Oral Roberts’ Gay Grandson Launches "Gay Agenda" Tour to Fight Homophobia

Few forms of Divine justice are more satisfying than seeing the worse of the Bible beaters end up with gay family members. It obviously demonstrates that they are the last folks to be telling others how to raise children since, according to their own propaganda, it's flawed parenting that cases the gays. Hence, it's interesting to see that the gay grandson of televangelist and snake oil merchant Oral Roberts is launching a "Gay Agenda" tour through the Bible belt of the USA to counter the anti-gay legacy of professional Christians like his grandfather. Even better, he's scheduled to marry his boyfriend in May. Here are some highlights from the Houston Chronicle:

Randy Roberts Potts—whose grandfather Oral Roberts was a pioneering 20th-century televangelist and healer — is now touring the country hoping for his own kind of revival, comforting gay people like him, who have been told by their evangelical communities that they’re destined for hell.

Potts spoke about coming out as gay in the Roberts family on CNN recently. He lives in Dallas, where he and his fiancé do a performance art piece called “The Gay Agenda,” basically doing boring day-to-day activities like cooking and watching TV together while on display downtown. They’re now taking their show on tour.

The late Oral Roberts was a dramatic, charismatic preacher, and—like most big-name televangelist of his time — would warn audiences about the dangers of homosexuality. His eldest son ended up coming out as gay in the ‘80s, committing suicide shortly after ending his marriage.

“I think (Oral Roberts) was convinced that homosexuality killed his son,” Potts said in Details magazine profile. “Some evangelicals see it as a spirit or a demon of homosexuality that invades you, that it’s an almost personified thing that will completely strangle and kill you. Not even so much as a choice, but something you give in to, something that can afflict anybody.”

Potts’ own “It Gets Better” video was inspired by Ronnie’s experience among evangelicals and eventual suicide. He’s wearing a yellow T-shirt with an image of praying hands printed on it, much like the giant sculpture at his grandfather’s namesake university.

“My uncle and I were both raised in a world dominated by Evangelicals who taught and still teach that the fires of Hell await all gay men and women,” the clip said. “This is the Evangelical ‘Christian’ legacy for gays like my uncle and me: threats, bullying, death.”

Potts says his last visit with his grandfather was a friendly one, and Roberts did not bring up Potts’ homosexuality. His mother, though, continues to remind him of her views on his “lifestyle” (Potts told Details his parents don’t even use the word “gay”) and how it’s destined him to hell.

Through his performance art and speaking tours, he finds that a message of acceptance from a member of Roberts’ “royal family” means a lot to people who have been told the same thing.

“It’s an amazing thing that I know is a lot bigger than me. I’m just the guy who’s Oral Roberts’ gay grandson, and I don’t even think it matters what I say a lot of the time. It’s just the fact that I’m up there, gay and open about it and saying it’s okay—it’s just this huge release,” he said in the Details story.

The referenced Details magazine article can be found here. A CNN video clip on Potts' effort is here. His message is definitely needed here in the Hampton Roads area.

The New Yorker Savages Michele Bachmann

I know that I've already written about Michele Bachmann earlier, but The New Yorker has a must read profile on Bachmann. While the article is entitled "A Leap of Faith" it might just as well be captioned "The Face of Insanity." Conservative pundit David Frum found it impossible to not comment on The New Yorker article in a piece on his blog bearing the title "Inside Bachmann's Brain." Here are some highlights from Frum's piece:

"Here’s a route into her head; remember Bachmann’s statement about the Founders tirelessly working to end slavery? The statement was widely ridiculed as an expression of pure ignorance. Lizza takes the statement instead as a route into Bachmann’s own personal alternative knowledge system:

Bachmann’s comment about slavery was not a gaffe. It is, as she would say, a world view. In “Christianity and the Constitution,” the book she worked on with [John] Eidsmoe, her law school mentor, he argues that John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams “expressed their abhorrence for the institution” and explains that “many Christians opposed slavery even though they owned slaves.” They didn’t free their slaves, he writes, because of their benevolence. “It might be very difficult for a freed slave to make a living in that economy; under such circumstances setting slaves free was both inhumane and irresponsible.”

