Media Outrage

Yesterday Oral Roberts died at the age of 91 from complications of pneumonia.

Via USAToday:

Oral Roberts, the entrepreneurial evangelist known to millions by catchphrases such as “expect a miracle,” and by the Oklahoma university bearing his name, died Tuesday at age 91. Hospitalized after a recent fall, he died in Newport Beach, Calif., from complications of pneumonia, his spokesman said in a press release.

“Other than Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr., and maybe Jerry Falwell, it would be hard to name a different religious leader of more importance,” said Grant Wacker, professor of Christian history at Duke University Divinity School, Durham, N.C.

“In the middle of the 20th century, he took faith healing and Pentecostalism away from a frowzy backwoods image and gave it an upbeat face,” Wacker said.

“He pioneered the use of televangelism while (Billy) Graham was still using television sporadically. And then he went on to build the university and professional schools, challenging the idea that healing is solely a miraculous act of God, saying a miracle brought through a doctor’s hands is just as valid,” said Wacker, author of a history of Pentecostalism, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture.

Born in 1918 in Bebee, Okla., Roberts found his faith — and healing from a childhood stutter and a case of tuberculosis — while attending a healing revival at age 17.

Within a few decades, he became a leading figure in Pentecostalism, the century-old charismatic faith movement that highlights speaking in tongues and other “gifts of the spirit.” By 1947, he was crusading across the country and in 1954, he turned the cameras of the still-young television industry on his services.

His ministry’s daily program, The Place for Miracles, is still broadcast worldwide and on the Internet. Roberts’ Abundant Life Prayer Group is still taking prayer requests around the clock, answering 23 million phone calls for prayer, spokesman A. Larry Ross said.

Oral Roberts University opened to students in 1965 and a decade later added professional schools. But the City of Faith Medical and Research Center, which opened in 1981 with the idea of combining the healing power of medicine and prayer, closed eight years later.

Roberts wrote more than 130 books, most variations on his key principles: “God is your Source, sow your seed out of your need, and expect a miracle harvest.”

Graham in a statement released Tuesday, called Roberts “a great friend in ministry,” and added “I loved him as a brother.” Graham also praised Roberts’ late wife, Evelyn, as “a powerful prayer warrior.”

When Graham and Roberts last spoke three weeks ago, Graham said, Roberts told him he was “near the end of his life’s journey.”

Graham added, “I look forward to the day that I will see Oral and Evelyn Roberts again in Heaven — our eternal home.” Graham, also 91, is frail and living in retirement in North Carolina.

Richard Roberts, former president of Oral Roberts University, called his father, “a modern-day apostle of the healing ministry, an author, educator, evangelist, prophet and innovator. He was the only man of his generation to build a worldwide ministry, an accredited university and a medical school. … His name is synonymous with miracles.”

Historian of religion Martin Marty, professor emeritus at University of Chicago, also noted Roberts’ astute and innovative use of broadcasting to bring a religion once associated with the least educated in society into the mainstream.

“He proved before Rev. Jerry Falwell built Liberty University that you could build something more than a little bitty Bible college to train missionaries and learned Greek not to read Plato but to read Luke,” Marty said.

When Roberts opened his university to students in 1965 “it was the first to offer a full academic vision.”

But Marty also noted that while Graham saw his reputation rise across the decades, Roberts “overreached.”

The university has struggled. According to the Associated Press, last year Roberts settled with two professors who alleged that they were forced out after detailing financial and ethical wrongdoing by Oral’s son, Richard, the school’s former president, who resigned. And this year the university is cutting 10% of its workforce.

Roberts will also be remembered, says Marty, for his “clownish moments, like an idea to build a 900-foot-tall statue of Jesus to knock on the windows of the United Nations. He would stop at nothing to make a point, didn’t worry about manners or prestige. He had a genuine faith — but he lost perspective along the way.”

Roberts is survived by his son, Richard, his daughter, Roberta Potts, and 12 grandchildren, all of Tulsa.