University of Virginia Library

Oral Roberts

Many Americans still remember Oral Roberts as the man with the "world's largest gospel tent" who traveled from city to city from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. During the twenty years of his tent meetings, he established a reputation as a spellbinding preacher and faith healer. Roberts is still a spellbinding preacher, but the healing is much less flamboyant, as he now heals only in

crusade meetings; on television he merely promises and prays for it. He has progressed a long way from the shirt-sleeved sweatiness of the gospel tent. These days he wears expensive suits and enjoys preeminence among TV religionists.

Granville Oral Roberts, son of a Pentecostal Holiness minister, grew up in poverty in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma. His father's ministry, according to Oral's own account, was sporadic, and the family was sometimes hungry. In his book The Call, Roberts tells of running away from home, only to return when he was stricken by tuberculosis. He also describes a miracle cure, both of the tuberculosis and of the stuttering that had plagued him till then. He certainly doesn't stutter today. He is a powerful preacher with many followers, who send him more than $50 million a year for the support of his TV show, his university, and his hospital.

Oral was licensed to preach as a Pentecostal Holiness minister in 1935. He attended a few college courses but has had no formal theological training. He was pastor of a church in Enid, Oklahoma, in 1947 when he rented a local auditorium and conducted a crusade. In 1948 he conducted his first tent meeting.

Oral's first television program, on January 10, 1954, was broadcast on sixteen stations. It was filmed in a studio, but in early 1955 he began filming in the tent. For a time his sermons were done in a studio, healing lines in the tent. Changing times in TV led to changes in Roberts's approach, however. Seeing that the medium was growing more sophisticated, Roberts dropped his program in 1967, when his tent came down for the last time.

Roberts was seeking new styles in more than one way. By 1966 he was seriously considering joining the Methodist Church. He did so in 1968, although not at the highest level of Methodist ministerial orders. He returned to the air in 1969 with new ecclesiastical credentials and a new television style.

His new television program was at first taped in the NBC studios in Burbank, California, but it is now done in Roberts's own multimillion-dollar studios on the campus of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. The production facilities at the university are considered to be among the best in the country. The Miss Teen-age America Pageant, country music programs, commercials, and other shows have been produced there when Roberts's own taping schedule permitted renting out the facilities.

Roberts's new program bore no resemblance to those of his sawdust-trail days under canvas. He had adopted the look and the techniques of modern television entertainment programming. Oral's son, Richard, became the singing star of the show, backed up by the World Action Singers of ORU. Guest stars were scheduled frequently on the weekly program, and always on the periodic prime-time specials. Before each taping, a warm-up session helped the audience to relax and clap with enthusiasm. During the warm-up, cameras recorded applause and smiling faces as cutaways to be edited into the program later. Opening and closing program shots featured scenes from the beautiful, ultramodern campus of Oral Roberts University, Roberts's showcase in Tulsa. Recent programs have also featured shots of Oral's huge City of Faith medical complex, which is under construction but in serious financial trouble. The medical center has been attacked by the Tulsa Hospital Council, which complains that the hospital isn't needed because Tulsa already has a surplus of a thousand hospital beds, and the City of Faith would put other hospitals out of business.

In early 1980 "Oral Roberts and You" was being shown on 165 TV stations and had the largest audience of any syndicated religious program. Yet this audience has diminished since Roberts's heyday, as Oral's tremendous financial problems have driven him to devote much energy and program time to fund raising. He preaches and teaches about "seed faith" stewardship, in which money planted in the Oral Roberts ministries will bear fruit in the form of multiple blessings from God. He pleads for financial support so that he can finish his hospital. He proclaims "financial emergencies" that can be met only by immediate gifts from his viewers. It remains to be seen whether he can get more money from fewer viewers, but his audience appears to be shrinking because of his deemphasis of entertainment in favor of fund raising and a more traditional worship service format.