Bishop Charles Blake, the head of the Church of God in Christ, is tired of hearing from one of his pastors, Pastor Earl Carter, who has been accusing him of getting thousands of dollars in kickbacks as well as being gay and a pedophile.
“Mr. Carter’s misconduct is extreme, outrageous, and beyond all bounds of decency,” Blake said in papers recently filed in court. He is suing Carter for $75,000 and is also seeking to end his crusade against Blake.
The animosity likely began when Carter attacked gay people during the church’s annual meeting, the Holy Convocation, last year. Blake responded to the attack by apologizing profusely on behalf of the church, and Carter took the apology to mean that Blake “threw him under the bus.”
Since then, Carter has accused Blake of a medley of sins, including molesting underage boys in Africa, receiving kickbacks from hotels of $60 per room during conventions, and having sex with an openly gay Harvard professor who is now dead.
Carter claimed that Blake, who is president of the Pan African Children’s Fund, went to South Africa “because little boys are accessible and you can’t go to jail. They won’t charge you.”
In court papers, Blake defended himself against the accusations. “Mr. Carter’s goals are to destroy Bishop Blake’s stellar reputation, interfere with his relationship with Church of God in Christ, Inc. and drive visitors to Mr. Carter’s websites where he seeks to illegally profit off of Bishop Blake’s good name,” said the papers.
Blake went on to claim that he felt “compelled” to file suit after the accusations continued to pile up and cause him and his family “immeasurable” pain.
“Bishop Blake refrained for several weeks from taking action against Mr. Carter hoping that Mr. Carter would have a change of heart and would, on his own, retract his false and defamatory accusations and apologize for the harm he has caused his family.
“Mr. Carter has not done that and, instead, has escalated the nature of his false accusations, such that they are now extremely inflammatory and reckless.”