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Bishop Carlton Pearson - Come Sunday - Film
Rych McCain International/Nationally Syndicated Entertainment Columnist
Bishop
Carlton Pearson Discusses His Movie “Come Sunday.”
It is a warm, April
afternoon as I arrived at the beautiful Sunset
Bronson Studios in Hollywood. This newly constructed campus with sound
stages and administrative offices has only been open since last year. One of the
occupants on the lot is the Netflix
Studios. I am greeted by a gracious company publicist and escorted via
elevator to an interview room a couple of stories up. Upon entering, I am
introduced to a man I have admired and followed for years. We’re talking the
famed Bishop Carlton Pearson.
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| Bishop Carlton Pearson |
As he is
on camera, he was the same in person i.e., warm, cordial, relaxed and open for
deep discussion. After introducing myself, we hit it off right away because I
am one of the few who understood where he was coming from when he broke away
from the traditional fire and brimstone, hallelujah, ‘you’re-going-to-hell’ philosophy
and switched to an open dialog that questioned certain hard-core beliefs of
dogmatic Christians.
After a
series of spiritual revelations from having witnessed on TV the suffering caused
by the genocide in Rwanda and a
personal family incident where he wouldn’t write a letter of support to the
parole board on behalf of his uncle who was trying to get out of prison that
led to the uncle hanging himself in his cell while he was unsaved; Bishop
Pearson said that God had revealed some concepts to him that prove highly
controversial. In 1998, after years of spiting out the fire and brimstone
message, the Bishop introduced the Doctrine
of Inclusion that basically said
there was no hell and because of God’s mercy and love, people did not have to
be saved by Jesus to get to Heaven. God’s mercy and love for them alone was
enough to get them into glory.
Well,
suffice it to say, this philosophy did not mesh well at all with either Bishop
Pearson’s Tulsa, Oklahoma 6,000-member Higher
Dimensions Church or his fellow Bishops in The College of African American Pentecostal Bishops who
excommunicated him with the added insulting label of being a "heretic." The Higher
Dimensions congregation fell to less than 1,000 in very short time and was
absorbed into the All Souls Unitarian
Church in Tulsa and Bishop Pearson became a United Church of Christ Minister.
The movie biopic “Come Sunday,” airing on Netflix chronicles the tumultuous
ten-year journey of Bishop Pearson beginning in 1998 with his fall from mega
church grace (only in the eyes of the closed minded, dogmatic Christians), to
his reconstructed come back.
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| Chiwetel Ejiofor as Bishop Pearson |
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| Martin Sheen as Dr .Oral Roberts |
The TV movie stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Bishop Pearson and Martin Sheen as Dr. Oral Roberts. Both actors not only looked like the real-life people they portrayed but they acted and sounded exactly like them as well. Rounding out the cast was Condola Rashad as the Bishop’s wife Gina, Jason Segal, Stacey Sargeant and Lakeith Stanfield whom all played the core members of Bishop Pearson’s personal church team, Danny Glover who plays the suicide uncle and Lakeith Stanfield plays the church musician who is a closet gay man with aids. The film is directed by Joshua Marston.
One of
the first things I discussed with Bishop Pearson is the fact that religious
people are so dogmatic about their beliefs and the word believe has the word “LIE” in the middle of it. To believe and to know are two different things. Bishop Pearson responded by saying
“If the saints knew that King James was gay, they would freak out They say of
the King James Bible; if its good enough for Paul, its good enough for me. He
was so gay they called him Queen James but that’s the word of God. A gay man
gave it to us. Now freak out on that! God is no respecter of persons.”
Has the
Bishop fully recovered from the events of 1998 – 2002? He ponders and says yes
but not fully recovered because I lost everything. But this is the first time
I’ve seen that the light at the end of the tunnel is supreme” Bishop Pearson
has read several books by Catholic Bishop John
Spong who also says there is no hell. It was created by the church for fear
and control. Bishop Pearson agrees with Bishop Spong and has spoken with him.
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| Catholic Bishop John Shelby Spong |
In terms
of the bible, Bishop Pearson explains, “It took 300 years of men drinking wine,
getting high, sometimes drunk, cussing, fussing and fighting physically to
determine what would go in and what would stay out.” Bishop Pearson declares, “The
bible is not the word of God. It is the inspired word of man about God and some
of that knowledge expired. It is ineffective and ill relevant.”
(Author’s Note):
Bishop Pearson is referring to the first
of seven Ecumenical councils called by Roman Emperors that were held in the
Eastern part of The Roman Empire over a time period close to 400 years. These
councils included priest, bishops, theologians, politicians and academic
scholars from the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches beginning
with the famed First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. These European men disagreed
and fought over concepts, doctrines and philosophies that were to be included
in the so-called “Holy Book” (later referred to as THE BIBLE), that they were
writing that “THEY” would declare to be the so-called “WORD OF GOD.”
With
each additional Ecumenical Council (primarily the next six), these fellows
became angry enough over their differences to begin splitting up into various
sets, creating their own separate religions and denominations with their “Own Versions” of a bible they wrote that
contained what they had agreed upon within their particular set. If you have ever wondered why their are so many different religions with so many different denominations within them, here is your answer. And each one claims to be the truth. This
foolishness is still going on to this date with new versions of the bible
continuously being written!
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| Bishop Carlton Pearson |
So, does the Bishop go deeper and further
from here?
He laughs, “I’m more into what I call Meta-Pentecostalism with the meta physics and the Pentecostal
combined. It includes the science of mind and other disciplines.” Bishop
Carlton Pearson is a pioneer fore runner of progressive spiritual thought and what
may seem like concepts that are too way out to grasp now will be the norm in
the future as the truth keeps emerging with better clarity to the masses
seeking it. History will bare this out.
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2018 Rych McCain Media/Syndication TM
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