Oral Roberts and the Rise of the Prosperity Gospel (Jonathan Root) - A Review
ORAL ROBERTS AND THE RISE OF THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL (Library of Religious Biography). By Jonathan Root. Foreword by Daniel Vaca. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2023. Xiv + 254 pages.
At one
point in my life, I was fully enmeshed in Pentecostalism. I may have left the
movement many years ago, but it left its imprint on me (see my books Unfettered Spirit: Spiritual Gifts for the New Great Awakening. Second Expanded Edition and Called to Bless: Finding Hope by Reclaiming Our Spiritual Roots). As I grew up in
the 1960s and 1970s, even before my encounter with Pentecostalism as a
movement, I had heard of Oral Roberts, who appeared regularly on TV. His specials
featuring his son Richard and the World Action Singers were mainstream TV.
Later on, some of my friends went to Oral Roberts University after high school.
So, I knew about him and his influence on a certain segment of Christianity.
This influence stemmed in part from his healing ministry, his university, and
eventually the formation and spread of the prosperity gospel within
Pentecostalism. So, who is Oral Roberts that for a time was one of the most
recognized religious voices in the United States and beyond, rivaling even Billy
Graham?
Oral
Roberts’ name might not be as recognizable as it once was (though the ORU
baseball team did well in the 2023 College World Series), but his legacy
continues in people like Joel Osteen. Looking back in time, having watched
various prosperity gospelers such as Kenneth Copeland, with scandals aplenty
(Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart), Roberts seemed to rise above the worst of the
prosperity preachers. Questions were raised about his fundraising efforts, but
unlike Bakker and Swaggart, there were no sex scandals. Now, with Jonathan
Root's contribution to Eerdmans' Library of Religious Biography, we have
access to the fuller story of one of the most influential preachers/evangelists
of the second half of the twentieth century.
The
author of this religious biography, Jonathan Root, is a postdoctoral teaching
fellow in history at the University of Missouri, where he focuses on the
relationship between the Prosperity Gospel and American culture. While Oral
Roberts, in Root’s estimation, might not have been the father of the prosperity
gospel (as some interpreters have suggested), Roberts did spread its message
through the concept of seed faith, a concept that he used in the course of his
ministry to fundraise for his various projects, including the founding of Oral
Roberts University and the establishment of his medical school and hospital in
Tulsa.
As we
move through Robert's life, Root offers a complicated picture of his life.
There are positives to Roberts’ life and ministry along with major problems.
Root helps us see both the good and the bad about Roberts, rooting his story in
his origin story as the son of a poor farmer/preacher affiliated with the
Pentecostal Holiness denomination. We learn that Roberts was somewhat
precocious—he was very smart, but he also faced numerous challenges growing up
that included his family’s poverty, health concerns (a bout of tuberculosis),
stuttering, and the family’s involvement in Pentecostalism. It was the
experience of tuberculosis that served as a driving force in his later commitment
to engaging in healing ministry, something that the Pentecostal Holiness
denomination did not emphasize. In addition, the poverty of his early years
contributed to a sense of insecurity that never disappeared but led to a
perceived need to build ministries and eventually buildings —including the
University, medical center, and more—that would prove to the world if not to
himself that he was no longer poor.
Root
takes back to Roberts’ roots in early twentieth-century Oklahoma, where he was
born into poverty. His father was a poor farmer who gave that up to serve as a Pentecostal
preacher. At the time many Pentecostals, especially those involved with the
holiness traditions, believed that to be a good Christian was to live in
poverty. This was a view that initially pushed him away from the faith and
which he later sought to overcome in his own preaching. So, as he grew up the
desire to escape poverty grew within him, pushing him to make something of
himself. We also learn of Roberts's Cherokee ancestry on his mother's side,
which opened his eyes at different points to the question of integration and
civil rights. As he matured and came to faith, he married Evelyn and began his
life of ministry. He began to make a name for himself as a Pentecostal Holiness
preacher/evangelist. He also got caught up in generational conflicts,
especially regarding support by his denomination for younger evangelists like
himself. He also bucked the trends of his denomination by emphasizing the
importance of education, though he was himself a high school dropout. In 1941
he took his first pastorate in North Carolina, though he returned to Oklahoma a
year later to take up a new ministry. This second ministry was largely
successful, which saw the congregation grow under his leadership. He also
pursued further education, first at Oklahoma Baptist University and then at
Phillips University (a Disciples of Christ institution). In addition, it was
during this period that his second child, Ronald, was born. While he
experienced much success during this period, he became restless. During this
period of restlessness, he helped launch Southwestern College in Oklahoma City
to train ministers for the Pentecostal Holiness churches. Then in 1946, he began
to feel the call to healing ministry.