You don’t want to invest a lot of time nit-picking the historical inaccuracies here. (For example, John Adams was a Unitarian who rejected the divinity of Christ, Alexander Hamilton avoided church, and while all three genuinely abhorred slavery, only Jay can be said to have worked to end it.) The anecdote is valuable as an illustration of the way in which Bachmann processes information. Lizza found a 2005 interview in which Bachmann was asked about books she liked. She praised two: Ann Coulter’s Treason and Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey. Lizza explains the latter:

[Pearcey] teaches readers how to implement Schaeffer’s idea that a Biblical world view should suffuse every aspect of one’s life. She tells her readers to be extremely cautious with ideas from non-Christians. There may “be occasions when Christians are mistaken on some point while nonbelievers get it right,” she writes in “Total Truth.” “Nevertheless, the overall systems of thought constructed by nonbelievers will be false—for if the system is not built on Biblical truth, then it will be built on some other ultimate principle. Even individual truths will be seen through the distorting lens of a false world view.

As Lizza points out, Bachmann regards even the most mundane political facts through the prism of a worldview that would probably seem extremely strange to most Americans. One of her first great political causes was to attack federal vocational education programs on the grounds that they promoted:

a “new restructuring of American society,” beginning with “workforce boards” that would tell every student the specific career options he or she could pursue, turning children into “human resources for a centrally planned economy.”

This kind of talk would sound paranoid to most of us. It emerges from a religious philosophy that rejects the federal government as an alien instrument of destruction, ripping apart a Christian society. Bachmann’s religiously grounded rejection of the American state finds a hearing with many more conventional conservatives radicalized by today’s hard economic times.

As for The New Yorker article itself, here are some other interesting highlights that underscore the fact that Michele Bachmann is utterly unfit for the presidency - or any other elected office for that matter:

Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians. Her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature, including Sarah Palin, to whom she is inevitably compared. Bachmann said in 2004 that being gay is “personal enslavement,” and that, if same-sex marriage were legalized, “little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and that perhaps they should try it.” Speaking about gay-rights activists, that same year, she said, “It is our children that is the prize for this community.” She believes that evolution is a theory that has “never been proven,” and that intelligent design should be taught in schools.

In the fall of 1975, Bachmann enrolled at Winona State University, a small school in southeastern Minnesota, where she became more devout and tried to lead her dormmates to Christianity. There she met Marcus, whom, she has said, God called her to marry. She had a vision while praying “of me marrying this man in the valley where his parents have a farm in western Wisconsin.” According to Michele, Marcus was simultaneously having a vision about marrying her.

[I]n January, 1977. Later that year, they experienced a second life-altering event: they watched a series of films by the evangelist and theologian Francis Schaeffer called “How Should We Then Live?” . . . . In the films, Schaeffer—who has a white goatee and is dressed in a shearling coat and mountain climber’s knickers—condemns the influence of the Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Darwin, secular humanism, and postmodernism. He repeatedly reminds viewers of the “inerrancy” of the Bible and the necessity of a Biblical world view.

Francis Schaeffer instructed his followers and students at L’Abri that the Bible was not just a book but “the total truth.” He was a major contributor to the school of thought now known as Dominionism, . . . . Sara Diamond, who has written several books about evangelical movements in America, has succinctly defined the philosophy that resulted from Schaeffer’s interpretation: “Christians, and Christians alone, are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns.”

Bachmann enrolled at the new O. W. Coburn School of Law, at Oral Roberts University, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. . . . . Among the professors were Herbert W. Titus, a Vice-Presidential candidate of the far-right U.S. Taxpayers Party (now called the Constitution Party), and John Whitehead, who started the Rutherford Institute, a conservative legal-advocacy group. The law review published essays by Schaeffer and Rousas John Rushdoony, a prominent Dominionist who has called for a pure Christian theocracy in which Old Testament law—execution for adulterers and homosexuals, for example—would be instituted. In a 1982 essay in the law review, Rushdoony condemned the secularization of public schools and declared, “With the coming collapse of humanistic statism, the Christian must prepare to take over, he must prepare for victory.”

