Religion: A Family That Prays Together

Richard Roberts follows father Oral down the sawdust trail

"If you want prayer for arthritis, stand up. Maybe it's in your neck, your shoulders, your back. Maybe in your hips or your knees. Who has a problem in your stomach and you want prayer? Kidney, liver, hernia, colon—any problem in the stomach? Please stand for prayer."

At the preacher's urging, people start to stand one by one. The momentum builds and soon about 400 of the audience of 1,500 are on their feet. "I speak to the spirit of infirmity. I command the arthritis to come out of your neck, in the name of Jesus!" Then the preacher demands that people begin moving their ailing limbs and joints: "I know it sounds crazy, but just do it."

The oldtime Pentecostal faith-healing revival meeting still survives, and on this June night at the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena in Green Bay, Wis., one of the latest practitioners on the circuit bears the most magical surname of them all. The handsome man with the well-rounded baritone voice and well-tailored suit is the Rev. Richard Roberts, 34, son and heir presumptive of Oral Roberts. Young Roberts is now ardently working the road that his father, 65, forsook when he folded his Gospel tent in favor of healing via TV in 1968. This year Richard Roberts will be preaching and healing in 42 U.S. cities, as well as in South Africa, Taiwan, Norway and Jamaica.

Oral Roberts, a smalltown, small-time Pentecostal Holiness preacher, swept out of the Oklahoma prairie in 1947, drawing legions of both disciples and scoffers. He is now an "ordained elder" in the United Methodist Church, presiding over Tulsa's 4,200-student Oral Roberts University and hosting a weekly TV show seen on 241 stations in the U.S. and abroad, and on a religious cable network. Total weekly audience in the U.S.: 3 million. Roberts occasionally appears on a prime time program as well. He is also trying to complete the $250 million City of Faith medical center. Last February, amid growing reports that his center was in financial trouble, Roberts announced that Jesus had appeared to him in person and commissioned him to find a cure for cancer. The medical crusade was to be financed by Roberts' following of "prayer partners," with gifts of $240 per person. This appeal has raised more than $5 million to date. Roberts denies that his medical center is short of cash, but refuses to release any figures.

From the start, Oral Roberts believed that God worked in a miraculous way through his hands, which he fervently placed upon each ailing petitioner who stood in the famous prayer line at his meetings. His son, whose style is far less electric, rarely does any laying on of hands. Richard Roberts, a minister of the United Evangelical Church, simply asks those who are receiving healing to come into the aisles and give their reports to aides carrying microphones. He often announces specific cures as—he claims—they happen: "Someone is receiving a healing in the right ear, right now!"