Customer Reviews

The Gospel of Inclusion: Reaching Beyond Religious Fundamentalism to the True Love of God

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Imagine having an epiphany. Suddenly, the ministry you'd preached for so long, being one of the most popular and charismatic ministers in the church and of the flock entrusted to your care, had changed. No longer was your mission to teach the gospel of exclusion. Where God's love is conditional and some of his children are doomed. Instead, you now know God is love. For everyone, everywhere. They're saved by that grace of truth even if they don't know Jesus. God is simply love.

This minister did have that revelation. And when he sought to teach his flock that truth he was shunned. And his ministry, his church, were ripped from him. A ministry he'd helped to build and to prosper in the light of Christ was no longer his to care for.

Why? Because he was branded a heretic for daring to say God does not hate! By those that insist on believing God does hate. And isn't it interesting and pathetic that that happens to be in concert with everyone they hate too!?

This book will change lives! This book promises that if all ministers of the word could see God and teach of him and Jesus in this way the world would find peace and we would truly know , in our hearts, what it means when Jesus said; love your neighbor as yourself.

This is the first commandment above all and this title and this man is on his way to relating that message for all it's worth. It provides an opportunity, page after page, to realize God loves us. Each and everyone. And for those that have had their hearts broken by the viciousness of exclusivist Christianity this book will help them to love God back. What a blessing this title is for everyone that happens to find it.

I'm not a religious man, but I have a feeling I could become one if I spent time with Bishop Pearson. He's a man of unbelievable courage. It takes great strength to question one's own beliefs, but even greater fortitude to then defy one's community and risk losing everything for one's new world view (which he has done, based on the This American Life program I heard about him).

I rejected religion and God based mostly on the divisive, fear-based manipulation of organized religions that he spends much of this book railing against. But even better is his positive message that God is much more than we can understand, and fundamentally inherent in us all. This is a work of tremendous faith, intellectual rigor, scholarship, love and bravery by a great man of our time. The writing is a little bit repetitive, but that does not detract from the passion and vision. This book may anger you, but it's worth it.

*****
This book is about a way to be a Christian that is loving and caring, living in the spirit of Jesus rather than by church doctrine and man-made rules based upon hatred and fear. The author uses many quotes from the Bible as well as quotes by theologians and other thinkers to make his case in diagnosing the problems with Christianity today and in arguing that there is a better way, a way that was practiced by the first-century church and beyond for almost 500 years. If you are someone who loves God and who desperately wants to follow Jesus, yet can't bear to call yourself a Christian because you are uninterested in the orthodox evangelical or fundamentalist churches...this is the book for you.

The author presents God as love at great personal cost. He has been attacked and vilified by evangelical and fundamentalist leaders, and has lost his lucrative ministry, and in some ways his life's work. However, the same could have been said about Paul (author of some of the New Testament), who also did an about-face and preached the real message of Christ. In my opinion, it is the author's life's work that led him just to this point, and that gives his message the sincerity and the purity it has.

I have to admit that before I read this book I was considering leaving Christianity for good. I still loved Jesus, but didn't know how to live as a Christian in today's dogma-based, money-based, and fear-based churches. "The Gospel of Inclusion" is genuinely good news, and has given me a way to follow Christ without being a part of what I frankly am repulsed by in the institutionalized and religion-based so-called "Christian" churches. Rev. Pearson has found a spiritual home and a message and a way to follow Jesus that is good news for all people, and I know that I will too.

I consider this book a spiritual classic that will inspire many, and perhaps comfort you if you need a soft place to fall.

Highly recommended.
*****

Brother Carlton is a forerunner that God has chosen to speak forth in this hour. As a Baptist, turned Pentecostal/Charsmatic Minister, I, too, always struggled with the idea that the Father God I knew personally to be full of mercy and grace, could be unforgiving and cruel full of punishment that we had been taught. True punishment of evil is to obliviate it through love. Our God is the consuming fire. Thank you Brother Carlton. You are not alone.

