Oral Roberts

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Granville Oral Roberts (born January 24, 1918 in Ada , Pontotoc County , Oklahoma , USA , † December 15, 2009 in Newport Beach , California ) was an American healing preacher, television evangelist and entrepreneur. He is considered to be the founding father of the Charismatic Movement and was one of the most famous and controversial offensive missionary preachers worldwide.

Ordained by the United Methodist Churches and the Pentecostal Holiness Church , Roberts was recognized as one of the leaders of the prosperity gospel in the Pentecostal movement and a pioneer in televised worship. With his appearances, he helped the Pentecostal movement to gain greater attention from the American public. Roberts founded the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association (OREA) and in 1963 Oral Roberts University (ORU) in Tulsa .

Live and act

Oral Roberts was born as the fifth and youngest child to parents Ellis and Claudius Roberts, who lived in Bebee in poor and rural Oklahoma. His family had ancestors, some of whom were Cherokee , and his father was a pastor in Pentecostal Holiness Church . At the age of 17 he contracted tuberculosis , from which two of his sisters and his grandfather died. At an awakening tent meeting with George W. Moncey, he received healing from this disease and gave his life to God. A year later he began preaching in the Pentecostal Holiness Church . After high school, he studied at Oklahoma Baptist University and Phillips University . Roberts dropped out of college and traveled as a traveling evangelist and traveling preacher, holding healing meetings . A little later, he was called to pastor the International Pentecostal Holiness Church in Georgia.

After spiritual insight and miraculous healings, he stepped down in 1947 and founded his own Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association (OREA) in an effort to expand his preaching and healing activities across the United States and even worldwide. He also started the monthly Healing Waters magazine to promote its events. In April 1948, Oral Roberts met in Kansas City, Kansas with healing evangelist William Branham , who was after him the most important spiritual healer of the Healing Revival . In 1954, he began tented services that were filmed and broadcast on television. He later experimented with other new television formats. In 1963 he founded Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, which started accepting students in 1965, was accredited in 1967 and 1971 and subsequently had up to 3,000 students. Some graduates such as Kenneth Copeland later started their own movements. In 1978 he built the City of Faith Medical Center , which cost $ 250 million. Despite donations, the health center was never able to operate economically and had to be closed in 1989. Then a complex with retirement homes was set up. In 2007, this campus comprised 22 large buildings valued at $ 250 million.

As early as 1987, Roberts was at the height of his career, his organization in Tulsa had a budget of $ 120 million and a staff of up to 2,300 people. He announced to his viewers that he was going to die soon, which resulted in a large donation of several million dollars. Throughout his ministry he wrote 120 books, laid hands on 1.5 million people around the world, and over 500 million heard and saw his messages.

His younger son Richard (* 1949) had become President of Oral Roberts University in 1993 , but was forced to resign in 2007 because he had misused donations for private purposes. The newspaper Tulsa World revealed this and made Larry King public. So Roberts returned at short notice as co-president. In the year he died in 2009, Oral Roberts was able to speak in the Oklahoma State Senate , who had honored him for his life's work.

Private

In 1938 he married the teacher Evelyn Lutman Fahnestock (1917-2005). They had two sons and two daughters together. His daughter Rebecca and her husband Marshall Nash died in an air accident in 1977; his eldest son Ronald committed suicide in 1982. Roberts died in 2009 of complications from pneumonia after having previously had two heart attacks. His daughter Roberta and his son Richard, 13 grandchildren and some great-grandchildren survived him.

Reception and criticism

Roberts was known as the most aggressive televangelist when it came to fundraising. Auburn University writer David Edwin Harell wrote of Roberts that he believed his feelings were the voice of God and that he was directly guided by God.

Many Christians reject the gospel of prosperity, as Roberts preached, as unbiblical. Leaders in the Roman Catholic and many other churches questioned the authenticity of his healings. Around 1955, a group of pastors from Arizona offered $ 1,000 each person to be cured by Oral Roberts and verified by medical examination. This amount was not paid to anyone.

Roberts had systematically requested and received donations in the name of God using new methods and sometimes manipulatively. The authoritarian father tried to involve his sons in his services at an early age, but this only temporarily succeeded with the younger one. The misuse of donations for private purposes became a pitfall for his son Richard. To what extent this was known to his father remains unclear.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Oral Roberts Story , 1952
  • Expect a Miracle , Thomas Nelson, 1995

literature

  • Wayne Robinson: Oral: The Warm, Intimate, Unauthorized Portrait of a Man of God , 1976
  • David Edwin Harrell Jr .: Oral Roberts: An American Life , Indiana University Press, 1985 and Harper & Row, San Francisco 1987

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the history of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement. In: The Word of Truth. March 21, 2017, accessed on September 10, 2019 (German).
  2. ^ David Edwin Harrell Jr., Oral Roberts: An American Life , Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana 1985 p. 150
  3. ↑ Roy Weremchuk, THUS Saith the Lord? William M. Branham (1909-1965), Life and Teaching , Deutscher Wissenschafts-Verlag, Baden-Baden 2019, p. 132 f.
  4. ↑ Randy Frame: CT Classic: Did Oral Roberts Go Too Far? Retrieved February 4, 2019 .
  5. ↑ In: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 1: Religion. Ed. Samuel S. Hill. Page 207
  6. ↑ Kiera Feldman: The Prodigal Prince: Richard Roberts and the Decline of the Oral Roberts Dynasty , This Land Press, September 2014
  7. ↑ In: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 1: Religion. Ed. Samuel S. Hill. Page 207
  8. ↑ Fritz Wirth: Der liebe Gott provides the script for the show. True prophets are rare: How criminal traders of “divine” messages robbed American TV preachers of their reputation. In: The world. March 23, 1998
personal data
SURNAME Roberts, Oral
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Roberts, Gainville Oral (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American healing minister, television evangelist, and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Ada , Pontotoc County , Oklahoma , USA
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 2009
Place of death Newport Beach , California , USA