At Oral Roberts, Bachmann worked for a professor named John Eidsmoe . . . . . Bachmann worked as Eidsmoe’s research assistant on his book “Christianity and the Constitution,” published in 1987. . . . . Eidsmoe has stirred controversy. In 2005, he spoke at the national convention of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a defiantly pro-white, and anti-black, organization. (Eidsmoe says that he deeply despises racism, but that he will speak “to anyone.”) In Alabama last year, he addressed an event commemorating Secession Day and told an interviewer that it was the state’s “constitutional right to secede,” and that “Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than did Abraham Lincoln and Daniel Webster.” Bachmann has not, however, distanced herself, and she has long described her work for Eidsmoe as an important part of her résumé.

Around this time [the late 1990's], Bachmann became interested in the writings of David A. Noebel, the founder and director of Summit Ministries, an educational organization founded to reverse the harmful effects of what it calls “our current post-Christian culture.” He was a longtime John Birch Society member, whose pamphlets include “The Homosexual Revolution: End Time Abomination,” and “Communism, Hypnotism, and the Beatles,” in which Noebel argued that the band was being used by Communists to infiltrate the minds of young Americans. Bachmann once gave a speech touting her relationship with Noebel’s organization. “I went on to serve on the board of directors with Summit Ministries,” she said, adding that Summit’s message is “wonderful and worthwhile.”

While looking over Bachmann’s State Senate campaign Web site, I stumbled upon a list of book recommendations. The third book on the list, which appeared just before the Declaration of Independence and George Washington’s Farewell Address, is a 1997 biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins.

Wilkins is the leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North. This revisionist take on the Civil War, known as the “theological war” thesis, had little resonance outside a small group of Southern historians until the mid-twentieth century, when Rushdoony and others began to popularize it in evangelical circles. In the book, Wilkins condemns “the radical abolitionists of New England” and writes that “most southerners strove to treat their slaves with respect and provide them with a sufficiency of goods for a comfortable, though—by modern standards—spare existence.”

There's much more in The New Yorker article. All of it paints one overall picture: Michele Bachmann is religious extremist nutcase who has disconcerting ties to racists as well as Christian Dominionist. Anyone who cares about the separation of church and state and equality for all races ought to be terrified that someone as extreme - and in my view mentally deranged - as Bachmann is in the top of the polls in Iowa at the moment.

