Russell Cobb Carlton Pearson says there are two kinds of people in his family, preachers and convicts. He grew up in an all-black ghetto in San Diego in a strict Pentecostal denomination-- no smoking, drinking, cursing, or dancing. But there was lots of churchgoing. And church is where the really wild stuff happened. People spoke in tongues, got slain by the Holy Spirit. And they definitely believed in hell, to the point where even the faithful could get possessed by demons. Carlton's father and grandfather were ministers. And at an early age, he was following in their footsteps.

Carlton Pearson Well, the first time I ever cast the devil out of somebody, I was like, 17 years old. 16, maybe. And the girl was my girlfriend.

Russell Cobb This was a tiny storefront where the church was having a youth revival.

Carlton Pearson She just let out this scream. And it startled me and everybody else. She fell to the ground. I looked at the pastor, and he just stood there. And nobody else moved. So I started rebuking the devil, and binding the devil in the name of Jesus, and commanding him to come out, and pleading what we call plead the blood. The blood, the blood, the blood, the blood, come out. You lying wonder, in the name of Jesus I command you to cease and desist. Loose her. Come out in Jesus-- Come out. Come out now. The things we'd been taught to say. My grandfather used to do that. She kind of thrashed a little bit. And she's, I'm not going out, you know, talking back to me like this. So I was freaking out. But I was the leader of the meeting. It was my revival. So I couldn't-- I had seen people cast devils out before. I never expected that, certainly not from a girl I was dating. It took me probably an hour, maybe an hour and a half, before she got through thrashing and talking back to me and screaming. And then it went out of her into another person, supposedly. And they-- the whole pew hit the floor. And there were all these crazy things happening in that little storefront church. It was very frightening, very serious. And that kind of thing happened every night for three nights in a row. And I became a hero after that because Carlton Pearson cast the devil out of people three nights in a row.

Russell Cobb Looking back at this episode right now, I mean as you're telling it, how do you think about it right now?

Carlton Pearson Well, I expected devils. I expected demons. I saw them everywhere. So that was a part of my life. The devil was as present and as large as God. He had most of the people. He was ultimately going to get most of the people. Demons were all over-- in the church, in the schools, in the neighborhoods. Everything was a devil. So if you believe it, you experience it.

Russell Cobb Carlton was still curious about what went on beyond the world of devils and demons. But intellectual curiosity wasn't really encouraged where he grew up. This wasn't a place where church leaders had PhDs in divinity.

Carlton Pearson All my pastors but one were janitors. They cleaned banks and restaurants. And I'd sometimes go with them. A lot of them couldn't read. They had no formal education, certainly not seminary. And so we were trying to fit into a big, broad world that we didn't understand, that we felt was basically hellbound, and we were to reach them, but we couldn't relate to them. They couldn't relate to us. So my world was getting smaller. And the world was getting larger. And I was smothering. But I had to find a way to get out of that world and still go to heaven. And ORU offered that to me in a sanctified way.

Russell Cobb ORU was Oral Roberts University. Roberts was one of the few outside influences that made it into the Pearson home. He had a TV show, and Carlton's mother loved it. And I'd like to take a moment here and talk a little bit about Oral Roberts and the school he founded because it forms a backdrop for much of what happens later. Oral Roberts was a half-Cherokee charismatic preacher who claimed to heal disease with the touch of a hand, sometimes even through the TV screen. He was one of the first preachers to take TV seriously, the first televangelist the way we think of them now. And his weekly show, The Hour Of Healing, reached tens of millions of viewers. And he tried to change the image of Pentecostals from dusty tent revival Holy Rollers into something respectable and higher class.

Oral Roberts I grew up in the Christian faith and was taught to give, but was told not to expect anything back. And we listened. And we gave, and received nothing back. We had old rattletrap cars, many times no place to live. Our clothes were not fit to wear, and mete out trying to tell people the good news. And people out there saying, yeah, to be like you? No.

Russell Cobb He also tweaked the Pentecostal message, making it more optimistic. His catchphrases-- expect a miracle, God ain't poor no more, plant a seed and it will grow-- were all about the idea that faith would lead to wealth and happiness on this earth. He called donations to his church investments. And he guaranteed a high rate of return.

Oral Roberts God said return unto me, and I'll return unto you.

Congregation That's right. Amen.

Oral Roberts When you give to God, you're putting money into your account. [MUSIC - WORLD ACTION SINGERS]

Singer You won't believe it's true, how the bank of life pays interest. Amazing what a little love can do.

