The Bishop, the Name and the Ocean

It's 2026. Artificial intelligence is rewriting how the world works. Telescopes are looking billions of years back toward the edge of the universe. Scientists are in labs trying to work out what consciousness even is.

And in the Black church, we are still arguing over whether you have to say "Father, Son and Holy Ghost," or "Jesus," when you put somebody under the water.

On Thursday, Nov. 5, at the Church of God in Christ's 118th Holy Convocation in St. Louis, Presiding Bishop J. Drew Sheard stood before the largest Black Pentecostal church in America at its biggest gathering of the year and taught the saints which name belongs in the water, and why some of their young people are leaving.

I'm not here to mock Bishop Sheard. I'm here to challenge him, directly and by name. I listened to the entire sermon myself, and every quotation below is checked against the recording.

What the Bishop said

He opened by telling the room he usually keeps his Bible class off the air: "I do it for in-person Bible class only, so that the critics can't pick apart what I'm saying." Then he broadcast it to the whole church. So, Bishop, respectfully: I'm one of the critics.

His text was Matthew 28:19, "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Then he turned to Acts 2:38, where Peter says, "be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ," the verse the Apostolic (Oneness) churches build their house on.

"Peter said that you're to be baptized in the name of Jesus," he said. "But you ain't got that right. Because you don't understand who Peter was talking to." Peter's crowd, he argued, were Jews who "already believe in God" and "already believe in the Holy Spirit." So "now you got to get Jesus in your baptismal formula."

To be fair, and on the record: he did not say anyone baptized in Jesus' name is unsaved. He went after a reading of Peter, not anybody's baptism.

Then the illustration. "What is God's name? Jesus. I agree. But he got some other name. My name is Drew. But my other name is John. And then I got another name. Sheard. And if you call any one of those three names, I'm going to look around."

One man, three names. That is precisely how Oneness churches explain God: one God, three titles. The Bishop rose to defend three persons and drew a picture of one. Minutes later he went to the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3, the Son in the water, the Spirit descending, the Father's voice, and said, "Now you say that is Jesus only. But that ain't what my Bible say."

So in a few minutes, he agreed with the Apostolics twice (God's name is Jesus; Acts has a "baptismal formula" in that name) and then told them they were wrong.

The rest of the Book

The Bishop's case is that "in the name of Jesus" in Acts 2 was for Jews only. The rest of Acts doesn't cooperate.

• Acts 8:16: Samaritans "were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus."
• Acts 10:48: Cornelius, a Roman Gentile, and his household are baptized "in the name of the Lord."
• Acts 19:2–5: disciples in Ephesus tell Paul, "We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost," and are then baptized "in the name of the Lord Jesus."

People who had never heard of the Holy Ghost were baptized in Jesus' name. The Bishop's explanation works for Acts 2 and breaks in Acts 8, 10 and 19.

The Trinitarian side has a real card too: Matthew 28 is Jesus' own command, and the earliest Christian manual outside the Bible, the Didache, uses the threefold words, as does Justin Martyr in the second century. But the same Didache also speaks of people "baptized into the name of the Lord." Both formulas, one document.

Both sides have verses. That's not the scandal. The scandal is that the fight exists at all, because the Book itself keeps telling us it's the wrong fight:

• John 4:2: "Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples." (One chapter earlier, John 3 says he was baptizing; John 4 stops to correct it.)
• 1 Corinthians 1:13, 17: Paul's church is splitting over who baptized whom. He writes, "were ye baptized in the name of Paul?" and "Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel."
• Luke 23:43: the thief on the cross gets "to day shalt thou be with me in paradise," with no water and no formula at all.

Two thousand years ago, Paul looked at a church fighting over baptism names and told it to stop. Two thousand years later, the presiding bishop of COGIC is teaching a convocation which name to say.

Which name?

The Apostolic answer is Acts 4:12: "none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." So let's talk about the name.

His mother never said "Jesus." He was a Jewish man in Galilee whose everyday language was Aramaic. His name was Yeshua. In Greek it became Iēsous; in Latin, Iesus. And the 1611 King James Bible, the one most of our churches still hold up, printed it "Iesus." The letter J as its own letter came later in English printing.

If the sound saves, which sound? And if it's what the name points to, then we already agree: it isn't the word. It's what the word points at.

When Moses asked God the Bishop's exact question, what's your name, the answer in Exodus 3:14 wasn't a label. It was "I AM THAT I AM." Being itself. You can't write that on a baptism certificate.

The King's book

The Bible was not written in English. The King James Version was commissioned by James I at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, translated by about fifty scholars in six companies, and published in 1611. That's the same king who had written Daemonologie, a book on witchcraft, in 1597.

And right in the middle of the Bishop's fight sits 1 John 5:7 in the King James: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." It's the plainest three-in-one verse in that Bible, and it isn't in the early Greek manuscripts. Erasmus added it to his third Greek New Testament in 1522; the King James kept it; most modern translations (NIV, ESV, NRSV) drop it or footnote it.

I'm not saying that to hand the Apostolics a win. I'm saying the ground under both sides moves.

We of all people should know men choose the words. In 1807, a Bible for enslaved Africans in the British West Indies was printed in London, built on the King James text, with about 90% of the Old Testament and more than half of the New Testament removed. The Exodus story was gone. "Servants, obey your masters" stayed. Men chose the words, men cut the words, men printed the words. And men are still fighting over the words.

