Frosty Troy and more

Tonight instead of going to my drum circle, I went to All Souls Unitarian Church to hear the state’s best known liberal – Frosty Troy. Frosty said that corruption is the worst he has ever seen it. He spoke to the crowd for a little more than an hour, and I think he spoke without notes. Frosty is the former editor of “The Oklahoma Observer”. I have been a longtime subscriber to the Observer. Frosty is one of my heroes.

Just prior to his talk, a music program was going on. There was a group of musicians playing various instruments – violin, flute, bass, guitar. They reminded me of Peter, Paul, and Mary. They have some kind of music at All Souls in the evenings on Wednesdays. In fact, they have a lot of things going on at that church all the time

Last Sunday I went to All Souls Church since Restoration had no service account the All Souls service being a recognition of the combination of the All Souls congregation with the New Beginnings congregation. The leader of New Beginnings (formerly called Higher Dimensions) is Bishop Carlton Pearson. Pearson founded Higher Dimensions and grew the congregation to a megachurch. Then Pearson came to the conclusion that God was too good to consign anybody to hell. He gave up the idea of hell in his theology and lost about 90 percent of his congregation.

The remnants of his congregation met at Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Tulsa for several months. He came to All Souls and preached to an overflow audience about a year ago. His sermon was excellent, although it did contain some God-talk. But that does not bother me like it once did.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Bishop Pearson’s congregation agreed with All Souls to share the same building on South Peoria. I don’t know any other details of the arrangement.

After the Sunday service I spoke with Patrick Burke (a member of Restoration), and we wondered what effect the combination of the two congregations would have on Restoration.

There was a meal provided on the lawn following the service – barbecue beef, potato salad, green salad, bread, etc. I saw Barbara Frey (a member of HAT) there who had just recently returned from Michigan, where she had gone for the summer. She had stayed along the eastern coast and spoke of taking part in a ceremony honoring her brother who had died a few months ago.