Michele Bachmann's Extremism Exposed

I'm on record in my view that Sarah Palin is certifiably insane. But Palin is hardly the sole female lunatic within the GOP. Her in many ways separated at birth twin, Michelle Bachmann, is no better. While she managed to not make a fool of herself in the largely unwatched GOP debate carried by CNN earlier in the week, any examination of her background and her views underscores the fact that Bachmann is a total extremists and not much better on the issue of separation of church and state than a Christian dominionist like Mike Huckabee. The Daily Beast has a story that tracts Bachmann's religious extremism and other beliefs that while popular with the untethered GOP base set her far outside the mainstream of Americans. Hopefully, the media will will fully wake up to this reality and begin to focus on just how frightening Bachmann's views are to most Americans - LGBT citizens in particular. Here is the lead in to the Daily Beast article:
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Her anti-gay platform has alienated parts of her family. A mentor she described as a "great influence" has a history of addresses to white supremacists. A book she collaborated on advocates theocracy. Rep. Michele Bachmann's impressive performance at Monday's debate has catapulted her near the front of the GOP pack, but the radical roots of her ideology remain poorly understood. The Daily Beast’s Michelle Goldberg reports.
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Pretty strong stuff but totally on target. Here are some highlights from the body of the article:
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Lots of politicians talk about a sinister homosexual agenda. Bachmann, who has made opposition to gay rights a cornerstone of her career, seems genuinely to believe in one. Her conviction trumps even her once close relationship with her lesbian stepsister.
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Her ideological radicalism should not be mistaken for stupidity. On Monday, Bachmann didn't talk a lot about her religion. She didn't have to—she knows how to signal it in ways that go right over secular heads. In criticizing Obama's Libya policy, for example, she said, "We are the head and not the tail." The phrase comes from Deuteronomy 28:13: "The Lord will make you the head and not the tail." As Rachel Tabachnick has reported, it's often used in theocratic circles to explain why Christians have an obligation to rule.
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Indeed, no other candidate in the race is so completely a product of the evangelical right as Bachmann; she could easily become the Christian conservative alternative to the comparatively moderate Mormon Mitt Romney. "Michele Bachmann's a complete package," says Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition wunderkind who now runs the Faith and Freedom Coalition. "
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"Michele Bachmann says certain things that sound crazy to the general public," says author Frank Schaeffer, Francis Schaeffer's son and former collaborator. "But to anybody raised in the environment of the evangelical right wing, what she says makes perfect sense." Bachmann honed her view of the world after college, when she enrolled at Coburn Law School at Oral Roberts University, an "interdenominational, Bible-based, and Holy Spirit-led" school in Oklahoma.
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At Coburn, Bachmann studied with John Eidsmoe, who she recently described as "one of the professors who had a great influence on me." Bachmann served as his research assistant on the 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution, which argued that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, and that it should become one again.
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Eidsmoe, who hung up the phone when asked for an interview, is a contentious figure. Last year, he withdrew from speaking at a Wisconsin Tea Party rally after the Associated Press raised questions about his history of addresses to white-supremacist groups. In 2010, speaking at a rally celebrating Alabama's secession from the Union, he claimed that Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than Abraham Lincoln.
*
n the statehouse, Bachmann made opposition to same-sex marriage her signature issue. Both she and her husband, by all accounts her most trusted political adviser, believe that homosexuality can be cured. Speaking to a Christian radio station about gay teenagers last year, Marcus, who treats gay people in his counseling practice, said, "Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined, and just because someone feels this or thinks this, doesn't mean that we're supposed to go down that road."
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Over the years, several letters from disgruntled Bachmann relatives have appeared in local newspapers, though they usually don't mention their relationship. "I have a suggestion for Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater, since she's interested in watching gay people," Cielinski wrote in a letter published in the Pioneer Press in 2005. "Instead of hiding behind bushes with a security guard, go to the grocery store, a PTA meeting, ballgames, concerts, church, the movies, or take a walk around the lake…[T]hey are our friends and family members who have added so much to our lives." Bachmann never responded.
*
None of this is likely to sour her many devoted fans. Indeed, it's precisely her unwavering ideological commitment that endears her to them.

After Scandal, Students are Leaving Oral Roberts University

Between students looking to transfer out and a reduced number of applications, Oral Roberts University could see as much as a 13% drop in enrollment come fall as the fallout continues from the financial and sex allegation scandal involving Richard Roberts and his wife (who has been alleged to have a predeliction for under age boys). Personally, I cannot attending a university based on a kooky Christianist agenda, but I am sure some of the students attended with either good intentions or as a result of parental pressure. Now, they are rightfull concerned about the marketability of their diplomas in the wake of the scandal. It's unfortunate for these students that the Roberts were unsrupulous frauds who used the university to enrich themselves. Here are some highlights from the Virginian Pilot's AP coverage of the story:

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TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- As Oral Roberts University prepares to hand out diplomas to its Class of 2008, Anna Siebring, a junior, will be mailing out applications to transfer to another school. Siebring, a government major, is among many students having second thoughts about staying at Oral Roberts after six months of scandal at the evangelical Christian university. She and others fear the furor will reduce the value of any degree they earn there. Some graduates worry that they will have to try twice as hard to market themselves to potential employers after Saturday's commencement.

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Two university employees who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation said they have been told a much higher figure: around 400. That would amount to a startling drop of almost 13 percent. Oral Roberts spokesman Jeremy Burton said the decline has less to do with students leaving and more to do with fewer new ones enrolling.