Russell Cobb You're listening to another front in the Oral Roberts campaign for mainstream acceptance, the World Action Singers. They were sort of musical emissaries, a group of about 20 Oral Roberts University students who traveled around the world performing Christian-themed variety shows to religious audiences. Carlton joined the group when he first arrived on campus at ORU in 1971. By this time the singers had already started to cross over to a more secular audience. Carlton's freshman year, he went with the group to the headquarters of NBC in California to appear on a prime time Oral Roberts special. 37 million people watched it. For a kid who wanted a sanctified way to see the rest of the world, it couldn't have been better.

Carlton Pearson I remember going to NBC, and Johnny Carson had a star, Redd Foxx had a star. They all had-- and Oral Roberts was a star on the-- and he would come in a Rolls Royce. And here we are, the Pentecostal kids, singing on nationwide television, sometimes with Johnny Cash, or Pearl Bailey, or Robert Goulet, and movie stars. And we saw Dale Evans and all that kind of thing. So it changed my worldview pronounced. He brought an elegance to the Pentecostal expression, a dignity to it, that we had not known in California. I was elated. [MUSIC - WORLD ACTION SINGERS]

Singer It'll come back to you someday.

Russell Cobb Through all this, Carlton was getting closer to Oral Roberts. He'd go to dinner with Oral and his wife, Evelyn. Oral and he would talk for hours. But it wasn't until a problem arose with Oral Roberts' son, Richard, that Carlton realized how close they'd become. Richard Roberts ran the World Action Singers when Carlton sang for the group. They butted heads on a few occasions. And Carlton decided he'd had enough. At the time, coincidentally, Kathie Lee Gifford was also a World Action Singer. And she and Carlton decided to quit together. Word of all this made it to Oral, and Carlton got called into his office.

Carlton Pearson To my surprise, when I went in the office, Richard was sitting in there. And he had explained to his dad that Kathie and I were getting out. And he was sitting there in front of his father and me. And it was like whatever the son had done to make us not want to be in there was not good. Because Oral didn't want particularly his two favorites, one of his two favorite singers, me and Kathie, to leave. That's the impression I got. I could be wrong, but I think that's what was going on. And so Richard was the heir apparent, the likely successor. It never crossed my mind that it would be any different than that. I just was close to his father. His father was intrigued with the fact that I was from the ghettos of San Diego. Oral was always for the underdog. He saw me as pulling myself up by my own bootstraps. And so he said, "We like you around here. 25% of my support is consistently African-American." He would've said black in those days. And he said, "I need a black son. Richard is my biological son. He has the indispensable name of Roberts." I remember him using the term indispensable because I didn't know what that meant, indispensable name of Roberts. "But you are my black son, and I need you by my side."

Russell Cobb Carlton still decided to leave the group, but he stayed Oral's black son. And let's put this in context. Civil rights came late to Tulsa. Schools weren't desegregated until the 1970s. South Tulsa is still almost all white, North Tulsa almost all black. But Oral Roberts had always been sympathetic to the plight of black people. As early as the '50s, he integrated his tent revivals. And he was sincere about his feelings toward Carlton. The two were very similar. Because of their sheer charisma, they could walk in seemingly contradictory worlds-- black and white, religious and secular-- which explains what happens next. Carlton, with his best friend and roommate from ORU, a white man named Garry McIntosh, started a church. They called it Higher Dimensions. And it was different from all the other churches in Tulsa. Here are some early members. First, Jeff Voth.

Jeff Voth The church can be really, really a cloistered place. You know, white folks kind of worship the way they do. And people of color worship the way they do. And never the twain shall meet. And Higher Dimensions, it really blew that stereotype away.

Russell Cobb And here's Martin Brown, who joined Higher Dimensions right after it started in 1981.

Martin Brown It was very integrated. And that was one of the things that I really respected him for, and I was really proud of him as an African-American man to have accomplished in South Tulsa. And I had never seen it before. I had never seen it in a black church or a white church.

Russell Cobb One of the things that made the integration possible at all is a characteristic everyone points out about Carlton Pearson. He's a very funny man. Here's a sermon from 1998 where he starts off talking about the need for strong discipline with children.

Carlton Pearson Sometimes she was a sweetheart. No, darling. That don't work. Not with coloreds, it don't work. It may work with some of you Anglos. No, I'm kidding. The coloreds are becoming more like the Anglos, and the Anglos are now starting to whip their children. Isn't that a blessing? [LAUGHTER]

Carlton Pearson All this soft talking ain't working no more. So you finally convinced you going to have to beat them like we beat ours. Strike that from the record, please. [LAUGHTER]

Russell Cobb This one's from 2001.

