The
Gospel of Inclusion: Reaching Beyond Religious Fundamentalism to the True Love
of God and Self by Bishop Carlton Pearson; Atria
Books/Simon & Schuster, NY, 2006; 305 pages, ISBN 1-4165-8043-3, hardback,
$24.00 (paper, $15.00 released March 2009).
What would Christianity be like without an angry,
punishing God, without the doctrines of damnation and hell? What if everyone were saved now, irrespective
of their personal beliefs? Bishop
Pearson, a fourth-generation African-American Pentacostal
preacher, was once leader of a very large and prosperous congregation in Tulsa,
Oklahoma. He believed and preached that
only the elect few are saved: those who accept Jesus as their personal savior and
act and believe in the manner stipulated by Pentacostals. But one evening, watching the return of refugees
after the massacres in central Africa, he realized that God loved all these
weary, heartsick people unconditionally.
They were in fact already in hell on earth and a God of love would not condemn
them to eternal suffering and punishment simply because they had not been
reached by the right Christian missionaries.
This insight began a process of research and rethinking that has led him
to embrace the universal salvation of the human race by a loving God, an
unpopular stand with most of his former religious colleagues.
Bishop Pearson makes several points. He gives evidence that inclusion or universal
salvation was held by many of the early Church Fathers and is supported in
Christian scriptures. Second, he explains
that, while God is real, religion is a man-made institution that reflects the
imperfections, ambitions, and fears of human beings: “Religion seeks to substitute
for God, even to replace divinity with its doctrines. This is my point in saying that God is not a
Christian. God is neither religion nor
religious. God is simply Spirit. . .
. beyond
concepts like gender” (p. 37). He
wonders, “How does one offend an omnipotent being who
created the universe? . . . We assume He is going to be angry and even belligerent
if we don’t flatter His eternal ego – an absurd idea” (p. 89).
Rather than seeing humanity as separated into a few favored
sheep and a vast herd of damned goats, Pearson thinks such exclusive ideas
contradict Divine Oneness: “We can be reconciled because we were all originally part of God and still
are. We just got disconnected in
consciousness, causing the illusion of separation. I had always assumed that reconciliation is
exclusive to Christians. A fear- and
guilt-based reading of Scripture offers ample evidence that this is the
case. However,
unbiased observation of Christian theology makes it clear that Christ’s purpose
was to redeem the whole of humanity” (pp. 46-7). His reflections have caused him to reevaluate
the nature of God and the role of Christianity: “God is not limited to time and
space. God’s consciousness is
unlimited. He is omnipotent, omniscient,
and omnipresent. He is not bound by time
as we are, but is present everywhere past, present, and future. Whatever this Infinite Spirit does has been
accomplished and realized in eternity, not time. The salvation of the entire human race is a
fait accompli, including those who have yet to be born. Only our theologies insist there is conflict,
one that they manufacture and sustain” (p. 125). If God wishes to save all human beings, then
it is a fact not dependent on the beliefs or imperfections of individuals: “Sin
or no sin, God is love, and He loves all people
without their permission – and also without their knowledge” (p. 117).
These views also affect our approach to morality: “God
did not create us to judge one another. That
is not our role. We are not here to
force our own values of good and evil on others. Our role as people living in Christ
Consciousness is simply to announce that sin is no longer the issue. It has been made irrelevant by the work of
Christ. We should turn our attention to
the development of our own minds and our own righteous actions. When we do, the world will be a far better, more
tolerant, and understanding place” (p. 107).
This is an intriguing book by someone who has dared
to think for himself and follow his own convictions at considerable personal
cost. – Sarah Belle Dougherty