Word: orals
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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From wrinkled bills to neatly creased $100 checks, donations poured into the Rev. Oral Roberts' sleek Tulsa headquarters last week. Cash and pledges have arrived in a steady stream over the past fortnight, at a rate of more than $160,000 each day. That was the good news. But there was also the bad news: a television channel in Washington dumped two January episodes of his 30-minute telecast. Seven other outlets, including stations in Tulsa and Dallas, are now monitoring each of the United Methodist preacher's syndicated shows to see if they fit the stations' standards. The Tulsa...
...source of all the fuss was a Jan. 4 Roberts program. Surrounded by white-coated students, the evangelist launched into an appeal for money so that graduates of the medical school of Oral Roberts University, his 22-year- old institution in Tulsa, can serve in overseas missions. Viewers were urged to send at least $100 apiece during the next three months to help reach a goal of $4.5 million. Then Roberts dropped a bombshell. If donations fell short, said the 68-year-old preacher, God would strike him down. "I'm asking you to help extend my life," he said...
...Oral Roberts has long aroused controversy, not only during his 21 years as a touring faith healer but in his subsequent career as university president and medical administrator. The death revelation, however, was certainly the oddest of the messages from on high that Roberts has reported since he launched his $250 million City of Faith Medical and Research Center in 1977. The first revelation was God's command to build the lavish complex, detailing such matters as a design with three towers of 20, 30 and 60 stories. In the next astonishing disclosure, Jesus appeared, standing "some 900 feet tall...
...some published accounts, contributions plummeted from $88 million in 1980 to $55 million last year. Another index of trouble: Arbitron ratings indicate that Oral Roberts' weekly TV congregation has dropped by more than half since 1977, though that is partly counterbalanced by an added daily show with his son as host...
...complete a 60-story dog-and-cat hospital and that noncontributors would die. More soberly, the Tribune editorial informed Roberts that his portrayal of a "petty, vengeful or idiotic God" is "close to sacrilege." General Manager David Lane of WFAA-TV, the offended Dallas station, stated that Oral's pitch "violates everything I believe in from a moral standpoint." But a Roberts aide, Jan Dargatz, explained that God has "always given Oral impossible goals, and if Oral can't get it done, there's a possibility of sacrifice in the process." A concerned engineering student at Oral Roberts University expressed...