TV evangelist and pioneer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/americas/8416439.stm

Version 0 of 1.

US television evangelist Oral Roberts who has died of complications from pneumonia, was a towering figure in 20th Century American Christianity.

He reached millions from the 1960s onwards, wrote dozens of books and founded Oral Roberts University.

He preached a message of God's healing power known as "faith healing", although Mr Roberts rejected the label with the comment: "God heals, I don't."

He was also at the forefront of taking the Christian message to television.

His contemporary and fellow evangelist, the Reverend Billy Graham, said on Tuesday: "Oral Roberts was a man of God, and a great friend in ministry. I loved him as a brother."

Whole person

Oral Roberts, a preacher's son, was born into poverty on 24 January 1918 in Oklahoma. He overcame both a childhood stutter and tuberculosis at a young age, and later said this was when his Christian ministry began.

He took to the pulpit, preaching at revivals around the country while studying at Oklahoma Baptist University and Phillips University in Oklahoma.

In 1947, he founded the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association in Tulsa and conducted crusades across America and around the world, attracting crowds of thousands, many who were "sick and dying and in search of healing", according to a biography.

His message was one of healing the whole person - body, mind and spirit - leading many to call him a "faith healer".

'Televangelist'

Mr Roberts was also one of the first evangelists to see the power of the broadcasting medium.

He started bringing cameras into his sermons in the mid-1950s - providing what he liked to call "a front-row seat to miracles", a path followed by such fellow preachers as Pat Robertson and Billy Graham.

The "praying hands" at Oral Roberts University are modelled on his own

By the late 1960s, he had evolved into a softly-spoken television orator. His prime-time programmes featured celebrities and people of different races together, which was unusual at the time.

The founding of the Oral Roberts University, the first Pentecostal university in the world, was the fulfilment of one of his greatest ambitions.

The campus is a local landmark, with a steel and glass prayer tower and a huge bronze sculpture of praying hands, modelled on Mr Roberts's own.

Mr Roberts served as president of the university until 1993.

Students there still sign an honour code pledging not to lie, steal, drink or smoke.

Controversy

But as with many televangelists, his money-raising courted controversy.

In 1977, Mr Roberts said he had had a vision of a 300m (984ft) figure of Jesus, who told him to found the City of Faith medical centre that was to marry prayer and medicine.

He famously said that God would strike him dead if he failed to raise $8m needed for the centre.

He attracted $9m in donations but it later closed, leaving the university with staggering debt.

His son, Richard, resigned as president of the university in 2007 after he was accused of using university money on spending sprees and luxuries.

While largely out of the public eye in his later years, Oral Roberts remained a chancellor of the university until his death.