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. Paulk was also known for his lifelong crusade against racism. Paulk's reputation was severely tarnished in his later years by allegations of sexual misconduct, including several illicit relationships and accusations that he had molested children. Early life and training Earl Paulk was born on May 30, 1927, in Appling County, Georgia, near Savannah, to Earl Pearly Paulk, Sr. and Addie Mae Tomberlin Paulk. His father was a minister in the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), eventually rising to assistant general overseer of the denomination. At 17, Paulk said he received a call from God to enter ministry. Paulk graduated from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina in the 1940s, 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. While at Candler, he was called to his first pulpit, a Church of God in Buford, Georgia, north of Atlanta. It was during this time that he began preaching against racism. Years later, Paulk said that he was influenced by seeing his uncle shoot a black friend in the back for cutting corners while plowing cotton. His stance was not typical for his time; it had long been common for white Southern preachers to use the Bible to justify support for racial discrimination. 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.