WHat can I say? Carlton Pearson is such a brave man, to preach the love of God over religion and there scare tactics! "the whole world is alreay saved the just don't know it!" We are accepted by God already because of Christ. Its not about us acepting him its we are already accepted in him and forgiven. This powerful is changing and will continue to change lives. Pearson lost it all because he believes hell is on earth and not a eternal torture chamber in fire. Most people seem to be more in love with the idea of hell then GOD HIMSELF. They love to put people there. And angry vengenceful God leads to angry vengenceful people. This book is awesome and life changing. Please buy the book. He asks questions most of us today are scared to ask. Thanks Carlton

There are two great public understandings of the enveloping universal environment in our time. One is essentially political or socio-political, and it is finding the going extremely and increasingly tough in a world wracked with inequalities of Biblical proportions, both between members of society and nations, together with resentiments and seemingly willful misunderstandings, violent conflicts, and accrimony. The other understanding is, according to its lights, properly religious to the exclusion of all understandings at variance to it, being based on its pracitioners' certain interpretation of one or another body of scripture that it has inherited. This mode of understanding the world almost always pits a proverbial "them" against a God-fearing "us", or one "them" against yet other sub-human, misguided, and therefore lost and dismal "thems". Particularly within this second great (but radically divided) community of understanding, we desparately seek security and control precisely because all of the various "thems" want to do little, old us (who are a divinely favored remnant) in, and will stop at nothing to do so; and accordingly, we more willingly justify atrocities committed on "our" side against "the other (enemy/infidel)" side. People, respective representatives of virtually all the great faiths, who are staunch and unflinching representatives of this second great mode of understanding inarguably among them continually fuel and cause or abet most of the mess that so flummoxes and baffles the first (secular) mode of interpreting the world today. The followers of both these great basic modes of understanding who are believers in and to whatever extent followers of a divine mover must, at some point, stop and ask themselves honestly, could this sort of violent, unending antagonism really be what God, if his core character is, after all, unreserved parental love and justice overflowing with mercy, had in mind? That's the question that long troubled Carlton Pearson, one of the pillars of the Christian evangelical movement, a black Oral Roberts alumnus who for years presided over his own model mega-church in Tulsa, to the point that he finally dissented strongly from the exclusivist and fear-inflicting "gospel" (good news?) of the closed-minded mainstream of that movement. In response to the evils he saw abiding in fundamentalist Christianity and religious fundamentalism in general, he came to proclaim an understanding of the Bible and the wholly-benevolent much-larger God he experienced embracing as saved and enobled every person and every part of the universe God ever created: the "gospel of inclusion". The blowback for him professionally was swift and stunning. He was denounced as a "heretic" and lost his mega-pulpit and most of his congregation and friends. As the previous reviewer has said, his courage was and is amazing. Yet, his brand new book, "The Gospel of Inclusion", though not the first to trumpet the "doctrine of universality" and the unlimitedness of divine grace which (as he convincingly documents from the New Testament writings and a host of early authoritative commentaries), was the orthodox position in the church in its first four-hundred years. And he credibly presents his conclusion as the only consistently logical possibility, given what we can know. Salvation is by grace: it is a work of God alone, not requiring our shakily-informed assent in the least. The "good news" Jesus delivered and brought into early church consciousness, accordingly, was not that God had decided to save anyone who agreed to profess adherence to any doctrinal positions or tests posed by the "insiders" (whom Bishop Pearson likens to the Pharisees), but that God had saved and was redeeming EVERYONE WITHOUT EXCEPTION, even all those who never on this earth would know of or expect it. Salvation, then, was to be properly understood as like the Emancipation Proclamation -- it set EVERYONE free unconditionally, by forgiving and holding no one's sins ultimately against them. I believe that Bishop Carlton Pearson, in this book, and less-elegantly in his prior one in 2005 ("God is Not a Christian") has developed this doctrine and explored all of its revolutionary implications to a greater extent and more clearly than anyone else ever has. In the end, he challenges those who agree with him to transform belief in Christ and his mission and message into a great transformative force for good and a basis in truth for unity and hope among all human beings, and to proclaim that TRULY "good news" to all the world, a truly REVOLUTIONARY understanding of the "Great Commission". To my mind, no writing without exception since the days of Saint Paul carries more potential for good and for dispelling ignorance, hatred, and evil. I say thank you, Bishop Pearson, for your unmatched courage and brilliance applied toward renewing God's Gospel when it is so very urgently needed, and AMEN!