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Administrators are urging patience from professors and students. Last week, Fagin conceded it would take "a while to turn a big ship." Similarly, Green said it will take years to make necessary overhauls and begin rebuilding trust. He has already dissolved the old board of regents and established a new set of bylaws.

*

But that doesn't appear enough for sophomore Andrew Saah, who has already been accepted at the University of Maryland as a transfer student and is thinking about making the jump. He said Oral Roberts needs to change its culture to give more voice to its students.

Oral Roberts University May Improperly Funneled $1Billion a Year

The previously alleged financial improprieties at Oral Roberts University pale in comparison to the newest allegations that indicate that perhaps a billion dollars or more per year may have been laundered through the finances of the university. Unfortuantely, based on the other stories that have been reported to date, I would not be surprised if the allegations were true. Yet another example of the corrupt practices of the supposedly holier than thou set at ORU. Here are some highlights from Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080208/ap_on_re_us/oral_roberts_scandal;_ylt=AvdtTbb5uKN4oHSLsRvrLhME1vAI):

TULSA, Okla. - A former senior accountant at Oral Roberts University alleges that more than $1 billion annually was inappropriately funneled through the school. Trent Huddleston claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday that he discovered an "unrestricted" account used to funnel "unusually large" sums of money through the university each month — which would exceed $1 billion on an annual basis — that wasn't used for any legitimate university purpose.

Named as defendants are Richard Roberts, the school's former president, and his wife, Lindsay, along with former regents. Huddleston's lawsuit, the latest to hit the scandal-plagued university, amended a complaint he filed in late November against ORU.

The initial complaint alleged Huddleston was ordered to help Richard and Lindsay Roberts "cook the books" by hiding improper and illegal financial wrongdoing from authorities and the public. It also claimed that he was directed against his will to falsely list thousands of dollars as expenses rather than assets — which were spent remodeling the home of Richard and Lindsay Roberts — in order to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies.

More From the Wingnut Universe: Regent University Will Explore Ties with Oral Roberts University

One could say that Pat Robertson's Regent University and Oral Roberts University deserve each other. Both were founded by Christianists who made a very good living off their "ministry" and and both teach students who seek Christianist dominion over the rest of the citizenry. Would that Pat would take over ORU and move to Tulsa. It would be a nice development for this area. Based on Pat's track record, if the deal moves forward, I am sure he will benefit financially somehow. Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot's coverage of this development (http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=137900&ran=54942&tref=po):

VIRGINIA BEACH - A team from Regent University will travel to financially troubled Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., on Monday to explore “options” for ties between the institutions. “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,” George Pearsons, chairman of the ORU Board of Regents, said in a statement posted on the university’s Web site.

"Dr. Robertson is sending a team on Monday to Tulsa to meet with ORU Regents and administrative representatives,” he said. A spokeswoman for Regent University could not be reached for comment Thursday night. The discussions are “very preliminary,” Pearsons told The Oklahoman newspaper in Oklahoma City on Thursday. The assistance could range from simply giving advice to possible partnerships, he said. “Pat’s just interested in helping in any way he can,” he said. Pearsons told the newspaper that Robertson had made a “great” financial donation to ORU within the past month, but declined to release the amount.

A day earlier, the founder of a Christian office and education supply store chain pledged $70 million to help the university, provided it passed a 90-day review of the school’s finances.

Oral Roberts began building the university on Tulsa’s southern outskirts 44 years ago. It has about 5,700 students. Regent University, founded by Robertson in 1978, is the smaller of the two. The accredited, private, interdenominational Christian university was known as CBN University until 1990. The 2007 student body numbered more than 4,200 – including almost 2,000 full-time students. The university has a faculty of more than 600.

