Charles Edward Blake Sr. (born August 5, 1940) is an American minister and retired pastor who served as the Presiding Bishop and leader of the Church of God in Christ, a 6 million-member Holiness Pentecostal denomination, from 2007 to 2021.
Charles Blake was born on August 5, 1940, in Little Rock, Arkansas, to the late Bishop Junious Augustus (J.
He became a Christian and converted to Pentecostal Christianity as a young adolescent, under the ministry of his mother and father in Arkansas, and he and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was in his 20's when his father was asked to take over as a bishop of the First Jurisdiction of Southern California for the COGIC denomination.
In the 1990's and early 2000's, Blake also penned articles for Ebony and Christianity Today noting the importance of the Black Church's influence on presidential elections and American politics and society in general.
[7][8] In 1984, after the death of his father, he was ordained and consecrated as a jurisdictional bishop of the First Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of Southern California for the COGIC denomination, and remained in that position until 2009 when he stepped down from the position to dedicate himself fully to the duties of the Office of the Presiding Bishop.
Between 2009 and 2011, in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, Blake founded and was the first president of the Pan African Children's Fund (PACF).
Blake has also formerly served as an Advisory Committee Member of the Pentecostal World Conference, and as the founder and Co-chair of the Los Angeles Ecumenical Congress (LAEC), an interdenominational coalition of religious leaders and pastors for the city of Los Angeles.
On April 24, 2022, while addressing his local congregation at the West Angeles COGIC for their sunday morning service, he announced that he has been dealing with and coping with Parkinson's disease, "for the past ten years", and that as of April 2022, he was going to be retiring as the senior pastor of West Angeles COGIC, and that his two sons who are also COGIC elders and ministers, Reverends Charles Jr. and Lawrence Blake, would be taking over as the de facto pastor and assistant pastor of the West Angeles congregation, respectively.