Coordinates	53°6′″N19°3′″N
name	Oral Roberts
birth date	January 24, 1918 in Ada, Oklahoma, U.S.
death date	December 15, 2009 in Newport Beach, California, U.S.
church	Pentecostal
congregations	Pentecostal Holiness Church;United Methodist Church
offices held	Founder and President, Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association;Co-founder, President, and Chancellor, Oral Roberts University
salary	$161,872 from Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association
Spouse	Evelyn Lutman Roberts; married 1938–2005 (her death)
Children	Ronald Roberts (deceased)Richard RobertsRebecca Nash (deceased)Roberta Potts
Parents	Ellis Melvin RobertsClaudius Priscilla Roberts(nee Irwin)
Website	http://www.oralroberts.com/oralroberts/ }}

Granville "Oral" Roberts (January 24, 1918 – December 15, 2009) was an American Pentecostal televangelist and a Christian charismatic. He founded the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University.

As one of the most well-known and controversial religious leaders of the 20th century, Roberts' ministries reached millions of followers worldwide spanning a period of over six decades. His healing ministry and bringing American Pentecostalism into the mainstream had the most impact, but he also pioneered TV evangelism and laid the foundations of the prosperity gospel and abundant life teachings.

Early life

Roberts was born in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, the fifth and youngest child of the Reverend Ellis Melvin Roberts and Claudius Priscilla Roberts (née Irwin) (d. 1974). According to an interview on ''Larry King Live'', Irwin was of Cherokee descent. Roberts was a card-carrying member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Roberts began life in poverty and nearly died of tuberculosis at age 17. After finishing high school, Roberts studied for two years each at Oklahoma Baptist University and Phillips University. In 1938 he married a preacher's daughter, Evelyn Lutman Fahnestock.

Roberts became a traveling faith healer after ending his college studies without a degree. According to a ''TIME Magazine'' profile of 1972, Roberts originally made a name for himself with a large mobile tent "that sat 3,000 on metal folding chairs" where "he shouted at petitioners who did not respond to his healing."

Ministry and university

1947 came as a turning point. Up until that time Roberts had struggled as a part-time preacher in Oklahoma. But at the age of 29 Roberts claims he picked up his Bible and it fell open at the Third Epistle of John where verse two read: "I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." Roberts decided immediately that it was all right to be rich. The next day he said he bought a Buick and God appeared, he said, telling him to heal the sick.

Roberts resigned his pastoral ministry with the Pentecostal Holiness Church to found Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association (OREA). He conducted evangelistic and faith healing crusades across America and around the world. Thousands of sick people would wait in line to stand before Oral Roberts so he could pray for them. He appeared as a guest speaker for hundreds of national and international meetings and conventions. Through the years, he conducted more than 300 crusades on six continents, and personally laid hands in prayer on more than 2 million people. He also ran direct mail campaigns of seed-faith, which appealed to poor Americans, often from ethnic minorities. At its peak in the early 1980s, Roberts was the leader of a $120 million-a-year organization employing 2,300 people. This spanned not only a university but also a medical school and hospital as well as buildings on south of Tulsa valued at $500 million. Another part of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, the Abundant Life Prayer Group (ALPG), was founded in 1958.

In 1963, he founded Oral Roberts University (ORU) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, stating he was obeying a command from God. The university was chartered during 1963 and received its first students in 1965. Students were required to sign an honor code pledging not to drink, smoke, or engage in premarital sexual activities. The Prayer Tower, opened in 1967, is located at the center of the campus.

Roberts was a pioneer televangelist, and attracted a vast viewership. He began broadcasting by radio in 1947, and began broadcasting his revivals by television in 1954. His television ministry continued with ''The Abundant Life'' program reaching 80% of the United States by 1957, and quarterly Prime Time Specials from 1969 through 1980. In 1996, he founded Golden Eagle Broadcasting.

Roberts had a vast impact on the Protestant community. According to one authority, in conservative Protestant culture, his ministry had a worldwide impact second only to Billy Graham. His divine healing ministry called for prayer to heal the whole person — body, mind and spirit. Many labeled him a faith healer, but he rejected this with the comment: "God heals — I don't." He played a major role in bringing American Pentecostal Christianity into the mainstream. From 1968 through 1987, Roberts was a member of the United Methodist Church’s ministry. Even though Roberts was often associated with the prosperity gospel and the faith movement because of his close doctrinal and personal ties with Word-Faith teachers, his abundant life teachings did not fully identify him with that movement.