Why they're leaving

The Bishop got one thing right, and I'll say it plainly: "You got to stop shouting and teach the people what they shouting about." Agreed. Teach them.

But his diagnosis was this: "The reason why we losing some of our young people is because we haven't put the doctrine of our church in them," and they're going to "other denominations that don't believe what we believe" for "a good feel-good experience." (He also told one member that "if you feel the Lord is leading you then you may go." Credit where it's due.)

The national data, which is not COGIC-specific because no one has studied COGIC specifically, tell a different story:

• In Pew Research Center's December 2025 study, the top reason people left the religion they were raised in was that they stopped believing the teachings (46%). PRRI's 2023 study put it at 56%. Other leading reasons: drifting away, finding religion unimportant, the church's social and political stances, and clergy scandals.
• The double edge, honestly: the top reason people stay is that they believe the teachings (64%). Belief matters.
• Among Americans under 30 raised in a religion, 10% switched to another religion. 35% now have none. Most aren't leaving COGIC for the feel-good church down the street. They're leaving church.
• And among Black Americans with no religious affiliation, 83% still believe in God.

Leaving church is not leaving God. Many of our young people know Acts 2:38 and Matthew 28:19. They did the reading. Then they looked up from the page and asked the question nobody in the pulpit would answer: is any of this true, or is it just what we were told?

They didn't leave because they didn't know. A lot of them left because they did.

The ocean

My co-host Daysha held me to my own standard on air, and she was right to. If I say doctrine is "just belief," then isn't "Source" just my belief? Isn't it just my name for God?

Here's my answer. If I ask you to believe Source because I said so, I'm the Bishop with a different checklist. Don't do that. I'm not asking you to believe. I'm asking you to look. Put the words down and check your own experience: what is here before the word "God" arrives? Before "Jesus," before "Father, Son and Holy Ghost"? You don't need a king's translation for that. You don't need a convocation. Truth doesn't mind being questioned. Belief needs protection.

Picture a wave. It has a shape, a height, a beginning and an end, and it has never once been anything but ocean. Now picture that wave standing up in the middle of the sea, arguing with the next wave about which name you have to say to be saved by the ocean.

That's the debate. And the institution is worse: it's a wave trying to save the ocean. Guarding God's name, defending God's formula, protecting God from critics, as if the ocean needed a wave to protect it.

This isn't an outside idea. It's the part of our own tradition that got buried under the fighting. The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart prayed, "I pray God to rid me of God," meaning: take away my idea of God so I can meet what's actually there. Howard Thurman, the Black preacher and mystic whose Jesus and the Disinherited shaped Dr. King, told Spelman students to listen for "the sound of the genuine" in themselves. Not in a formula. In themselves.

Bishop Sheard asked, "What is God's name?" The Book already answered: I AM.

The debate is over which name saves the wave. The older question is whether the ocean was ever lost.

What to do with this

1. If you're in a church, ask. Not to fight. Ask your pastor what Jesus' name was in Aramaic. Ask why 1 John 5:7 disappears in modern Bibles. Ask why, if Jesus himself didn't baptize, we split families over how it's done.
2. If you already walked out, hear this: you're not lost. Leaving the argument isn't leaving God. You put the map down. Now go look at the territory.
3. Bishop Sheard: you said teach the people. Let's teach them where the words came from, who printed them, who cut them, and who fought over them. Then let's teach them the one thing a formula never could: how to be still long enough to notice they were never separate from what they're looking for.

Notice the pattern. Interrupt it. We are Source. Ashe (Ashay).

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Sources:

• "Bishop J. Drew Sheard | Morning Manna | 118th Holy Convocation," broadcast Nov. 5, 2026. Quotations verified against the audio by Don Jackson.
• Prodigal Breaking News, "'That Ain't What My Bible Say': Bishop Sheard, 'Jesus Only' and the Fight Over God's Name" (Nov. 6, 2026).
• Church of God in Christ, Statement of Faith (cogic.org).
• King James Version (1611): Matthew 3, 28:19; Luke 23:43; John 3:22, 4:2; Acts 2:38, 4:12, 8:16, 10:48, 19:2–5; 1 Corinthians 1:13–17; Exodus 3:14; 1 John 5:7.
• The Didache, ch. 7 and 9; Justin Martyr, First Apology 61.
• On the 1611 spelling "Iesus": Eden, "1611 KJV vs modern KJV: what's the real difference?"
• On 1 John 5:7 (the "Comma Johanneum"): standard textual-critical references; see the notes in the NRSV, ESV and NIV.
• On the 1807 "Slave Bible": NPR (2018); Museum of the Bible exhibit; Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands (Law and Gilbert, London, 1807).
• Pew Research Center, "Why Do Some Americans Leave Their Religion…" (Dec. 15, 2025); Pew Research Center, key facts on Black Americans and religion (Dec. 2025).
• PRRI, "Unveiling the Exodus" (July 2023).
• Meister Eckhart, German sermon "Beati pauperes spiritu."
• Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949); "The Sound of the Genuine," Spelman College baccalaureate address (1980).
• The ocean and the wave, and Source, are Prodigal's own perspective, not settled science or settled theology.

Image: AI-generated illustration, not a photograph.