Earl Paulk

Earl Pearly Paulk, Jr. (May 30, 1927 – March 29, 2009) was an American televangelist and the founder of the Cathedral at Chapel Hill, a charismatic/Pentecostal megachurch in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. Noted as "one of the country’s first great independent megachurches", Paulk's church gained an international reputation for combining liturgical arts, such as dance and drama, with social ministry. and earned his divinity degree from Emory University's Candler School of Theology, becoming the first Pentecostal to attend the historically Methodist seminary. While at Candler, he married Norma Davis, a girl who had attended his father's church.

Civil rights work While attending Furman, Paulk served as an associate pastor at his father's church in Greenville.

In 1952, Paulk was named pastor of Atlanta's Hemphill Avenue Church of God (now Mount Paran Church of God) just as the civil rights movement was getting underway. He was one of the few white pastors who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. Not long after taking over at Hemphill, Paulk became a member of "Concerned Clergy," an interracial group of Atlanta pastors who opposed racial segregation. The group was led by King's father, Martin Luther King Sr., and met in the basement of the elder King's church, Ebenezer Baptist Church. During this time, Paulk served on a committee that observed Georgia's then-segregated schools, and determined that "separate but equal" was a fiction. but examination of that document does not include Paulk's signature. His name does, however, appear in the second Ministers' Manifesto of 1958.

Paulk resigned from Hemphill in 1960. Officially, it was due to differences of opinion with Church of God leaders regarding his stance on racial integration, as well as the fact he allowed women in his church to wear jewelry something that the Church of God, like many Pentecostal denominations at the time, admonished against. However, it later emerged that Paulk had had an extramarital affair with a woman at Hemphill.

Church & Ministry In 1960, Paulk founded the Gospel Harvesters Evangelistic Association with his wife, his brother Don (also a former Church of God pastor), and his sister-in-law Clariece. During its early years, the church held services at St. John's Lutheran Church in the Little Five Points section of Atlanta.

From the first day, Paulk was committed to opening the doors of his church to all people, regardless of racial or economic background. Not surprisingly, given his opposition to segregation, he was one of the first white pastors to open the doors of his church to blacks. This stance wasn't popular even with some members of his own church; when the first blacks set foot in the church in the early 1960s, several whites walked out in protest. In response, one of the whites who remained, Ida Williams, gave a fifteen-minute sermon in which she said, "It is not the will of God that we should have prejudice."

Paulk remained active in the civil rights movement during this time. For instance, at a meeting of Concerned Clergy, he was one of the pastors who blessed the first civil rights march in Selma, Alabama. Later, he and his brother picketed a produce market which sold food to blacks at inflated prices. The resulting public outcry caused the store's closure. The church, now led by D. E. Paulk, changed its name to Spirit and Truth Assembly and moved to another location in Decatur.

Sex scandals Allegations by congregants Paulk was involved with many sex scandals spanning several decades. In 1992, six women accused Paulk, his brother Don, and two other nephews who were ministers at the cathedral, of sexual manipulation. One of them was Tricia Weeks, who had ghostwritten Paulk's autobiography. The story received considerable national coverage. Paulk denied the allegations, claiming Weeks was either mentally unstable or under evil influences. However, he admitted to the adulterous affair which forced him out of Hemphill Church of God in 1960.

On Monday, March 5, 2007, at a pretrial hearing, the Brewers' lawyer wrote out a request for dismissal of the case by hand and handed it to lawyers for Paulk and the cathedral. This was just as a ruling was about to come on a motion by Paulk's lawyers to dismiss the allegations. By dropping the case before the ruling, the Brewers left open the possibility of filing another suit with the same allegations. The Brewers' lawyer said they had no choice to do so because "we were having difficulty even at this point getting witnesses to speak out against the acts of Bishop Paulk and the church." Although Paulk's death removed him from the suit, Mona said she fully intended to continue her suit against the cathedral.

Donnie Earl Paulk On October 14, 2007, Donnie Earl (D.E.) Paulk, who had become senior pastor of the cathedral a few months earlier, informed a shocked congregation that a paternity test had revealed he was Earl Paulk's son, and not his nephew as he had believed for all his life. D.E. Paulk had been raised as the son of Don Paulk, Earl Paulk's brother. However, the test confirmed that he was the product of an illicit relationship between Earl Paulk and his sister-in-law, Clariece Paulk, who was married to Don. Don Paulk later said that he has forgiven his brother, and said D.E.'s paternity "made no difference in my love for my brother or my son."

Allegations by daughter and granddaughter Paulk's daughter, Beth Bonner, appeared on Atlanta station WAGA-TV on December 11, 2007, and apologized on behalf of her family for her father's misdeeds. She claimed to have confronted Paulk as far back as the 1980s about his immorality. According to her, Paulk had confessed and promised to reform, but reneged on his promise. She was not surprised when D.E. Paulk revealed he was her half-brother rather than her cousin. Interviewed on WAGA-TV the next day, Bonner's daughter, Penny White (née Penielle Brooke Bonner) went public with allegations, previously made only in court papers, that Paulk, her grandfather, had sexually abused her as a child. Paulk issued a statement through his lawyer denying the charge.

Theological concerns Paulk found his theology criticized concerning accusations of promoting Dominionism and Word of Faith teaching. Before opening his doors to the gay and lesbian community, he had close ties to the Christian Reconstructionist movement.

Death Paulk died early on the morning of March 29, 2009, at Atlanta Medical Center after a long battle with cancer.