Big Trouble in Jesusland

[LaWood]

Scandal brewing at Oral Roberts U.

By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 21 minutes ago

Twenty years ago, televangelist Oral Roberts said he was reading a spy novel when God appeared to him and told him to raise $8 million for Roberts' university, or else he would be "called home."

Now, his son, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors' expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter's senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as "underage males."

At a chapel service this week on the 5,300-student campus known for its 60-foot-tall bronze sculpture of praying hands, Roberts said God told him: "We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not. This lawsuit ... is about intimidation, blackmail and extortion."

San Antonio televangelist John Hagee, a member of the ORU board of regents, said the university's executive board "is conducting a full and thorough investigation."

Richard Roberts, according to the suit, asked a professor in 2005 to use his students and university resources to aid a county commissioner's bid for Tulsa mayor. Such involvement would violate state and federal law because of the university's nonprofit status. Up to 50 students are alleged to have worked on the campaign.

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.

http://news.yahoo.com/
Oct 5, 2007

Another case wherein god had better find better caretakers for his money.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Praying hands or preying hands?

[Doug]

God, it seems, has gotten involved in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday against Oral Roberts University and its president, Richard L. Roberts.

In his weekly chapel address today, Mr. Roberts said God had spoken to him this morning and advised him to respond to the lawsuit. “Here’s what he told me to say to you,” Mr. Roberts told the students and professors gathered at the service, according to the Associated Press. “‘We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not.’


"OK, Dick, here's what to tell them. Listen up!"

...Three former professors at the university sued the evangelical institution and Mr. Roberts on Tuesday, accusing him of enlisting university resources to back a local mayoral candidate and to furnish his family with an opulent lifestyle.

How opulent? According to the lawsuit, the university maintains a stable of horses for the exclusive use of Mr. Roberts’s daughters; university security guards are routinely ordered to run errands for the daughters; and the university jet was used to fly one of the daughters and her friends for a $30,000 trip to the Bahamas and Florida.

The professors are suing for breach of contract, wrongful discharge, slander, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

...“Instead of ‘Thy Kingdom Come,’” said one poster [on the website], “it became ‘My Kingdom Come.’”

Read the rest here.