«
»

, , , , ,

Oral Roberts in deep water (again)

10.06.07 | 13 Comments

(While you’re here, check out my blog.)

Oral Roberts University, that is. Oral put himself out to pasture years ago—just after his “call home” got him in deep water—and his son Richard Roberts and his wife Lindsay have been running the show since.

The long and short of it is that Richard and Lindsay (and ORU-attending daughters) have been living high off the hog at ORU’s expense. Really high off the hog. Like Imelda Marcos high off the hog. I’m pasting the allegations down below. They’re too much for summary.

News from ORU always feels odd to me—I went to summer camp there twice during junior high. I remember my friends and I running all over campus with some girls from Corn, Oklahoma, looking for the illusive rubber chicken they’d sent hundreds of us on a scavenger hunt for. I remember jokes that we’d seen members of “The Family” on the Jetsons-like campus: Oral rappelling down from a “thorn” of the Prayer Tower to clean the windows, and Lindsay making all the fried chicken we ate in the dorm cafeteria. We were disappointed Richard didn’t come at speak to one of the camp’s worship services.

And I remember my “call” into the ministry the last night of camp, when a good third of the other guys in the audience were also “called.” That started me down a long road.

Here are just eight of “dozens” of allegations, pasted directly from the AP article:

  • A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.
  • Mrs. Roberts — who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU’s “first lady” on the university’s Web site — frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to “underage males who had been provided phones at university expense.”
  • The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an “evangelistic function of the president.”
  • Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico’s clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, “As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off.” The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.
  • Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.
  • University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts’ home to do the daughters’ homework.
  • The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts’ children.
  • The Roberts’ home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.

(Photo is by an Emory student I used to know—but whose name I’ve forgotten—who was kind enough to take some photos for me when she was in Tulsa visiting grandma one year for Christmas.)

13 Comments


«
»