I’ve never been a fan of Richard Roberts, and while I shouldn’t take joy in the recent scandals, I have had a little bit of satisfaction in his resignation, knowing that ORU would no longer be run by Richard Roberts.
You know the old saying, “Be careful what you ask for?”
Well, there are, it turns out, a few people who I would like to see running ORU even less than I wanted to see Richard Roberts running ORU. Here, friends and neighbors, is one of them:
Statement from George Pearsons - Chairman, ORU Board of Regents
We are pleased to report that Dr. Pat Robertson, president and chancellor of Regent University and long-time friend of Oral Roberts University, has contacted members of the board of regents and has expressed interest in exploring options for the future of ORU with Regent University. Dr. Robertson is sending a team on Monday to Tulsa to meet with ORU Regents and administrative representatives.
I just got this e-mail from Oral Roberts University’s alumni office:
Today, a letter was sent from Richard Roberts to the Board of Regents of Oral Roberts University tendering his resignation as President of Oral Roberts University effective today, November 23, 2007.
The Board of Regents will meet Monday and Tuesday, November 26 and 27, 2007 to determine action in the search process for a new president.
Executive Regent Billy Joe Daugherty will continue to assume administrative responsibilities of the Office of the President, working together with Chancellor Oral Roberts, until the Regents meeting.
In his letter of resignation to the Board, Richard Roberts said, “I love ORU with all my heart. I love the students, faculty, staff and administration and I want to see God’s best for all of them.”
We needed a local opinion column for today’s paper, and I updated and tweaked my blog post about televangelism for use as a column. I got a great e-mail this afternoon from a much more recent ORU grad who had found the column online. He agreed with it, and — sadly enough — offered his own confirmation of at least some minor aspects of the allegations against the Roberts family from things he’d seen or heard about as a student.
This was a reconnection of sorts — even though we were 20 years apart at ORU, he’d worked on the campus newspaper during his tenure, and during that time he had run across some of my old “Speed Bumps” humor columns, as well as the 1984 April Fool’s issue which I supervised. The campus paper sometimes does profiles of successful alumni, and he took it upon himself to interview me. I found out from his e-mail today that when he tried to reprint some of my old material to accompany the interview, standards had changed — a few jokes I had gotten away with in 1983 and 1984 were no longer allowed in 2003 and 2004.
Meanwhile, I also swapped e-mail this week with Bill Meenk, the old campus chaplain with whom I reconnected back in May. That led to Bill reading the column as well. He praised it, although he also offered his positive experience as the second surgery patient at the City of Faith, and his belief in the holistic, prayer-plus-medicine approach which it was supposed to have represented.
My friend and fellow ORU alumnus Peter Smith has a terrific blog post pointing out that some of the university’s regents who will be investigating allegations against Richard Roberts are, themselves, sometimes accused of the same materialistic behavior.
Peter notes how many of the figures involved are not members of the Evangelical Council on Financial Accountability. One of my proudest moments as a Mountain T.O.P. board member was being a part of the board during the time when Mountain T.O.P. joined ECFA. ECFA’s rules are tough, and sometimes difficult to comply with, but at the end of the day you can look your donors in the eye and tell them what you are doing is above board and show them audits and documentation to prove it.
The Wittenburg Door’s regular newsletter has links to a PDF of a document filed in court about the Richard and Lindsay Roberts scandal. Supposedly, it’s based on an internal analysis of potentially scandalous situations prepared by someone within the ministry. If even 10 percent of these accusations are true, the ministry is guilty of some serious mismanagement.
As for me, I watched Richard and Lindsay Tuesday night on “Larry King Live.” Right now, it’s really a case of one person’s word against another, and Larry King’s non-confrontational interviewing style didn’t really shed a lot of new light on the matter, other than Richard and Lindsay denying everything. Oral Roberts called in to support his son and daughter-in-law. At one point, you could hear a muffled voice in the background who was either prompting Oral with some talking point or perhaps just repeating the question for him.
I think I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating.
During the time that I was a student at ORU, the Oral Roberts TV ministry offered a particular leather-bound Bible as a premium for people who donated a particular amount to the ministry. The Bible included a section with photos of the Oral Roberts ministry. I guess it takes a peculiar kind of hubris to think that your own activities are worthy of being bound into, and distributed with, the words of holy scripture, but let’s put that aside for a second.
I did not own this Bible — being a college student, I couldn’t have afforded to give quite that much to the ministry — but I recall looking through someone else’s copy one day. One of the photos in the ministry section of the Bible was of the groundbreaking for the City of Faith hospital. The City of Faith, which never turned out as planned, was supposed to be a sort of evangelical Mayo Clinic — a research hospital combining top-flight medicine and science with a holistic, prayerful outlook.
Anyway, the groundbreaking took place on a beautiful, sunny day, and there was bright blue sky at the top of the picture. Through that bright blue sky, I detected a faint vertical line. I followed the line down through the photo and realized it ended up right next to Richard Roberts. Read more »
As an alumnus of Oral Roberts University, I will have more to say about this story later this evening, when I’m at home and have the time to compose my thoughts. For now, I’ll say that — whether the current allegations are true or not — I’ve never cared for or had much respect for Richard Roberts, even when I was a wide-eyed ORU student who had a more innocent view of televangelism.
or 
.