Bishop Carlton D. Pearson has passed away. He was 70 years old.

Pearson died on Sunday night in hospice care in Tulsa due to cancer, said his agent, Will Bogle.

Early in his ministry Bishop Pearson was considered a rising star on the Pentecostal preaching circuit and frequently appeared on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, bringing him to an international audience.

From a ministry he started in 1977, Pearson in 1981 founded Higher Dimensions Family Church in Tulsa – later known as New Dimensions Church, whose membership numbered about 6,000 by the turn of the century.

Membership plummeted to a few hundred by 2008 after Pearson began teaching what he called “the gospel of inclusion”, a form of universalism, which does not recognize hell.

Pearson’s beliefs led to his resignation from the board of regents of his alma mater, Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, and a split with the university’s founder and his mentor, the evangelist Oral Roberts.

After the collapse of his old ministry, his story was chronicled in a lengthy episode of public radio’s This American Life, which became the basis for the 2018 Netflix movie, Come Sunday, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor.

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