Richard had been like a moth to the limelight since childhood, when he began singing in his father’s tent crusades. “He just thought it would be cool to go on Larry King.” “There was no exonerating himself at that point,” one remembers. The eavesdroppers could tell Richard saw the writing on the wall. He trained up a whole generation of jet-setting mega-church pastors who preached the prosperity gospel: Plant a seed-meaning, send a check-and God will reward you with health, wealth, and happiness. Oral was the original pioneer of television ministry. John Hagee, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar-ORU’s board was a who’s who of televangelists. ORU’s Board of Regents agreed: Larry King was a terrible idea. and 3 a.m. on cell phones expensed to the university. What’s more, the suit claimed Lindsay sent hundreds of text messages to “underage males” between the hours of 1 a.m.
The university’s finances were inadvertently cracked open by three professors who claimed they’d been fired for questioning Richard’s efforts to involve ORU in campaigning for Senator Jim Inhofe’s chosen candidate in Tulsa’s mayoral election. Oral thought Larry King would eat Richard alive.Ī week earlier, a lawsuit hit the front pages of the Tulsa World, alleging that Richard and Lindsay Roberts, ORU’s president and first lady since 1993, treated the university as a personal ATM. “I think I should,” they heard Richard tell his father. Patriarch Oral Roberts was urging Richard, his successor, not to go on Larry King Live that evening. The voices of the Oral Roberts University Board of Regents on the speakerphone conference call one floor below carried up through the thin ceiling panels. Two Oral Roberts Ministries employees crouched on a desk on their hands and knees, their heads sticking through a hole in the wall. The fall of the first family of televangelism came swiftly. Feldman and This Land Press have both been featured on Longreads many times in the past, and her This Land story “Grace in Broken Arrow” was named the Best of Longreads in 2012.ĭownload. This Land PressWe’re proud to present a new Longreads Exclusive from Kiera Feldman and This Land Press: How Richard Roberts went from heir to his father’s empire to ostracized from the kingdom.