90 foot Jesus Won't Help Richy Roberts, son of Oral, (teacher of Ted Haggard) Coverup his Crimes

Oral Roberts Diploma Mill University rocked by scandal

By ERIC GORSKI

(3 good men maligned by the Oral Roberts Propaganda Machine for telling the truth of the crimes. But Chicken Guts Faith Healing Quacks and Frauds Still at Large)
Back in 1963, when evangelist Oral Roberts built a university on Tulsa’s southern outskirts and put his name on it, he believed that he was taking orders from God.

At the center of campus, he built a 200-foot steel and glass prayer tower that looks like a spaceship and is topped with a flickering gas flame representing the Holy Spirit.

Roberts’ vision was to educate “the whole man” in mind, body and spirit. That meant a world-class faculty, mandatory chapel attendance, body-fat measurements and citations for public displays of affection.

Times have changed at Oral Roberts University.

The once-rigid dress code has been loosened so much that, as one student put it, aside from the lack of guys wearing earrings, the campus could be Oklahoma State University. The prayer tower is showing rust. Students still sign an honor code pledging not to lie, steal, curse, drink or smoke — but they hold hands during chapel.

Oral Roberts, now 89, recently returned from semiretirement to try to quell a scandal that has shaken the flagship university of charismatic Christianity. But on Friday, the scandal caused the downfall of his heir.

Roberts’ son, Richard Roberts, resigned as university president, facing accusations that he misspent school funds to support a lavish lifestyle, and ordered an accountant to help hide improper and illegal financial wrongdoing.

To ORU’s 5,300 students, the events of recent weeks have brought an unexpected test, one that caused them to choose between questioning or defending the administration, worry about tainted diplomas and search for spiritual answers.

“I’m sure there is corruption everywhere,” said freshman Ben Conners, one of several people interviewed before the resignation. “But if you’re holding students to such a high standard, making them sign an honor code and live by these strict principles, I expect the administration to be living an even stricter set of principles. To see something like this, it feels empty, like an elaborate masquerade party.”

At a university that is hardly a den of dissent, the reaction to the scandal has been striking. Before Richard Roberts stepped down, tenured faculty gave him a no-confidence vote and his handpicked provost said he would resign if Roberts were reinstated.

“There was a time when the wagons would circle and we’d protect our own,” said the Rev. Carlton Pearson, a former member of the ORU board of regents who is now a United Church of Christ minister. “But we don’t know what our own is anymore. People are asking questions and questioning answers, and we’re not used to it.”

Albert Thompson, a government major from Fairfax County, Va., said he chose ORU to become not just a public servant, but a better person.

Thompson, a senior, initially was angry about the allegations. But like other students, he separates the university administration from his university experience.

“He’s just a human being,” Thompson said of Richard Roberts. “If that individual man fails, that doesn’t affect my faith in Christianity. It affects my faith in Richard.”

Vincent Narciso, a senior from Seattle studying international relations, said: “In Scripture, we all fall short. We’re all capable of screwing up. To me, it’s not devastating to see someone fall. It’s arrogant to think it wouldn’t happen to any of us.”

Requests for interviews with university officials were denied by an ORU spokesman.

To outsiders, Oral Roberts, may seem a relic, a man who drew scorn for saying in 1987 that God would “call me home” if he didn’t raise $8 million in three months (he raised more than $9 million). But in the 1950s and 1960s, Roberts had brought spirit-filled Christianity into the mainstream. He took his revivals to a new frontier for religion: television.

“Here was this Pentecostal preacher who speaks in tongues, was brought up in poverty like many of us, and he builds this place that looks like it landed the night before from another planet,” Pearson said. “I can’t tell you the pride.”



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what’s alleged

TULSA, Okla. | The turmoil that led to Richard Roberts’ resignation as president of Oral Robert University focused on allegations in a lawsuit filed Oct. 2 by three former professors:

•The professors alleged that they were fired after reporting the school’s involvement in a local political race and giving regents a copy of a report documenting moral and ethical allegations involving Roberts and his family.

•The lawsuit alleges that Roberts asked a professor of government to use his students and university resources to help a Republican candidate for Tulsa mayor.

•Lavish spending is also alleged, including 11 renovations in 14 years at Richard and Lindsay Roberts’ university-owned home, a $29,411 senior trip to the Bahamas on the university jet for one of their daughters, and a stable of horses for use by the Roberts children.

•Lindsay Roberts also is accused of awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children, and sending scores of late-night text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as “underage males.”

Richard and Lindsay Roberts earlier denied wrongdoing, and Richard Roberts said the lawsuit amounted to “intimidation, blackmail and extortion.”


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