TELEVANGLIST: CARLTON PEARSON: Hell doesn't exist and denying the inspired Word of the Gospel.

Carlton D'metrius Pearson (born March 19, 1953) is an American Christian minister. At one time, he was the pastor of the Higher Dimensions Evangelistic Center Incorporated, later named the Higher Dimensions Family Church, which was one of the largest churches in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

During the 1990s, it grew to an average attendance of over 6,000. Due to his stated belief in universal reconciliation, Pearson rapidly began to lose his influence in ministry with the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops And was eventually declared a heretic by his peers in 2004.

Pearson was born on March 19, 1953, in San Diego, California. He attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, where he was mentored by Oral Roberts, and sang with the World Action Singers, later becoming an associate evangelist with the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association. He was licensed and ordained in the Church of God in Christ.[ In 1981, Pearson formed his own church, Higher Dimensions Evangelistic Center, which became one of the largest churches in Tulsa. Along with Dr. Frederick K. C. Price, he was at one time one of only two African American ministers to host a weekly national television preaching show, reaching hundreds of thousands to millions of people weekly, and has been credited as being one of the first black ministers to hold major conferences in arenas and stadiums across the country. During the 1990s, Pearson's church grew to an average weekly attendance of over 6,000. On the opening night of his annual AZUSA Conference in 1996, Pearson was ordained as a bishop, and then consecrated on the opening night of AZUSA '97. In 2000, Pearson campaigned for George W. Bush, and later he was invited to the White House. Pearson had one of the most watched TV programs on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Pearson was also the host of the AZUSA Conference in Tulsa. Pearson was also a traveling evangelist, holding two-day revivals across the continent. Pearson also gave many up-and-coming ministers and singers national exposure and a global audience, including T. D. Jakes, Joyce Meyer, and Donnie McClurkin. Pearson has also met and counseled with former presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Pearson has subsequently been the senior minister of Christ Universal Temple, a large New Thought congregation in Chicago, Illinois; head of a new Higher Dimensions fellowship in Chicago; and an affiliate minister at Tulsa's All Souls Unitarian Church.

After watching a television program about the wretched conditions of people suffering and dying from the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and considering the teachings of his church that non-Christians were going to Hell, Pearson believed he had received an epiphany from God. He stated publicly that he doubted the existence of Hell as a place of eternal torment. He said that hell is created on earth by human depravity and behavior.

In February 2002, Pearson lost a primary election for the office of mayor of Tulsa. By then Pearson had begun to call his doctrine—a variation on universal reconciliation—the Gospel of Inclusion and many in his congregation began to leave.

In March 2004, after hearing Pearson's argument for inclusion, the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops concluded that such teaching was heresy. Declared a heretic by his peers, Pearson rapidly began to lose his influence in the evangelical fundamentalist church. Membership at the Higher Dimensions Family Church fell below 1,000, and the church lost its building to foreclosure in January 2006. The church members began meeting at Trinity Episcopal Church on Sunday afternoons as the renamed New Dimensions Worship Center.