Carlton Pearson They started saying I was the most available bachelor. Church was full of beautiful, Holy Ghost filled women. Everywhere I traveled, the place was packed. And I thought it was my anointing and the blessing of the Lord all over me. And then I got married. And the balcony cleared out. I went and messed up my whole ministry. [LAUGHTER]

Carlton Pearson First time I had an argument with her, I knew she was of the devil. He done tore up my life and my ministry. Satan, the Lord rebuke you. Hail Mary, whatever works. One time, we was both trying to cast the devil out of each other. Have I ever told you that story? [LAUGHTER]

Carlton Pearson Can you imagine two folks in love? Satan, the Lord rebuke you. Satan, the Lord rebuke you. I command you to come out of here, you foul, tormenting spirit. I command him to come out of you. [LAUGHTER]

Carlton Pearson Look at me. I don't care whether you're homosexual, heterosexual, or asexual, or bisexual, or try-- trying to have sex. [LAUGHTER]

Carlton Pearson Whatever it is, if it's unclean or unholy, you need your mind renewed. The renewing, everybody say the renewing.

Congregation The renewing.

Carlton Pearson Anakainos in Greek, and ana meaning back or again, kainos meaning new, not recent but different.

Martin Brown It felt good to go to church and have someone who could give you more than just a cursory explanation of scripture.

Russell Cobb Martin Brown says another thing a lot of people mention, that Carlton's sermons weren't just funny. They were scholarly.

Martin Brown I mean he could give you an in-depth analysis of the scripture. He could tell you what the Greek of this word meant and so forth. And I really appreciated that because it gave me the sense that you cannot take everything at face value. You have to study it and know it for yourself.

Carlton Pearson Say it with me. Demons, daemon, it is an inferior deity. Dae meaning to distribute. It also in Greek means a knowing one. So these are little spirits that supposedly have a certain knowledge, a secret knowledge.

Russell Cobb Things kept growing. Higher Dimensions built a mega church on the predominantly white south side. They hired more pastors, formed a youth group. There were plans to build a ranch and a hotel. And Carlton Pearson's profile was rising as well. He flew around the country, guest preaching with some of the biggest names in the evangelical world, people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. He was in and out of the White House, under both Bushes and Clinton. And when George W. Bush started his faith-based initiatives program, Carlton sat on an advisory panel and became a spokesman for the plan. He hosted a show on TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network, a Christian cable channel. He was appointed to the Board of Regents at Oral Roberts University and made bishop in 1995 by the International Communion of Charismatic Churches. And he started a revival called Azusa, a modern-day evangelical festival, which was sort of like a South by Southwest for evangelical preachers and singers.

Brother Alvin Once again, we are live at Azusa. Come on. Let's praise God and put those hands together for our bishop and doctor, Carlton D Pearson.

Carlton Pearson Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Brother Alvin. And hello, Azusa. We have come this far by faith. Let's sing it. (SINGING) And we've come this far by faith.

Russell Cobb Carlton would pack out the Mabee Center, the convention hall at ORU, for his conference and bus in 30,000 people from all over the country.

Carlton Pearson (SINGING) I'm trusting in his holy word. Trusting in his holy word.

Russell Cobb He introduced new talent, bringing up other preachers. One of the most famous is T.D. Jakes, who Carlton introduced in 1992. Jakes went on to found a church in Dallas called The Potter's House, which has over 28,000 members. He also has a TV show and might be the most important black preacher today. President Bush very publicly sought his support and appeared by his side in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In 2000, eight years after Carlton introduced Jakes to a national audience, Jakes welcomed Carlton to The Potter's House.

T.d. Jakes Let's clap our hands for the visionary Bishop Carlton Pearson and his lovely wife Gina. My, my, my, my, my, my, we salute you. And we celebrate you. We celebrate you for being a trailblazer, for your conviction, for your tenacity, and for your relentless spirit. We celebrate you, you lion.

Russell Cobb And attendance at Carlton's own church continued to grow. Higher Dimensions added new seats, a balcony, and bought state of the art audio and video recording equipment.

Carlton Pearson I used to worry that it would ever be filled. We could seat about 1,200, and it was full. Then we put the balconies in, another 800 seats. We're running about 2,200 per service, 5,000 on a Sunday. And every person in my position wonders each week, will they come back? And after a few years of driving up here, and there's police directing traffic, and parking attendants, and crowds, and security meets my car, and I go in my garage-- and one day, it dawned on me. And I said, I guess this is the way it's going to be. We are there.