Carlton Pearson has given a wonderful gift to all of us. It hasn't come without a price, however. Friends, associates, fellow pastors, members of his church, and denomination have castigated and reviled him. And they have done it in the name of protecting/serving an archaic and violent theology. The true gospel, literally meaning "good news" has been twisted and perverted by many, though not all, for centuries.

He writes very emotionally about the loss of most everything that had comprised his life up to the point that he finally accepted the unconditional, eternal love of God for everyone. While friends and associates literally turned their back on him, he stayed true to his message and did so right on the buckle of the "bible-belt.' Oral Roberts and many of those type of preachers have a lot invested in keeping people afraid through fear-based theology. In fact, Carlton Pearson tells about a multi-page letter sent to him by Roberts calling on him to repent and saying that his (Pearson's) minstry is "the most dangerous I have seen in sixty plus years.."

Bishop Pearson proclaims the true "Good News" telling us that God will ultimately save and restore every human being who has ever lived to himself through His irrestible love and grace. Why? Because being God He could do nothing else. We forget that it was Christ himself who came to show men and women how to live and how to love. He spoke of things not usually found in the theology of His day. Back then it was all about the "law." It was about a laundry list of do's and don'ts to appease an angry and treacherous god. Yet Jesus hung out with some very questionable characters and turned organized religion upside down saying such outrageous things as "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, body, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself-on these two hang all the law and the prophets." Period.

The fundamentalists/literalists have taken the greatest message the world has EVER received and turned it into something exclusionary; They have become the modern 'gatekeepers of grace.' Perhaps worst of all, they have wed God to their brand of politics and used God to promote their narrow, myopic world view insisting that they have the only truth. Bottom line: God hates who we hate and loves who we love. The trouble with this is not only that it is horrid theology, but it marginilizes millions of people who are seen as expendable and hell-bound. It promotes judgement, fear, and suspicion all the while telling us that we have free will, but will be eternally damned if we use it.

In this book, Bishop Pearson explodes the myth that the God of the universe would damn most of the world to eternal torture and reward a handful with the bliss of heaven. He lays bare the tribal theology of centuries past and invites the reader to fall in love with the God who will never leave nor forsake any of His creation.

If you are one of the many who have been poisoned by toxic theology and any of its messengers, don't give up! There is a beautiful, glorious relationship that is to be found with the Creator of the world whose love is eternal and whose grace is for all. There is no fine print to grace and you can bet that anyone who says otherwise has an investment in keeping you afraid and controlled. True love invites all to the table with no exception, and asks us to love as we are loved. If we did that for just one single day in this world, the results for us individually and collectively would be unbelievable.

My words pale in comparison to the one who said, "If I be lifted up I will draw ALL people to me." Get this book and start to live in love, faith, and happiness.

Dear Carlton Pearson,



I have finished reading through your book, The Gospel of Inclusion, and I think it contains some very deep insights. I sharw your abhorrence of the confrontational politics and violent militarism of the mainstream evangelical churches, along with the lack of cultural respect of their missionaries. Also I too abhor the atavistic rapture-dispensationalist mindset that projects gloom and doom even as its leaders scramble to amass temporal worldly fortunes. I often wonder how they expect to be raptured to heaven with so much gold and silver weighing them down!



Thus I would totally agree with your words on pp. 145-146: "I am embarrassed that the Christian Evangelical Church has become more indicting than inviting. We should do less attacking and more attracting. We should talk less and act more. Extremist preachers of the Christian doctrine are just as incendiary as extremist preachers of Islam. Both provoke rage, rebellion, and warmongering." (However I do not agree with your words on page 145 that "Morality cannot be educated or legislated." At the very least it should be taught by those who demonstrate it.)



