Dimensions, where he preached against homophobia and embraced the LGBTQ community as members. He challenged scriptures used to demonize and oppress their existence. He also authored books like The Gospel of Inclusion and God Is Not a Christian, Nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu…: God Dwells with Us, in Us, Around Us, as Us. He also was also a minister to many in person.

“Bishop Pearson’s ministry was a mirror for me,” says Dillard. Back in 2005, Dillard had met Pearson leaving an event and felt inclined to give him a ride back to Atlanta. 

“Something very powerful happened in our moment together. I was seeking God in a different way and I had come up with translations that I needed confirmation from. I felt low in spirit that I was not meeting the standards of the Word of God. Bishop said something to me that changed my life that day. He said ‘As others have judged you, you have now taken on their judgment and you are judging yourself.’ It spoke to my heart.”

In an age where millennials and gen- Z kids are exploring their faith outside of oppressive theologies, Bishop Pearson’s pivot in theology is a reminder to “keep holding on.”

“Carlton Pearson is the father of expanded consciousness and new thought and he must be revered forever,” says Reid. “He is the one who paved the way to what the church is about to become.”