Russell Cobb So here he is at the top of his game. It's the late 1990s. But something didn't feel right. Carlton had always preached a pretty conventional evangelical theology. Hell was a horrible place-- weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for eternity. And the only way to avoid it was to accept Jesus. But he was always reading and studying the Bible's origins, boning up on the original Hebrew and Greek. And he'd begun to doubt some of the stuff he'd been preaching. And it all came to a head one evening in front of the television.

Carlton Pearson When my little girl, who'll be nine next month, was an infant, I was watching the evening news. The Hutus and Tutsis were returning from Rwanda to Uganda. And Peter Jennings was doing a piece on it. Now, Majesty was in my lap, my little girl. I'm eating the meal, and I'm watching these little kids with swollen bellies. And it looks like their skin is stretched across their little skeletal remains. Their hair is kind of red from malnutrition. The babies, they've got flies in the corners of their eyes and in their mouths. And they reach for their mother's breast. And the mother's breast looks like a little pencil hanging there. I mean the baby's reaching for the breast. There's no milk. And I, with my little fat-faced baby, and a plate of food, and a big screen television-- and I said, God, I don't know how you could call yourself a loving, sovereign God, and allow these people to suffer this way, and just suck them right into hell, which is what was my assumption. And I heard a voice say within me, so that's what you think we're doing? And I remember I didn't say yes or no. I said, that's what I've been taught. We're sucking them into hell. I said yes. And what would change that? Well, they need to get saved. And how would that happen? Well, somebody needs to preach the gospel to them and get them saved. So if you think that's the only way they're going to get saved is for somebody to preach the gospel to them and that we're sucking them into hell, why don't you put your little baby down, turn your big screen television off, push your plate away, get on the first thing smoking, and go get them saved? And I remember I broke into tears. I was very upset. I remember thinking, God, don't put that guilt on me. I've given you the best 40 years of my life. Besides, I can't save the whole world. I'm doing the best I can. I can't save this whole world. And that's where I remember-- and I believe it was God saying, precisely, you can't save this world. That's what we did. You think we're sucking them into hell? Can't you see they're already there? That's hell. You keep creating and inventing that for yourselves. I'm taking them into my presence. And I thought, well, I'll be. That's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. That's where the pain comes from. We do that to each other. And we do it to ourselves. Then I saw emergency rooms. I saw divorce court. I saw jails and prisons. I saw how we create hell on this planet for each other. For the first time in my life, I did not see God as the inventor of hell. Here's what makes me right. I'm sitting next to a little Tibetan monk. He's been a Tibetan monk for the fourth generation. Here's a monk that all he does is every morning, he takes the goats. He milks the goats, takes them to another pasture. He works in the garden. He says some prayers. He burns some incense. He never married. He doesn't kill, cuss, fight, lie. He never heard the gospel. Never seen a television or a radio or a tract. He lives way up there in the cold. He's taking goats to one pasture, slips off a cliff, falls into a valley, and dies. Is there a Jesus anywhere? To receive that man? Or is the devil there, sucking 'em all into hell? And I would say, no, no, no, my God loves you. The way the God of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is presented, he's a monster. The God we've been preaching is a monster. He's worse than Saddam. He's worse than Osama bin Laden. He's worse than Hitler, the way we've presented him. Because Hitler just burnt six million Jews, but God's going to burn at least six billion people-- and burn them forever. He has this customized torture chamber called hell, where he's going to torment, torture, not for a few minutes, or a few days, or a few hours, or a few weeks-- forever.

Russell Cobb The more Carlton started to think about it, the further away from conventional teaching it led him. If there was no hell, then you didn't need to accept Jesus to avoid hell. And if you didn't need to accept Jesus, it didn't matter if you were a Christian. It didn't even matter if you came to church. Everyone in the world was saved, whether they knew it or not. And at first, Carlton didn't understand just how problematic this would be for pretty much everyone in his life. Remember, he had a 5,000-person congregation and eight pastors on staff, all of whom believed that hell was real. And the only way to avoid it was by being reborn in Christ, as they'd been told all their lives. So he had a series of meetings with his pastors, saying he wanted to rewrite the theology of the charismatic world. This turned out to be a pretty tough sell.

Carlton Pearson They were asking me questions. And I couldn't answer them to their satisfaction, and neither to mine. I knew it spiritually, but I couldn't answer it theologically. Because the Bible clearly-- I can take that Bible and denounce what I'm teaching. There is plenty of scriptures that say that salvation is limited to only those who confess Christ. The Bible clearly says that. Hell's enlarging its borders. And that, depart from me, workers of iniquity. I never knew you. Jesus said that. And he will separate the wheat-- the goat from the sheep. And Jesus makes several references to Gehenna, which is translated hell and fire and all that stuff. If you take it literally, Jesus preached hell-- the way King James translated is translated, which is inaccurate.