Your quote about hell on pp. 172-173, from Neale Donald Walsch, is very powerful: "Hell is the experience of the worst possible outcome of our choices, decisions, and creations; the natural consequences of any thought which denies God or says no to who you are in relationship to Him and your purpose in Him. It is the pain we suffer through inaccurate thinking. Hell is the opposite of joy; it is unfulfillment. It is, perhaps, to know who you are and fail to experience that. It is being less, lack, or incomplete. It is nonrealization!" Awesome horrible words!



However, you also write some things with which I cannot agree. I discern a very bitter and cynical spirit operating within you. You often write: "Christians believe" or "The scriptures Christians believe in say" as though you yourself do not believe these things but are simply using them as rhetorical devices with which to challenge your readers. You seem to have embraced a kind of New Age theology. That's OK, but if so why do you still call yourself a "Bishop"? "Bishop of what?" one might ask.



Also when you write that you do not accept all of Scripture as being literally true, one might well ask you how you decide which parts to accept? For instance, how do you know that Jesus really existed or if he is just an allegory? I would respect your views more if you had the courage to completely abandon the Bible rather than make what appears to be a kind of pathetic attempt to gain credibility and legitimacy in your readers' eyes by hitching yourself to the Bible when it is obvious that you do not really embrace it.



You claim that Jesus redeems all people regardless of their attitude to him. In the case of ignorance I agree that it is hard to accept that God would hold that against people, especially since Paul writes that they are judged according to the standards of the natural law already in their consciences. But in the case of people deliberately spurning Jesus' cross and resurrection, scoffing at his sacrifice and triumph, it is harder to imagine that God will not judge them negatively. Of course, God may give them a lifetime to embrace Christ. In his writings, which manifest much hatred, even Hitler expresses admiration for Jesus. So perhaps you do have a point. Perhaps even Hitler and KKK lynchers are enjoying heaven right now in Jesus' arms. Would you accept that idea?



I also found some blatantly disturbing errors:



1. On page 180 you write that faith is only mentioned two times in the Old Testament. I checked, and if you include its verb form ("to believe") it appears over 150 times. So this statement is very misleading. (See Strong's Numbers H-529, -530, -539)



2. On page 154 you write that God cannot be both love and hate. But earlier in the book you write that God can be both good and evil. So why not both love and hate? Are not love and hate related in terms of the intensity of your feelings? In love you feel intensely attracted and inspired to do good to a person; while in hate you feel intensely repelled and inspired to do evil to a person. Do you yourself not feel hatred for the white slavers who enslaved your ancestors? So while you may be right that God cannot be hate, your argument does not seem logically convincing.



3. On page 143 you complain about Scriptures that speak of the need for a Christian to expect enmity from the world. Perhaps this means simply from the world in which any particular person operates, rather than the entire world. As you point out, Jesus enjoyed great popularity with the masses of people; it was a narrow group of elites who opposed him unto death. In your own experience, your new direction has brought you fellowship and respect from many people while at the same time it has earned you the enmity and wrath of your former evangelical crowd. So this is not a contradiction. It always is difficult to take a stand for truth, in any age and in any society.



4. On page 127 you write that our belief or disbelief in God will not change his ability to function. This is true but irrelevant. God's interest is that we should avail ourselves of His mercy and grace. He leaves us free will to receive His gift. If we do not believe in Him then how can we come to trust Him and to seek a relationship with Him? So I think you are very wrong here to denigrate the importance of faith. It is absolutely vital to the fulfillment of God's creatures that they have faith in His promises. (As a simple example, consider a man who does not believe in the power of the sun to germinate seeds. He will never be willing to work as a farmer, investing his time, money, and energy to plant crops and therefore will lose the chance to realize a blessing. His lack of faith hurts him even though it does not prevent the sun from shining.)



