The Right Reverend Bishop Carlton D. Pearson
A stunning episode of "This American Life" this weekend. If you don't get a chance to hear it on your local public radio station today or tomorrow, wait for the archived version to show up here.
It's about Bishop Carlton D'Metrius Pearson, an Oral Roberts U. graduated Pentecostal preacher who one day made the mistake of no longer believing in Hell. His peers and pewers, who until then had adored him and showered him with money, threw him out, labeled him a Heretic, and perpetrated all the other sadly predictable so forths and so ons.
Bishop Pearson now runs the Higher Dimensions Family Church of Tulsa, Oklahoma. ("God is not a Christian!")
It's a remarkable story. I'm an atheist and even I have to say... I wouldn't mind being a member of his flock.
Of course, in a funny way, I think I already am.
That looks interesting enough that I might have to actually listen to the show.
But is there a browser in which you were actually able to navigate that church's web site? I've just been through four OS X browsers and those stupid javascript up/down arrows don't work with any of them.
Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden | December 25, 2005 at 11:34 AM
Oh, yeah, come to think of it, that was a pretty annoying site. No, I recall I was using Firefox (on W2K machine) and just got fed up after a while. Went there again just now and tried IE6 (on W2K) and finally the arrows seem to work. I guess God is not only not a Christian, he uses Internet Explorer exclusively.
Bishop. Dude. Fix your site.
Posted by: Corpsy | December 25, 2005 at 11:50 AM
Thank you, Patrick, for reminding me of this radio piece. I just listened to it again and I was even more moved by it this time than I was before. By the time I got to the (current) end of Bishop Carlton's journey, I was in tears again. It's a beautiful story. Not a bad way to kill an hour on Christmas Day, if you got a spare hour hanging around. I could hear the phrase "slain by the spirit of the Lord" all day long.
Posted by: Corpsy | December 25, 2005 at 01:08 PM