Oral's Progress

Peter Graves, of Mission: Impossible, is St. Luke. Sometime MGM musical Star Jane Powell is Pontius Pilate's wife. Actor Harve Presnell, his 6 ft. 4 in. frame draped with a mini-toga, is a troubled centurion. And there, amid crosses, a sepulcher, live olive trees and fake grass on Stage 4 in NBC's Burbank studio, is the real superstar of the $150,000 Easter special, waiting for the 40-minute semi-rock "cantata" to conclude. At a signal from the producer, the tape rolls. Oral Roberts beams a broad, benign smile into the camera's red eye and speaks: "In this space age, many people are discontented. They're concerned about Jesus Christ. Is Christ in the Now?"

Roberts' Easter show, taped last week for airing during Holy Week, is expected to draw even more than the 25 million viewers who watched his Christmas special. Once one of the country's most flamboyant and most criticized faith healers, Roberts, at 54, has come a long way from the days when his first big tent sat 3,000 on metal folding chairs and he shouted at petitioners who did not respond to his healing. The fast-paced, free-spending ambience of his television tapings, his casual, almost paternal confidence with his guest stars, his natty pinstripes and carefully barbered sideburns are only a few of the signs that the country boy from Pontotoc County, Okla.--who knocked down his last tent in 1968--has left the sawdust trail for good.

Though himself a college dropout, he is president of Oral Roberts University, a $30 million. 500-acre campus in Tulsa, Okla., which in only six years of existence has won full accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Though for two decades he conducted his crusades as a minister of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, Roberts was accepted as a United Methodist minister in 1968. This week he will be one of the guest speakers at a Catskill Mountain retreat for Methodist clergymen from New York.

He has also become a pillar of the Tulsa community. He is a director of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce and of one of the city's largest banks. He belongs to Rotary. His operations are vast. Besides supporting the 1,400-student university, the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association publishes a monthly magazine called Abundant Life (circ. 1,200,000) and a quarterly inspirational guide called Daily Blessing (circ. 400,000), plans his television shows, and promotes his radio program to 165 stations. All together, the Roberts empire generates more mail than any other Tulsa concern, including Shell Oil's national credit card office. As indeed it might. One Tulsa banker estimates that Roberts' operations pull in a cash flow of $15 million a year.

Good Manners. Some of the contributions doubtless come from new, affluent friends who have found Oral Roberts University a source of civic pride and a haven of good academic manners (boys in ties, girls in skirts, no smoking anywhere). But most of the support probably still comes from the millions who read the magazines, follow Roberts on radio or television, and send for free gifts. A typical gift last Christmas was a replica of a Judean oil lamp (with a candle in it); this Easter there will be a plate emblazoned with "He is not here. He is risen." Recipients often decide to send their own monetary gifts in return.

Roberts himself does not seem to be taking an excessive profit. When the university was getting off the ground in the early 1960s, he and his wife turned over all their assets to the cause. He now receives only his university salary ($24,500 a year) and lives in the four-bedroom president's home. Some income from the 46 books published under his name goes to a trust fund for the Roberts' four children.

At least 800,000 of the most loyal supporters have become permanent "prayer partners" and receive monthly prayer letters from Oral. "Are you suffering?" asked a recent one. "Is pain raging through your body? Is your marriage falling apart? Does it seem that no one cares? I want to help you get the answer you need. I want to pray with you." Each day, whether in Tulsa or traveling, Roberts gets a thick, typed list of the names and needs of all those who write with requests. He sometimes prays for them spectacularly--from a 200-ft. Prayer Tower that rises like a giant top out of the Oklahoma soil. Those in a hurry may call in to a 24-hour telephone watch at the Tower, where prayer counselors are always on duty to give spiritual comfort.

Overnight Cure. Roberts still believes in and practices faith healing. Many of the cures he describes might be dismissed as psychogenic, but some--which he duly emphasizes--are not so easily explained. One of the most striking stories in his catalogue of claimed cures goes back to the early '50s, when he prayed with a crippled ten-year-old boy in Roanoke, Va. As the story goes, the boy's withered leg-- 21 inches short -- grew back to normal overnight.

Out this month is Roberts' 47th book, an autobiography entitled The Call, which has already sold 30,000 copies. Disarmingly folksy, the book takes Oral upward from his grim days as a preacher's son ("I felt quite sure that Jesus lived with us because Mamma and Papa talked to him so much"), on a Pilgrim's Progress as it might have been rewritten by Horatio Alger. All the hagiographic basics are there: his mother's vow to give her child to God in return for the healing of a neighbor's child; his bloody bout with tuberculosis and miraculous cure (God to Oral: "Son, I am going to heal you, and you are going to take the message of my healing power to your generation"); his three-part challenge to God (asking for a crowd, money to pay for the hall, and convincing healings) to determine whether he should stay in the ministry.

The youthful dreams described in The Call continue to materialize today. Already Roberts' staff is having to turn down applicants for next year at O.R.U., perhaps partly because students are attracted by its heavily subsidized fees: $2,050 for board, room and tuition. The citizens of Tulsa have chipped in $2.7 million to help build a $9,000,000 special events center on the campus, which will also serve as Tulsa's civic auditorium. Beyond Tulsa, Roberts' audience seems to be broadening. Roman Catholics, who once castigated his pentecostal healing, now number 15% of his letter writers. Many of them, he says, are nuns.

Some achievements still elude him. He longs for the O.R.U. basketball team to win a national championship, at least partly, he claims, to reach the "40 million men who read the sports pages." The team is doing well enough in major independent competition (14 wins, one loss this year), but the big time still seems some distance away. Even so, Oral Roberts has the habit of exhorting his followers to "expect miracles." Perhaps this time he expects one of his own.

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