A Family That Prays Together

By Richard N. Ostling

Richard Roberts follows father Oral down the sawdust trail

"If you want prayer for arthritis, stand up. Maybe it's in your neck, your shoulders, your back. Maybe in your hips or your knees. Who has a problem in your stomach and you want prayer? Kidney, liver, hernia, colon--any problem in the stomach? Please stand for prayer."

At the preacher's urging, people start to stand one by one. The momentum builds and soon about 400 of the audience of 1,500 are on their feet. "I speak to the spirit of infirmity. I command the arthritis to come out of your neck, in the name of Jesus!" Then the preacher demands that people begin moving their ailing limbs and joints: "I know it sounds crazy, but just do it."

The oldtime Pentecostal faith-healing revival meeting still survives, and on this June night at the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena in Green Bay, Wis., one of the latest practitioners on the circuit bears the most magical surname of them all. The handsome man with the well-rounded baritone voice and well-tailored suit is the Rev. Richard Roberts, 34, son and heir presumptive of Oral Roberts. Young Roberts is now ardently working the road that his father, 65, forsook when he folded his Gospel tent in favor of healing via TV in 1968. This year Richard Roberts will be preaching and healing in 42 U.S. cities, as well as in South Africa, Taiwan, Norway and Jamaica.

Oral Roberts, a smalltown, small-time Pentecostal Holiness preacher, swept out of the Oklahoma prairie in 1947, drawing legions of both disciples and scoffers. He is now an "ordained elder" in the United Methodist Church, presiding over Tulsa's 4,200-student Oral Roberts University and hosting a weekly TV show seen on 241 stations in the U.S. and abroad, and on a religious cable network. Total weekly audience in the U.S.: 3 million. Roberts occasionally appears on a prime time program as well. He is also trying to complete the $250 million City of Faith medical center. Last February, amid growing reports that his center was in financial trouble, Roberts announced that Jesus had appeared to him in person and commissioned him to find a cure for cancer. The medical crusade was to be financed by Roberts' following of "prayer partners," with gifts of $240 per person. This appeal has raised more than $5 million to date. Roberts denies that his medical center is short of cash, but refuses to release any figures.

From the start, Oral Roberts believed that God worked in a miraculous way through his hands, which he fervently placed upon each ailing petitioner who stood in the famous prayer line at his meetings. His son, whose style is far less electric, rarely does any laying on of hands. Richard Roberts, a minister of the United Evangelical Church, simply asks those who are receiving healing to come into the aisles and give their reports to aides carrying microphones. He often announces specific cures as--he claims--they happen: "Someone is receiving a healing in the right ear, right now!"

Miraculous testimonies abounded on Richard Roberts' swing through Wisconsin. It was impossible to discern which people might have been cured and which were subject only to passing psychological relief. Some could even have sworn to have been made well, hoping that a taped segment of the event would make Oral's television show. Like all Christian faith healers, Richard attributes any cures to God's power, not his own, and says of his role: "If they say they are healed, no matter what you or anybody else thinks, you sure can't deny it."

Sons of evangelists often follow in paternal footsteps. Timothy B. Robertson, 28, has just been made a vice president of Pat (700 Club) Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. Another TV preacher, Rex Humbard, has four children in his operation. Billy Graham's son Franklin, 30, is also a preacher, but he chose his own course and now heads Samaritan's Purse, a humanitarian agency working overseas. His father, though, sometimes muses that Franklin might prove useful some day in the Billy Graham organization.

For a while, it seemed unlikely that Richard Roberts would follow his father on the sawdust trail. As a rebellious teenager, Richard told Oral: "Get out of my life and never mention religion to me again." Richard left Tulsa and shunned his father's Bible-centered university. While enrolled at the University of Kansas, he sang with rock bands. But he felt "a voice inside me" tugging him back to his father's school. There, he says, two weeks shy of his 20th birthday, "God got ahold of my life."

Roberts started his career modestly enough, singing and sometimes preaching on his father's TV show and with road groups promoting the ministry. His life changed in 1980 after a wrenching divorce and remarriage (his first wife has custody of their two children). During an appearance with the Roberts singing group in Albuquerque, he spontaneously called for all arthritis sufferers to step forth. As he prayed, one woman claimed that she had been cured. With that, a healer was born.

As for his prospects, Roberts says that he is preparing himself "for whatever God has for me in the future. It may be that I may be the one that God calls to head up our entire ministry. I don't know. All I know is that, right now, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do."

Some skeptics wonder why he dresses so well and tours in an eight-passenger airplane when many of those in his flock are among the poor. Richard Roberts replies to such criticism with annoyance: "Well, I'm serving a first-class God. When you see Oral Roberts University, you don't see a bunch of tin buildings. You see some thing that you can be proud of. I'm not serving a God that's poor. God owns everything. All the silver and gold on this earth belong to God. He created it. We believe in building first-class, that's why the City of Faith is built the way it is--it's built to serve people. You know, you can build second class and spend a fortune on maintenance."

--By Richard N. Ostling.

Reported by Don Winbush/Green Bay

With reporting by Don Winbush This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.