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ROBERTS, ORAL 1918-

TELEVANGELIST; FOUNDER OF ORAL ROBERTS
UNIVERSITY

Public Notice

In the early 1970s Oral Roberts attained a newfound acceptance and celebrity, symbolized in part by his induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1972. His television program, Oral Roberts and You, took on the trappings of regular television entertainment to widen its appeal and consistently attracted the largest audiences for regular religious programming for most of the decade of the 1970s. Roberts became a frequent guest on talk shows and other commercial television programs. As the nation's most famous charismatic preacher, he had become a part of the celebrity culture, having dinner with Billy Graham and President Jimmy Carter in the White House.

Oral Roberts University

Part of Roberts's acceptance came from the success of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. Roberts continued to serve as president of the University, but about half the expenses of the institution came from contributions to the Oral Roberts Evangelical Association, which operated his ministry. By the end of the decade there were about four thousand students enrolled in its various programs, and many fans followed the success of the ORU Titans basketball team. In middecade the University instituted graduate programs in business, theology, nursing, and education, and Roberts announced that schools of law, dentistry, and medicine would soon be added.

Family Misfortunes

But family misfortunes accumulated in the last years of the decade. His older daughter and her husband were killed in an airplane accident in 1977. Richard, his older son and mainstay in the ministry, was divorced two years later, and his younger son's life was spiraling downward toward an ultimate suicide.

Basketball Scandals

In addition to his children's tribulations, Oral Roberts University attracted widespread criticism as the decade wore on. The basketball successes of the ORU Titans declined after their high point in 1974. Critics questioned the school's efforts to restore the team's faded glory, particularly the coaches' extravagant salaries, and in 1979 the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced penalties for the Titans for recent rule violations.

Conversations with God

More bitter questions came from Roberts's decision to add a hospital and medical complex to ORU. In 1977 he announced that God had spoken to him and demanded he add a City of Faith, a medical complex that would contain a hospital with 777 beds, a sixty-story clinic, and a twenty-story research center. Derisive questions were raised about Roberts's direct conversations with God. More serious questions were raised by local hospitals in Tulsa about the politics of Roberts's efforts to secure a certificate of need for the new medical facility. While people in Tulsa agreed that a medical school would be useful for the city, many community leaders insisted that already there was a surplus of hospital beds in the area and that a new hospital would drain patients from the hospitals already operating, leading to their financial difficulties. In spite of the protests ground was broken on a scaled-back version of Roberts's City of Faith, and he and his political allies pushed through an acceptance of his plans. Even as work on the City of Faith went forward, Roberts found himself engulfed in new controversy when he announced that he had talked with Jesus and that he was nine hundred feet tall. By the time comedians had finished with that episode, Roberts announced that God would call him home if his followers did not send an immediate five million dollars for his ministry. The respect he had carefully acquired after playing down his charismatic tendencies washed away in the years that followed. Even the City of Faith was forced into closing by the 1990s.