1960's Religion | Roberts, Oral 1918-

EVANGELIST, FOUNDER OF ORAL ROBERTS
UNIVERSITY

Early Career.

Oral Roberts began his evangelistic career in 1947, after a brief ministry with the Pentecostal Holiness Church. At the beginning his primary emphasis was on healing services, and he attracted huge crowds in the 1950s with his tent revivals. His largest tent could seat 12,500. He soon recognized the usefulness of radio, eventually having over three hundred radio stations in the United States carrying his messages and shortwave radio beaming his program to the rest of the world. Most Americans outside Pentecostal circles grew familiar with him through the television programs he began in the mid 1950s, edited from his tent revivals. Many jeered at the healing lines he still used and scoffed at the "prayer cloths," pieces of cloth two and a half inches by five inches that he said he personally prayed over. He did not charge for these prayer cloths but...