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Granville Oral Roberts (1918—2009) was an American televangelist, faith healer, and prosperity gospel preacher who built a multimedia ministry empire. He also trained many younger ministers who later built mega ministries of their own. In the 1950s and ’60s, Roberts’ televised healing crusades brought him widespread influence and recognition amid a Pentecostal/charismatic revival that changed the face of Protestantism in the United States. In 1965, he opened Oral Roberts University (ORU) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a private, interdenominational Christian college that accelerated the spread of the charismatic movement into traditional Protestant and Catholic churches.
Oral Roberts was the youngest of five children born to Ellis Melvin and Claudius Irwin Roberts. As a farmer in the small town of Bebee, Oklahoma, Robert’s father struggled to make ends meet. In 1916, he gave up farming to become a minister of the Pentecostal Holiness Church and started preaching in remote congregations scattered throughout Oklahoma.
Young Oral rebelled against his religious upbringing until he underwent a dramatic conversion experience at age seventeen. In 1935, Oral Roberts was miraculously healed from tuberculosis and stuttering speech at a tent revival meeting. The following year, he received what Pentecostals call “the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Roberts believed God was calling him into a ministry of healing. In 1936, he was ordained in the Pentecostal Holiness Church and teamed up with his father as an itinerant evangelist.
After graduating high school, Roberts attended Oklahoma Baptist University and Phillips University but ended his studies two years later without earning a degree. In 1938, he married Evelyn Lutman Fahnestock, a schoolteacher and daughter of a fellow Pentecostal Holiness preacher. The couple built a solid and stable marriage of sixty-six years, avoiding the moral scandals of some other high-profile ministers.
Oral and Evelyn had four children. The eldest, Rebecca Nash, died with her husband in a plane crash in 1977. The older son, Ronald, committed suicide in 1982 after struggling with depression and drug addiction. Their youngest son, Richard, worked alongside his father in the Oral Roberts organization. Their younger daughter, Roberta Potts, became an attorney.
In 1947, a healing revival was sweeping the country. Oral Roberts decided to leave his pastoral post at the Pentecostal Holiness church in Enid, Oklahoma, to launch an independent ministry centered on divine healing. It was called the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association (OREA). Roberts began holding large-scale revivals and utilized groundbreaking mass-mailing strategies. He was an excellent organizer and businessman, and the ministry increasingly prospered as Roberts expanded his reach through televised healing crusades across the United States and in more than fifty other countries.
In 1951, Oral Roberts assisted in founding the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International. By 1965, he opened Oral Roberts University with 300 students. Billy Graham was the keynote speaker at the dedication service in 1967. ORU soon became one of the most respected and fastest-growing private educational institutions in the southwest United States. By 2000, the student population had risen to more than 5,000.
When the healing crusades of the 1960s dwindled, Oral Roberts adapted. In the 1970s, he hosted prime-time television specials with famous actors and entertainers; the specials attracted millions of viewers. He also put together a radio network broadcasting to hundreds of stations.
Oral Robert’s ministry direction continued to change dramatically. In the late 1960s, he departed the Pentecostal Holiness Church to become ordained in the United Methodist Church. He was drawn to the new receptiveness to the charismatic message among mainline denominations, particularly the Methodist Church.
Oral Roberts was a leading promoter of the prosperity gospel message, claiming that God blessed His people with financial success, based on Bible verses such as 3 John 1:2. His books—more than fifty in all—sold millions of copies, motivating people with positive slogans such as “Something good is going to happen to you” and “Expect a miracle.” He developed a “seed faith” doctrine, teaching that those who gave to his ministry would receive multiplied financial and spiritual blessings in return from God.
In the mid-1970s, Oral Roberts’ ministry entered a period of controversy and scandal. ORU greatly expanded its graduate programs, including a school of medicine. Roberts built a hospital and an enormous medical research facility called the City of Faith in Tulsa. To pay for his grandiose endeavors, he resorted to high-pressure fundraising tactics that were presented with extravagant personal revelations from God. More than once, Roberts claimed that, if contributions did not come in, the Lord would “take him home” (https://healingandrevival.com/BioORoberts.htm, accessed 10/3/24).
By the mid-1980s, Oral Roberts’ son Richard had taken the reins of OREA. The ministry was reportedly worth more than $500 million by then (www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/15/oral-roberts-obituary, accessed 10/3/24). The family was living a luxurious lifestyle, and Oral Roberts was heavily criticized for his constant appeals for money from his mostly non-affluent support base. His medical complex was putting an unsupportable financial strain on the organization. The project had come under fierce scrutiny by the media and the Tulsa medical community. Financial support for both OREA and ORU had dwindled as both institutions were losing credibility. By 1990, the City of Faith was forced to close its doors.
Oral Roberts passed the baton to his son Richard, retiring as president of ORU in 1993. In 2007, Richard Roberts resigned as president of Oral Roberts University amid allegations of improper personal use of university funds and resources. The following year, the case was dismissed, and ORU named Richard president emeritus in honor of his years of service. The university recovered under new leadership but severed ties with the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, which still operates today under Richard Roberts’ direction.
Oral Roberts died of complications from pneumonia in 2009 at age 91. Although his prominence faded during the years of controversy, his imprint on healing revivalism, television evangelism, the charismatic movement, and Christian education are irrefutable.