His
healing ministry began in earnest in 1947 as he began to hold healing services
at his church in Enid, Oklahoma. As news spread of the healings at his
services, he began to receive invitations to bring this ministry to other
communities. It was during this period that the family moved to Tulsa, where in
time he became one of the city's leading citizens. By 1951, he had preached to
1.5 million people in eleven healing campaigns. He had also sold thousands of
copies of his books and had a newsletter, Healing Waters that had over a
million subscribers. As Oral moved from local ministry to engaging in healing revivals,
he purchased a series of ever larger tents in which to hold his meetings, which
often attracted audiences of up to 10,000 people at a time. The key to these early
revivals was the healing line, which personalized the encounter. In the course
of the book, we follow the story from the tent revival to the launching of his radio
ministry and finally to his television ministry in the 1950s. Since all of this
required large amounts of money, he began to look for ways to fundraise. Thus,
fundraising became a staple of his ministry as he was always needing more money
to pay for his work.
Throughout
Root's biography, we learn about Roberts' relationships with his family members.
Because he was often on the road, Evelyn was the one who kept together the
family that included four children together. Not surprisingly problems emerged
that the family had to face. This included numerous problems, including drug
addiction and the later suicide of his brilliant son, whose academic
proclivities Oral hoped to tap into with his university. Throughout Evelyn
stood by her husband, who despite his numerous travels remained faithful to
her.
It was
in the early 1960s that he began to envision the founding of a university that
would serve young people like his son Ronnie, who were "bright, curious,
worldly, and Pentecostal." In other words, he envisioned something
different from the typical Pentecostal Bible colleges. With this in mind, he
purchased property in Tulsa in 1961, with the building of a university in mind.
As the university was formally established in 1962, it becomes a central focus
of the remainder of the book. We discover that Roberts dreamed of creating a
leading, modern, Christian university that would gain the attention of the
broader world. Unfortunately, these efforts continually faced the challenge of
remaining financially solvent. That ongoing challenge fed into significant
fundraising efforts that included his concept of seed faith through the promise
that as one gave to his ministry, one would receive blessings (including financial
ones) from God.
Roberts
chose to name the university after himself because he believed that his
supporters wouldn't give to the university without his name attached. As the
vision took shape, we find out that Roberts, who was very athletic himself, wanted
to establish a powerful basketball program at the university. So, by the early
1970s, ORU had developed a powerful basketball team that competed for a
national title. But in addition to his athletic teams, his commitment to health
and healing, which emerged out of his own illness and healing, led him to establish
a medical school and a hospital (City of Faith). Although this effort put him
at odds with the local medical community in Tulsa, he did find supporters in
the city. His opponents in the medical community feared that his hospital would
lead to the presence of too many hospital beds in the city, a problem that did
emerge. While Roberts argued that the City of Faith would serve as a national draw
(like the Mayo Clinic) that never came to fruition. Most of those served were local.
Another
element in the story is Robert’s desire to be respected, especially by the
elite in Tulsa. To achieve this, he joined exclusive golf clubs and moved his
church membership from the Pentecostal Holiness church to the Methodist Church.
While the move to the Methodist Church was designed to gain respectability in
the community it did cause problems with some of his allies and supporters who
believed that his alignment with what was perceived to be a liberal denomination
would damage his ministry.