Oral Roberts University Faculty Gives Vote of No Confidence

Meanwhile, the meltdown at Oral Roberts University continues as reported by the Tulsa World (http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=071114_1_A1_spanc48573). A quorum of tenured Oral Roberts University faculty voted "no confidence" in President Richard Roberts and voted in favor of "greater faculty governance and transparency of university finances" in a 3-1/2-hour meeting Monday night at the University. Few things warm my heart more than seeing Christianist hypocrites taken down and exposed for the frauds far too many of them are in fact. It is about time that Robert's little cult of the personality (and his wife's use of under age boys for toys) came to an end. Here are some story highlights:

The vote of no confidence in Roberts as president and CEO of the university was made "without regard to the outcome of the current lawsuit against the university" and "is not to be construed as a judgment of guilt or innocence with regard to the present lawsuit against the president and the university," according to the list of motions and summary of the meeting faxed to media by Gary Richardson, an attorney for the three former professors who are suing ORU, Roberts and other ORU leadership. The tenured faculty also approved a motion to be involved in "determining selection criteria for and the actual selection of university leadership."

Evaluators who visited ORU last week told administrative staff members that they will recommend the college keep its accreditation, according to the university. The visitors spent four days on campus as part of a regular peer review to ensure the university meets minimum standards. The accreditation team sent by the Higher Learning Commission also is recommending that commission representatives return to ORU in 2009 to review ORU's leadership, governance and finances, according to ORU's written statement e-mailed by Burton.

The Fall Out at Oral Roberts University Is Increasing

Bob Felton at Civil Commotion has a new post (http://www.civilcommotion.com/index.php?p=3326) that indicates the fall out [and fun for some of us watching it unfold] is increasing at Oral Roberts University. I suspect as this mess goes forward there will be LOTS of dirt coming out. It is also instructive that three of the university regents are also televangelists now under scrutiny by the Senate Finance Committee in respect to improper uses of non-profit funds for lavish lifestyles. True, I am perhaps biased, but I believe most of these folks are crooks hiding behind the shroud of religion in their quest for money and power. Pretending to preach the Gospels of Christ are merely a smoke screen. Here are some highlights:

The Plaintiffs . . . have asked the court for permission to expand the suit to include Oral Roberts Ministries and its Board of Directors, arguing that the ministry and university funds are commingled and, effectively, comprise a single entity. Additionally, subpoenas have been issued for the pilot of the university jet, the private investigator that took all those photos of Lindsay Roberts and her little buddy1, and the staffer who oversees work at the guardshack at the family compound. The university declined to comment.

Here’s what she [a former nanny] said she found [in the Roberts' closet]:

275 pairs of shoes for Lindsay Roberts, arranged by color on five shoe shelves taking up an entire wall. Richard Roberts had nearly 120 pairs of shoes, including 18 pairs of golf shoes of different colors. “It looked like a shoe store,” she said.

165 suits for Richard Roberts, of all different colors and patterns, were hanging in the closet. There were 454 ties.

Two “huge cases” of jewelry belonging to Lindsay Roberts.

In the bedroom was an entire dresser of unopened men’s dress shirts, in addition to the 50 hanging, pressed dress shirts in the closet. “Rows and rows” of shirts, blouses, dresses and other clothing hung on Lindsay’s side of the closet, Culpepper said, but the woman’s shoe collection stuck out the most.

It surely does not seem to jive with Jesus' directive to sell all that you have and give to the poor. Lindsay Roberts must be channelling Imelda Marcos.

Oral Roberts to the Rescue?

You know things are not going well for you (or the institution you founded) when Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1677098,00.html) does a story on your institution's financial/sex scandal. The newest issue of Time looks in unflattering terms and detail at the mess at Oral Roberts University. If nothing else, ORU is following in the tradition of other bogus televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker. One has to wonder why the gullible (sheeple, as Pam Spaulding calls them) continue to give money to these folks, only to get burned yet again. Here are a few story highlights:

[A]t age 89, the Tulsa, Oklahoma university that bears his name has called Roberts home from a California retirement — under the most excruciating of circumstances. On Wednesday, the head regent at Oral Roberts University announced that the school is an astonishing $52.5 million in debt. This news arrived just three weeks after the revelation of a wrongful termination suit filed against the school by three former professors who claim that they were fired after providing the school's Board of Regents with a report detailing moral and ethical lapses by Oral's son Richard, who had inherited the school's presidency from his father, and Richard's wife Lindsay. Among the allegations: the Roberts had remodeled their home eleven times in 14 years with University money, that they bankrolled one of their daughters' $29,411 trip to the Bahamas with school funds and that Lindsay Roberts had spent the night in an O.R.U. guest-house with an underage male nine times.