In 1977, Roberts claimed to have had a vision from a 900-foot-tall Jesus who told him to build City of Faith Medical and Research Center, and the hospital would be a success. In 1980, Roberts said he had a vision which encouraged him to continue the construction of his City of Faith Medical and Research Center in Oklahoma, which opened in 1981. At the time, it was among the largest health facilities of its kind in the world and was intended to merge prayer and medicine in the healing process. The City of Faith operated for only eight years before closing in late 1989, but the importance of treating the whole person – spirit, mind, and body – was conveyed to many medical professionals. The Orthopedic Hospital of Oklahoma still operates on its premises. In 1983 Roberts said Jesus had appeared to him in person and commissioned him to find a cure for cancer.

Roberts' fundraising was controversial. In January 1987, during a fundraising drive, Roberts announced to a television audience that unless he raised $8 million by that March, God would "call him home." Some were fearful that he was referring to suicide, given the impassioned pleas and tears that accompanied his statement. He raised $9.1 million. Later that year, he announced that God had raised the dead through Roberts' ministry. Some of Roberts' fundraising letters were written by Gene Ewing, who headed a business writing donation letters for other evangelicals such as Don Stewart and Robert Tilton.

Roberts maintained his love of finery and one obituary claimed that even when times become hard, "he continued to wear his Italian silk suits, diamond rings and gold bracelets – airbrushed out by his staff on publicity pictures".

He stirred up controversy when ''Time'' reported in 1987 that his son Richard Roberts claimed that he had seen his father raise a child from the dead. That year, the ''Bloom County'' comic strip recast its character Bill the Cat as a satirized televangelist, "Fundamentally Oral Bill." In 1987 ''Time'' stated that he was "re-emphasizing faith healing and [is] reaching for his old-time constituency." However, his income continued to decrease (from $88 million in 1980 to $55 million in 1986, according to the ''Tulsa Tribune'') and his largely vacant City of Faith Medical Center continued to lose money.

Harry McNevin said that in 1988 the ORU Board of Regents "rubber-stamped" the "use of millions in endowment money to buy a Beverly Hills property so that Oral Roberts could have a West Coast office and house". In addition, he said a country club membership was purchased for the Roberts' home. The lavish expenses led to McNevin's resignation from the Board.

His organizations were also affected by scandals involving other televangelists and the City of Faith hospital was forced to close in 1989 after losing money. Roberts was forced to respond with the sale of his holiday homes in Palm Springs and Beverly Hills as well as three of his Mercedes cars.

Oral Roberts' son Richard Roberts resigned from the presidency of ORU on November 23, 2007 after being named as a defendant in a lawsuit alleging improper use of university funds for political and personal purposes, and improper use of university resources. The university was given a donation of $8 million by entrepreneur Mart Green, and although the lawsuit was still in process, the school submitted to an outside audit, and with a good report an additional $62 million was given by Green. Oral Roberts continued in his role as ORU chancellor, helping in the leadership of ORU along with Billy Joe Daugherty, who was named as the executive regent to assume administrative responsibilities of the Office of the President by the ORU Board of Regents. Oral Roberts continued as the ORU chancellor until his death, but in 2009 eleven months before his death, handed over the leadership of ORU to its incoming president, Mark Rutland.

Even though Roberts' prosperous lifestyle, unorthodox fund-raising techniques, and the expanse of his organizations raised criticism and controversy, there was no credible evidence of malfeasance while he was in charge, he did not have sex-and-money scandals like some other televangelists, and he was not named among the six prosperity teachers in the financial investigations launched by U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2007. The Oklahoma Senate adopted a resolution honoring the life of Oral Roberts, and he accepted this honor in 2009 at the age of 91, seven months before his death. The Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters (OAB) elected Roberts to the OAB Hall of Fame one month before his death. The legacy he left behind upon his passing was worthy of his favorite quote: "Make No Small Plans Here."