As for
the fundraising efforts, the financial drain of his expanding ministry led to
more desperate efforts. This was especially true in the 1980s as he sought to
raise money for his hospital. Among his more controversial efforts was his
claim that a 900-foot-tall Jesus appeared to him with a message that called on
his supporters to give generously promising that they would be blessed if they
did this. Later he told of another vision from God that involved the need for
his supporters to send in eight million dollars to support the ministry in a
very short time or God would call him home. These visions led to much ridicule
and caused significant damage to his image. All of this took place in the
1980s, as the scandals involving Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart broke into the
open. As the 1980s drew to a close his grand vision began to fall apart.
Although the university continued to exist, the medical school and hospital closed,
while the law school moved to Pat Robertson’s CBN University (Regent
University).
By 1990
the damage to the ministry was extensive and the ministry would continue to
struggle. Eventually, Oral passed leadership of the university and evangelistic
association to his son Richard. He would struggle to carry on the legacy and
had to turn over the leadership of the two entities to others who separated the
university from the ministry. Oral would live to age ninety-one, dying in 2009,
four years after his beloved wife Evelyn.
As we
read this biography of Oral Roberts, we come to know more about his exploits,
along with the challenges that came his way (including growing up in poverty, the
suicide of his son Ronnie, and Richard's divorce from Patty). We also learn
more about his influence on evangelicalism. Interestingly, especially in light
of the current connection between white evangelicals and the Republican Party, Roberts largely stayed out of politics (unlike
some of his contemporaries). While he didn't have a clean record, he also sought
to integrate his revivals and later his university, before others chose to do
so. This may be due in large part to his own Native American heritage. Root
writes in his biography Oral Roberts and the Rise of the Prosperity Gospel that
Oral's life and ministry were controlled by two competing feelings. First of
all, there was a sense of divine calling, which went back to his mother's
continual reminder that she had dedicated Oral to God's service. On the other
side of the coin, there was that deep-seated insecurity that was rooted in the
poverty of his early years. As he grew up and entered the ministry, he
committed himself to never being poor again. Therefore, he devoted himself to
creating edifices that demonstrated to the larger world that he had achieved prosperity
in life. Both of these feelings found their culmination in the City of Faith, an
effort that involved putting everything he had achieved to that point at risk. To
bring this effort (and achieve prosperity) he engaged in fund-raising efforts
that pushed the envelope. Therefore, as Jonathan Root notes, "Roberts's
theologies of prosperity and seed-faith fostered a sense of invincibility and
aversion to facts" (p. 2030). In the end, Root writes that in his efforts
to build a bridge between the Christian faith and the surrounding culture,
"Oral Roberts represented twentieth-century Christianity's greatest hopes
and its worst failures" (p. 204).
Robert's
life and ministry offer a cautionary tale for the Christian community. While he
didn't pursue the political dimensions so prominent in today’s evangelicalism
(including Pentecostalism), he contributed to the crass materialism that has
taken hold in significant parts of the Christian community. Root also speaks to
the complicated nature of lives such as Roberts's. As a result of his efforts
to bring Oral Roberts’ life into the light, he has made an important
contribution to understanding the role of Pentecostalism in modern American
(and global) Christianity. In addition to this very fine book by Jonathan Root,
I also recommend Amy Collier Artmann, The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman
and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity, which is also in this Eerdmans
series, as Kuhlman was a contemporary but evidently not in Roberts’ orbit, as
we do not encounter her story in Root’s book. Taken together, Oral Roberts and the Rise of the Prosperity Gospel and The Miracle Lady provide
insight into the healing revivals and empire-building that took place during the
second half of the twentieth century. By doing so, we gain a better
understanding of a significant element in American Christianity, a portion of
the Christian community that has a significant presence in the larger culture. In
Oral Roberts and the Rise of the Prosperity Gospel, the reader is
provided a fair, even-handed, well-researched, thoughtful biography of one of
the most influential American Christians of the second half of the twentieth
century.
Comments
in the mid 1970s, she had a healing meeting at the Mabee Center at ORU.
She was later presented a special award at a graduation ceremony at ORU, (that many of
the graduating class did not want at their graduation)
Kuhlman had distanced/positioned herself and ministry apart from much of the personalities of
the post-war healing revival, but by the 1970s, she couldn't be ignored,
and they at least acknowledged each other.