ITF Columns Editor Russell Cobb makes his radio debut this weekend with an hour long piece on This American Life. He traces the mercurial career of Reverend Carlton Pearson, an evangelical preacher in Tulsa. The interview begins with Pearson recounting one of his early ministerial successes: driving the devil out of his then girlfriend at the tender age of 17. A man known for his charisma and sense of humor, Pearson later jokes in a sermon about him and his wife getting in a fight and each trying to drive the devil out of the other.

After growing up in a black ghetto in San Diego, Pearson later attended Oral Roberts University and was anointed by Oral Roberts as “my black son,” an appellation Roberts’ biological white son didn’t seem to enjoy. He went on to found Higher Dimensions, a surprisingly successful and racially integrated church, which at its peak was taking in 20,000 parishioners and half a million dollars every month. That was before Pearson became, in the words of his former followers, “a heretic.” Cobb lets the minister tell of his Road to Damascus moment in his own words. Essentially, he stopped believing in hell. And as one of a few pastors who remain loyal to Pearson afterwards explains, the belief in hell is a huge draw for churches. Stop believing in hell, he says, and you’ll have people — pastors like himself — out of a job.  

Cobb documents the inevitable fall. Some who leave Pearson’s church explain that while they don’t really like contemplating hell all the time, “they didn’t make the rules, God did.” Pearson, of course, disagrees, and brings a passionate eloquence to his new theory that all, even non-believers, have been saved. His “Theology of Inclusion” wins him some surprising new friends and foreclosure on his church building when he can’t make the mortgage payments. The story is compellingly told in Pearson’s rich tones and with Cobb’s own subtle humor. It is well worth hearing, even if you only catch the snippet in which a still-parishioner tells of the cost among her neighbors of remaining with the Reverend.

You can find “Heretics” broadcast the weekend of December 16-18, or can download it from This American Life in subsequent weeks.

Nicole Leistikow