The whole affair is a sad denouement for one of the pioneers of televangelism, a man who, in the early 1980s, seemed poised to pull the then-declasse Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions, which emphasize gifts of the Holy Spirit such as healing and speaking in tongues, into the mainstream. Says Randall Balmer, chair of the religion department at Barnard College, who has written about Roberts, "I feel badly for him. This must be a blow."

What happened? J. Lee Grady, the editor of the magazine Charisma, wrote recently that, "I don't know about you, but I'm having flashbacks of 1987," the year that the sexploits of Jimmy Swaggart and financial hijinks of Jim Bakker gave televangelism its reputation for sleaze. But while the allegations in the suit certainly meet Swaggart-quality standards of salaciousness, the causes of the university's fall may owe more to mismanagement than greed or negligence, suggests John Schmalzbauer, an expert in Christian higher education at Missouri State University.

Oral Roberts back at ORU - Now Wants to Seek Mediation

Interesting how Oral Roberts University now wants to mediate with the fired professors who have filed a lawsuit and let loose a fire storm of possible financial and sexual irregularities at the University. I suspect the media coverage is starting to take a toll and, if mediation were successful, much of the titillating information that might come out at a trial can be kept under wraps. Here are some highlight's from today's Tulsa World (http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=071023_1_A1_spanc37824):

At the ORU chapel service, Oral Roberts, 89, addressing students from a chair on stage, said: “I love you. I believe in you. I trust you. God brought you here, and you’re special to the Roberts family.” Roberts told the crowd that every allegation raised by a lawsuit against ORU and his son, university President Richard Roberts, was false. He said he was proud of ORU and its accomplishments “for the word of God,” and he said “the devil has come in to steal it away.”“The devil is not going to steal ORU,” he said.Oral Roberts said the university was born out of a healing ministry, and so ORU would turn to mediation this week to resolve the lawsuit.“This will be over and behind us, and my son will be back and be president of Oral Roberts University,” he said.

On Monday, Gary Richardson, attorney for the former professors, said he and his clients asked to work through the issues with ORU before filing the lawsuit but did not get a response from the university.Now, they do not want to resolve the situation with mediation — rather than in court — unless ORU officials “quit adamantly telling the public that they’ve done nothing wrong and become somewhat humbled by being caught and willing to acknowledge the imperfections of how they’ve operated.”“We would prefer to move forward and develop the information and develop the case,” Richardson said.

I hope the plaintiffs hang tough and the financial and sexual improprieties come out in full view for the world to see. It will not be the Devil that takes away ORU - it will be hypocrisy and false Christians who do that.

Revised Lawsuit Against ORU Makes New Allegations

Having read the first lawsuit filed against Oral Roberts University, one would have thought that there was not much more that could come out. Wrong!!! A revised lawsuit was filed yesterday (see it here: http://www.tulsaworld.com/webextra/content/2007/pdfs/orusuit.pdf) that alleges even more titillating misbehavior, particularly by Lindsay Roberts [pictured at left], the University's "first lady," who seems to have a real liking for underage boys. Here are some highlights:

The suit also alleges that three days after the original lawsuit was filed earlier this month, the school's financial comptroller, a 26-year ORU employee, was fired.''Within hours of this loyal employee's unceremonious removal from his office, witnesses have reported that voluminous materials and documents were shredded and destroyed....''

[M]ore details are added to several of the allegations, especially allegations involved Lindsay Roberts and an unnamed teen boy.The report says that dead-bolt locks were installed on all bedroom doors at the Richard Roberts residence at the insistence of his oldest daughter.'' This was precipitated by Mrs. Roberts repeatedly moving into the home her 16 year old male 'friend,' which made her daughters uncomfortable,'' the assessment says.