Russell Cobb Jeff Voth was an associate pastor at the time.

Jeff Voth We would talk about his perception of scripture. And he had begun talking about just that scripture had mistakes and errors. And so the demeanor of the conversation would get heated at times. Because it was apparent that we were on two different pages.

Carlton Pearson Open to Matthew chapter five. The average person, even preacher, that you approach and ask, where did we get the Bible? Most of them can't tell you that. Men sat around tables in rooms for weeks drinking wine, eating and taking breaks, fussing and sometimes cussing, arguing over what would be in the Bible and what would not. So I won't get into great detail. But I'm just saying that which we revere as the most sacred lexicon of truth on the planet is not necessarily-- and any true scholar will tell you-- infallible or inerrant. The logas, the logic of--

Russell Cobb For all the scripture that doesn't support Carlton's ideas, there are passages that do, like first Timothy, chapter four, verse nine, which says that God is the savior of all men, especially those who believe. Or there's this.

Man First John, chapter two. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.

Carlton Pearson My dear children-- watch this-- I write this to you that you don't sin.

Man But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the father in our defense.

Carlton Pearson But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the father in our defense.

Man His name is Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

Carlton Pearson Read on.

Man He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Carlton Pearson He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Man And not only for ours.

Carlton Pearson And not only for ours.

Man But also for the sins of the whole world.

Carlton Pearson But also-- look at me, babies. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins-- but not only ours, but for the sins of the whole world.

Russell Cobb He started formalizing his thinking into an actual doctrine, what he calls the gospel of inclusion. Everyone's going to heaven. Atheists, Muslims, gays-- Jesus died for them all. For people like Martin Brown, who'd been at Higher Dimensions since it started in 1981, this was a pretty confusing switch. Here was their pastor-- who'd married them, baptized them, counseled them, and advised them for decades-- all of a sudden saying that the premise of their faith was wrong.

Martin Brown It got to a point where-- and I remember the day my wife and I decided to leave. We were sitting in church. And I can't remember the particular scripture. But I remember the scripture said faith in Christ. And he looked at the congregation. And he said, that does not mean faith in Christ. It was written in ink in black and white. And he looks us in the eye and says, that's not what it means. I felt insulted by that. And he could tell by the looks on the members' faces that he had stepped into something. And so he said, wait a minute. Before you react, let me explain. And he gave an explanation for it which I didn't buy. And I think that was the time where we decided, OK, well, we need to find another church that's solid in the word because this is not-- we don't believe what he's telling us.

Russell Cobb Around this time, a lot of people were making this decision. And the congregation was shrinking. Word started getting out around town that something funny was going on with Bishop Pearson. His own pastors had reached a breaking point.

Carlton Pearson Four of my pastors-- all white-- my four pastors left here at once. And almost all my white members-- at least 85% of the white, non-black members left when they left. It was just a mass exodus. And we were at this table. And they came. I thought they were coming to tell me that they were recommitting themselves to me and to my wife. They had called a meeting, and for me and my wife to come. But I thought when they asked us, they were going to reaffirm. So we're going to pull together and make this thing happen, pastor. We know you're going through a lot of criticism and a lot of judgment. And we just want you to know we got your back. That's what I was expecting. But they came totally different. They said we-- very calm, they just said, we just wanted to tell you that we love you. But we've prayed together. And we've talked. And we've decided that we are going to resign our positions and start our own church. And would you be offended if we started one close? Because we can't find a building far away. We can only find a building down here close. And of course, me being the Christian pacifist, I said, oh. I mean I burst into tears. My wife did too. We were just crushed. I was just devastated that these guys were going to do this. It just totally caught me off guard. Those guys have had nothing to do with me since. They didn't ask me to come to any dedication. They've never asked me to speak. They've never come to anything I've had. They don't even like for people to know they were here. They just--

Russell Cobb You don't talk to them at all?

Carlton Pearson No. Well, if I see them around town or something like that, we hug and shake hands and grin like nothing. But there's still a lot of pain there.

Russell Cobb Again, here's Jeff Voth.

Jeff Voth There was a lot of crying, and it was difficult. I mean we didn't know. Like I said, it was emotional for us on many fronts. He was a dear, dear friend. And we loved he and his wife and kids and the church. And we'd spent a decade there almost and raised our kids there. And to be thinking that we were going to-- what's going to happen now?