Tulsa reporter Russell Cobb's report titled
Heretics on the rise and fall of Carlton Pearson was featured in the 12/8/2008 broadcast of
This American Life. Pearson is a former charismatic Pentecostal preacher who at one point renounced hell and began preaching a ministry of inclusion where all souls go to heaven. Declared a heretic by the Pentecostals, he is now a United Church of Christ minister, and his former church, Higher Dimensions, merged with the All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa.
While recounting Pearson's story, Russell Cobb gives his impressions of evangelical feelings about the possibility of giving up belief in hell:
Russell Cobb writes:
I only got a sense for how big the break was when I tried to get people in Tulsa to talk about Carlton Pearson. Only two people who left the church, Martin Brown and Jeff Vogt, were willing to talk about the gospel of inclusion. Nobody else, none of the professors at Oral Roberts University, Oral Robert's own son, or ex-parishioners, would talk on tape. But I asked the people that did talk to us, "Why is it so important to believe in hell?"
They said they didn't want to think about God condemning people to writhing and knashing of teeth. They didn't want to think that people like me, people who aren't born again, are bound for eternal damnation.
But that was just the point. They didn't make the rules. God did. And he put them in the Bible. Belief in hell was just a test of faith.
Carlton received hundreds of letters from around the country making this point, like this one.
Dear Bishop Pearson,
You are playing right into the enemy's hands. With all due respect, you can't rewrite the Bible and put it the way you think things ought to be. Stick to the scriptures, because that's the way it is, whether we like it or not.
That tradition is powerful. People told me it was hard giving up hell after a lifetime of believing in it. Steve Palmer is still with Higher Dimensions. He's a youth pastor. He says hell is one of the first things he learned about as a young person, growing up in an evangelical church.
Here's Steve Palmer recounting his introduction to evangelical thinking on hell and salvation:
Steve Palmer writes:
The approach was, "What's the best way we can get the kid's attention. I know! We'll scare 'em! Do you like to burn? No. Do you want to spend forever in darkness? No. Well, then you better turn." That's how most of us got saved. We chose because the alternative was just...scary.
And there were movies, and things like that. There was a movie called
A Thief in the Night. It was a low budget B Christian, I don't even know if it would be like B, maybe C or D, Christian movie that came out in the 70's with this real weird funky music. It was a dramatization of what would happen if the rapture happened.
And of course there's a whole big series out now, and there are movies that are even much milder than what we saw, but it scared the fire out of me when I was a kid. Because they had these images of a kid walking across the street with a pound of butter that she'd borrowed from the neighbor, and then the next thing you know the butter's laying there on the street. And kids are screaming and people are panicking, and there's this world order with this police and choppers and things like that.
Man, it scared me, because every time, and I lived in the country, we're out pulling weeds in the garden, and all of the sudden I turn around and Mom's not there anymore, I'm thinking, "Rapture!"
It would get dark, and Mom and Dad weren't around, I had my list of people I could call that I knew they would get raptured if it ever came to that, and sure enough, I actually put it to the test a couple of times, because I thought the rapture had happened, so I went to the phone and I'd call just to hear their voice answer. "Oh good, she's there, the rapture didn't happen." Because she's my Aunt May, and she was a missionary in Haiti for 28 years, she's definitely going on the first round.
Is this story from Steve Palmer how it starts for most evangelicals?
What Russell Cobb recounted in the first excerpt is just so familiar. It's what we hear from evangelicals all the time. "Don't blame us. We're not the ones who made the rules. God made the rules. God says when killing is murder and when it isn't. God says when rape is rape and when it isn't. God says you'll burn in hell for all eternity, not us. We're not hateful. We're just loving and obedient people following the rules laid down by a loving God."
There's no acknowledgement or even any hint of recognition that the Bible is open to many interpretations.
There's no sense of compassion.
There's no sense of responsibility.
There's no sense of remorse.
It is amazing what people will believe is good when they think it is God's will, as we see here all the time. Does it begin in childhood? Is the irrationality and determined ignorance we see displayed here everyday a result of childhood indoctrination? If you get to children when they're young and impressionable enough, are they doomed to lifetime of evangelical closemindedness?
--Percy
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