The assessment also says: ''Mrs. Roberts has personally spent the night in the ORU guest house with an underage male on nine separate occasions.''The report also says there are photos of Lindsay Roberts and an underaged male smoking at the president's residence, and 29 photos of her and an underage male alone in her sports car after midnight.The assessment goes on to say a longtime employee was fired so the same underage male companion could have the position.

Readers might also want to check out comments being posted on the Tulsa World article, (http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=071012_1__Three43533) some of which are by former Oral Roberts University employees - many are most unflattering. Here's are two examples:

Former ORU Slave, Tulsa WOW!!! No big surprise. I worked at ORU and was disgusted from day 1. On my very first day, I saw the youngest Roberts daughter, Chloe, driving a Lexus SUV, when she was 16 years old!!! And Lyndsey driving a little red german sports car!!! And Tricky Dick with his entourage of cronies!!! Showing up at athletic events like he was the "King of the castle". Richard Roberts is no more a holy-man, than I am the president of the United States. He's a preacher's kid (if you can even consider his daddy a preacher & not a crook/quack), that noticed that evangelism was where the money was. PERIOD!!! He was lazy & arrogant, and saw the way to make an easy buck. Riding daddy's coat-tails has brought him riches beyond most people's belief. And, now, his arrogance has brought about his undoing. This whole debacle can be explained a very simple way. He & his family thought they were above earthly & divine laws.

Cherry, Tulsa: I hear that Mrs. Roberts was a Mrs. Robinson at some time. That does not surprise me. She was blaming her girls for making cell phone calls to boys. Yeah, right. Now I know why females are NOT allowed in male dorms. Because Mrs. Robinson, oops I mean, Mrs. Roberts was on the prowl and didn't want to be caught. Well, guess what, we all know now. I can't wait to see this all come out in court. I hope all evangelist's learn from this. We common folk are only going to take so much.

Professors Sue Oral Roberts University President

It looks like when they are not trolling men's rooms and parks for tricks, the paragons of virtue of the far right are dipping into the non-profit till so that they can live lavishly. This New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/education/11roberts.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)looks at the financial scandel at Oral Roberts University. This University requires a minister recommendation for prospective students (http://admissions.oru.edu/minister_recommendation.pdf) and has an Honor Code which prohibits stealing, cheating, lying, etc. ( http://www.oru.edu/university/departments/admissions/code-of-honor-pledge.pdf), not to mention nasty homosexual acts. Unfortunately, it sounds like Richard Roberts and his wife were exempted from the Honor Code requirements. Here are a few of the article highlights:

A suit filed by three former professors charges financial, political and personal irregularities by the president of Oral Roberts University, including a claim that he illegally mobilized students to campaign for a Republican mayoral candidate.

The ex-professors, citing a secret internal report by an official of the Oral Roberts Ministries, linked to the university in Tulsa, Okla., sued on Oct. 2. They also contended that the Roberts house on the campus had been remodeled 11 times in 14 years, that the university jet took family members on trips and that the family’s university-paid cellphones sent text messages to “under-age males — often between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.” The plaintiffs said “some of the more salacious entries” were omitted from the suit “to preserve, as much as possible, the remaining positive image of the university.”

Tax law strictly limits the political activities of nonprofit groups, as well as the use of a charity’s assets by insiders like the Roberts family. The university’s reported ownership of a plane might also raise questions, lawyers said. Harvard, the nation’s wealthiest nonprofit institution, does not own a plane.

Some reports indicate have that Mrs. Roberts was racking up $800 a month phone bills text messaging under age males between 1 and 3 AM. It sounds like a regular Sodom and Gomorrah!! More information can be found here: http://www.tulsaworld.com/webextra/content/2007/oru-lawsuit/default.html A copy of the lawsuit - which needs to be read to be believed is here: http://www.tulsaworld.com/webextra/content/2007/pdfs/Swails_vs_ORU.pdf