Personal life

Roberts was married to Evelyn Lutman Fahnestock (April 22, 1917 - May 4, 2005) for 66 years from December 25, 1938 until her death from a fall at the age of 88. Their daughter Rebecca Nash died in an airplane crash on February 11, 1977 with her husband, businessman Marshall Nash. Their elder son, Ronald Roberts, committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart on 10 June 1982, five months after receiving a court order to undergo counseling at a drug treatment center and six months after coming out as gay. The other two Roberts children are son Richard, an evangelist and former president of Oral Roberts University (ORU), and daughter Roberta Potts, an attorney. Roberts' gay grandson, Randy Roberts Potts, talked about his uncle Ronald Roberts, and wrote an article discussing growing up gay in the Oral Roberts family.

Oral Roberts died on December 15, 2009 at the age of 91. He had been "semi-retired" and living in Newport Beach, California.

According to a 1987 article in the ''New York Review of Books'' by Martin Gardner, the "most accurate and best documented biography is ''Oral Roberts: An American Life'', an objective study by David Harrell Jr., a historian at Auburn University. Two out-of-print books take a more critical stance: James Morris' ''The Preachers'' (St. Martin's Press, 1973) and Jerry Sholes' ''Give Me That Prime-Time Religion'' (Hawthorn, 1979)."

See also

Healing Revival

Charismatic Christianity

List of television evangelists

References

Further reading

;About Roberts

''The Faith Healers'', by James Randi, Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1987. ISBN 0-87975-369-2

''Oral Roberts: An American Life'', by David Edwin Harrell, Jr., Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-15844-3

;By Roberts

''The Call: An autobiography''. by Oral Roberts, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1972.

''Expect a miracle: my life and ministry''. by Oral Roberts, Nashville : T. Nelson, 1995. ISBN 0-7852-7752-8

''Oral Roberts' life story, as told by himself.'' by Oral Roberts, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1952.

External links

Webcast of Chancellor Oral Roberts' Memorial Service

Oral Roberts Ministries

Oral Roberts University

''Oral Roberts: The Man. The Mission. The Ministry.'', online archive at ''Tulsa World''

Life With Oral Roberts slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Voices of Oklahoma interview with Oral Roberts. First person interview conducted with Oral Roberts on August 11, 2009. Last interview before his death. Original audio and transcript archived with Voices of Oklahoma oral history project.

Category:1918 births Category:2009 deaths Category:American evangelists Category:American Pentecostals Category:American television evangelists Category:American people of Cherokee descent Category:American people of Choctaw descent Category:Faith healers Category:Deaths from pneumonia Category:Infectious disease deaths in California Category:Oklahoma Baptist University alumni Category:Oral Roberts University people Category:People from Oklahoma Category:People from Pontotoc County, Oklahoma

ko:오럴 로버츠 nl:Oral Roberts no:Oral Roberts pt:Oral Roberts fi:Oral Roberts sv:Oral Roberts uk:Орал Робертс

Coordinates	53°6′″N19°3′″N
Name	Benjamin S. Carson,Sr., M.D.
Birth date	September 18, 1951
Birth place	Detroit, Michigan, United States
Citizenship	American
Ethnicity	African American
Fields	Neurosurgery
Workplaces	Johns Hopkins Hospital
Alma mater	Yale UniversityUniversity of Michigan Medical School
Known for	Pediatric neurosurgery
Awards	Presidential Medal of Freedom (2008)
Religion	Seventh-day Adventist
Signature
Footnotes	}}

Benjamin S. "Ben" Carson, Sr., M.D. (born September 18, 1951) is an American neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States by President George W. Bush in 2008.

Background and education

Carson was born in 1951. After graduating with honors from his high school, he attended Yale University, where he earned a degree in Psychology. From Yale, he attended University of Michigan Medical School, where his interest shifted from psychiatry to neurosurgery. Carson's excellent hand-eye coordination and three-dimensional reasoning skills made him a gifted surgeon. After medical school he became a neurosurgery resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. At age 33, he became the hospital's youngest major division director, as Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery.

