oral roberts
Revered by millions who heard his message of God’s healing power, ridiculed by others for tying his own mortality to a fundraising need, Oral Roberts was a towering figure in 20th century American Christianity.
Roberts, who died Tuesday at 91, was largely out of the public’s consciousness in his later years. His most visible legacy predated his death by 45-plus years: his namesake university in Tulsa, Okla., the first Pentecostal university in the world, built by a man who never finished college.
But Roberts also is credited with being at the forefront of taking the Christian message to television, helping make Pentecostal Christianity mainstream before it exploded across the globe, bringing greater acceptance of divine healing and laying the foundation for the oft-criticized “prosperity gospel.”
“He was a quite significant figure,” said retired Harvard University theologian Harvey Cox, who has studied Pentecostalism, the fiery branch of Christianity that Roberts embraced. “He was controversial, he was ridiculed now and then. But he more than survived. He turned out to be quite a big success.”
Roberts was hospitalized after a fall over the weekend. He died of complications from pneumonia Tuesday in Newport Beach, Calif., a spokesman said.
Born a preacher’s kid in Oklahoma poverty, Roberts overcame both a childhood stutter and tuberculosis at a young age. He said an evangelist praying for the sick healed him at a revival meeting aged 17.
Roberts took to the pulpit himself. The tall, handsome preacher with Cherokee blood and an Okie accent was a spellbinding speaker at tent revivals on the sawdust trail, said Vinson Synan, dean emeritus of Regent University’s School of Divinity, whose father was Roberts’ bishop.
Roberts’ message was one of healing the whole person ? body, mind and spirit. The philosophy led many to call Roberts a “faith healer,” a label he rejected with the comment: “God heals ? I don’t.”
Before Roberts came on the scene, “the idea of healing within a religious service was left to Christian Scientists or people who went to Lourdes,” Cox said. “Now, it’s fairly common in churches across the board. In his own way, he made that happen.”
Synan, who ranks Roberts among the three or four most important Christian leaders of the last half of the 20th century, said Roberts was widely loved for bringing Pentecostals, derided as “holy rollers” for their spirit-filled worship and speaking in tongues, into the mainstream.
Just decades later, more than 1 in 4 Christians in the world today are Pentecostal, said Cox. Roberts “was onto some of this stuff intuitively long before it became as big as it has.”
He was also ahead of the curve with his “Seed-Faith” teachings ? that those who give to God will get things in return. That laid the foundation for a current generation of “prosperity gospel” preaching televangelists who cite their own mansions and Bentleys as proof of God’s favor.