Televangelist Oral Roberts, Dead

Posted by disinfogreg on December 15, 2009

Or floating forever on a giant pile of money in the Kingdom of Heaven. You decide.

from the NY Times:

Oral Roberts, the charismatic Pentecostal evangelist whose televised ministry attracted millions of followers worldwide and made him one of the most recognizable and controversial religious leaders of the 20th century, died Tuesday in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 91.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Melany Ethridge, a spokeswoman for Mr. Roberts.

At the height of his influence, Mr. Roberts sat at the head of a religious, educational and communications enterprise based in Tulsa, Okla., that managed a university, conducted healing “crusades” on five continents, preached the gospel on prime-time national television and published dozens of books and magazines.

By 1985, the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and the university that bore his name employed more than 2,300 people and earned $110 million in revenue. The expanse of Mr. Roberts’s ministry, coupled with his fiery preaching, tycoonlike vision and jet-set lifestyle, also attracted persistent questions throughout his career about his theology and his unorthodox fund-raising techniques, although no credible evidence of malfeasance was ever produced. Some of the harshest criticism was generated by former members of his staff.