To end on a positive note, on page 88 you speculate that Psalm 51:5, which is used by evangelists to support the idea of original sin, might have been describing something unique to King David. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. I don't know if you are aware of it, but you have hit upon a famous Jewish Midrash that discusses this very point! The Midrash probes the very idea you discuss, the reason for David's ostracism from the rest of the family, and it states that David was born out of a suspected adulterous relationship by his mother. The story goes like this: David's father, Jesse, became uncertain whether his ancestor, Boaz, had a right to marry the Moabitess Ruth. This is because of the Biblical prohibition of marrying a Moabite, which Boaz decided excluded Moabite women and only applied to the men: Deuteronomy 23:3 An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever. Originally Boaz had ruled that Israelites may marry Moabite women, because the reason for the prohibition is spelled out in the very next verse and does not apply to women (since it is the custom that men go out to greet strangers, not women): 4 Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee. According to the Midrash, for some reason Jesse became uncertain about this ruling and voluntarily separated from his wife, thinking that perhaps his own Israelite pedigree was illegitimate and that he should not be wed to an Israelite woman. Now, in a turn that is reminiscent of Tamar and Judah, Jesse's wife (David's mother), who was certain from the Holy Spirit that she was destined to bear an anointed son, went to her husband disguised as a servant girl and he slept with her, not realizing her true identity. When later it became clear that she was pregnant, Jesse's sons considered her guilty of adultery and they regarded David, born from this union, to be a bastard offspring. This explains, according to the Midrash, the enmity of his brothers towards David. Of course, in reality, the Midrash claims that David was perfectly legitimate, except to the extent that his father did not know he was lying with his mother at the time of conception, which introduced a slight spiritual flaw into David's character. And this may well be the reason for his words in Psalm 51:5.



Perhaps you also could have quoted from Psalm 139:13-14 for a very different perspective on the status of a fetus: For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.



I would conclude by saying that I think your book is a mixture of good and evil. You have many interesting and provocative ideas that deserve a very wide hearing. But I think you need to reason them out more carefully and logically.



The sincerity of your heart is apparent, but sometimes you write with barely concealed contempt for not just organized Christianity but for the very concept of God itself. I think you should be more courageous and also respectful to your readers and admit whether you think the whole Bible is a kind of pious fraud; for despite your claims to the contrary, your cynicism shows through in many places like a corrosive acid.



In Christ,

Michael Korn

I enjoyed the book, and took away some positive insights from it....but the author's view of Scripture scares me. At one point, he uses it to prove his argument when he agrees with his understanding of it, but then in the next breath bashes Scripture for being unreliable when it goes against his argument. Some of his "against" arguments are based on the traditional understanding of some passages, that if examined in context would show that both his and the traditional view could use some tweaking. It would be interesting to sit down with him and go through some of the Scriptures he spoke out against--and actually examine them in the proper context. I think both he and some traditionalists would be surprised at the findings.

I agree with all the favorable reviews here, and couldn't say it better. But I will add how I came to know about Bishop Pearson.

It was when, during one of the many dark days of this pseudo-Christian mass hysteria sweeping this country, I turned on the radio to an episode of This American Life.
(You can probably visit the archives of This American Life and listen to the show.)

As I listened to his story, about how he risked losing so much with his congregation and leadership to follow a higher spiritual law (the kind I had been taught years ago was the point of Christianity), I grew mesmerized.

In those days, many people like me were desperately searching anywhere for validation of our perceptions: that the religious scrupulosity infecting our culture like a lethal brain disease was shutting out goodness and reason, compassion and intellect, empathy and forethought.

Suffice it to say, it wasn't an easy time to stand up to this hysteria--on Pearson's local stage or the national one. So my God, what a heroic thing to do, to renounce all that and embrace goodness, light, and a higher order of thought. And to be willing to pay the cost. I love This American Life in general, but that was one of the top episodes, in my opinion. Extremely memorable.

So memorable, in fact, that as I made my way through the throngs of people at the Book Expo in New York last summer, quite a while after hearing that episode, I immediately recognized Pearson as the author solely by the book title (not wearing my eyeglasses, I couldn't read the author's name!) . The show had made no mention of a book, either. I simply "recognized" him--a man I'd heard on radio and never seen in a photo--because he simply, well, shone. His intelligence, openness, and kindness were right out there. Frankly, I just thought, well, who else could it be!

Fortunately, he had a few minutes to talk with me and confirm that yes, his story was on that radio show. I enjoyed our conversation very much. He is the type of preacher who could lure me back into a church. Intellectually smart. Spiritually strong. Morally honest. And brave.