In 1987, Carson made medical history by being the first surgeon in the world to successfully separate siamese twins (the Binder twins) conjoined at the back of the head (craniopagus twins). Operations to separate twins joined in this way had always failed, resulting in the death of one or both of the infants. Carson agreed to undertake the operation. The 50-member surgical team, led by Carson, worked for 22 hours. At the end, the twins were successfully separated and can now survive independently. Carson's other surgical innovations have included the first intrauterine procedure to relieve pressure on the brain of a hydrocephalic fetal twin, and a hemispherectomy, in which a young girl suffering from uncontrollable seizures had one half of her brain removed.

Personal life

Carson married Lacena (Candy) A. Rustin—whom he met at Yale—in 1969; she holds an M.B.A. degree and is an accomplished musician, and both are members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a Christian denomination. They have three sons, Murray, Benjamin Jr., and Rhoeyce.

Awards and honors

Carson has received numerous honors and many awards over the years, including over 61 honorary doctorate degrees. He was also a member of the American Academy of Achievement, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, the Yale Corporation (the governing body of Yale University), and many other prestigious organizations. He sits on many boards including the Board of Directors of Kellogg Company, Costco Wholesale Corporation, and America's Promise. He was also the president and co-founder of the Carson Scholars Fund, which recognizes young people of all backgrounds for exceptional academic and humanitarian accomplishments. In 2007, Carson was inducted into the Indiana Wesleyan University ''Society of World Changers'' and received an honorary doctorate while speaking at the university. He returned to IWU the following year when his friend, Tony Dungy, was also inducted into the society. On June 19, 2008, Carson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush. He is a recipient of the Ford's Theatre Lincoln Medal, the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership, and is a 2010 appointee to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Later career and illness

Carson has written four bestselling books published by Zondervan, an international Christian media and publishing company: ''Gifted Hands'', ''The Big Picture'', "Take the Risk" and ''Think Big''. The first book is an autobiography, and the other two are about his personal philosophies of success that incorporate hard work and a faith in God; Carson is a Seventh-day Adventist. In a debate with Richard Dawkins, Francis Collins, and Daniel Dennett, Carson stated he doesn't believe in evolution: "I don't believe in evolution...He says that because there are these similarities even though we can't specifically connect them it proves that this is what happened."

In June 2002 Carson was forced to cut back on his public appearances when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, but the cancer was caught in time. Since then Carson has cut back on his schedule. He still operates on more than three hundred children a year but has been trying to shorten his days: prior to his cancer he used to work from 7:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night. Now, he tries to leave the hospital at 6:15 P.M. This gives him more time to spend with his wife and three children.

A video documentary about Carson's life titled ''Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story'' was released by Zondervan in 1992. Subsequently in 2009, a separate television movie with the identical title premiered on TNT on February 7, 2009, with Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. in the lead role and Kimberly Elise portraying his mother.

Publications

(2009) ''Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story'', Zondervan Publishing Co. ISBN 0-310-21469-6

(2008) ''Taking The Risk'', Zondervan Publishing Co. ISBN 0-310-25973-8

(2000) ''The Big Picture'', Zondervan Publishing Co. ISBN 0-310-23834-X

(1996) ''Think Big'', Zondervan Publishing Co. ISBN 0-310-21459-9

(1990) ''Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story'', Review&Herald; Pub. Assoc., ISBN 0-8280-0669-5

References

External links

Ben Carson interviewed on ''Conversations from Penn State''

Everyday Matters Magazine Interview with Dr. Ben Carson

Home Page of the Carson Scholars Fund

Dr. Ben Carson M.D.

Benjamin Carson receives a Presidential Medal

Dr. Benjamin Carson - Pediatric Neurosurgery

''There Is No Job More Important Than Parenting'': NPR Interview With Dr. Benjamin Carson

Dr. Ben Carson: The Gifted Hands Interview with Kam Williams

Category:African American surgeons Category:American physicians Category:Christian vegetarians Category:Johns Hopkins Hospital physicians Category:Johns Hopkins University faculty Category:Kellogg Company Category:Neurosurgeons Category:People from Detroit, Michigan Category:Seventh-day Adventists in health science Category:University of Michigan alumni Category:Yale University alumni Category:American Seventh-day Adventists Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:1951 births Category:Living people Category:Spingarn Medal winners

bg:Бен Карсън de:Ben Carson es:Ben Carson it:Benjamin Carson sw:Ben Carson pt:Ben Carson simple:Ben Carson