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My grandmother was living on a small SS income for the last 14 years of her life, and she listened to Oral on the radio back in the day. Whenever he had a fundraising drive, she would send him small amounts from her pitifully small income -- and it burned my dad's butt every time he learned of it.
I resented Oral for that reason, too. I wasn't aware of Oral's being a Democrat at all, though I'm not really surprised; and I'm aware of the educational excellence that comes out of ORU along with all the other claptrap that is preached in that general vicinity. Notably the ever-burgeoning Victory Christian Center and school right across the street from ORU. They utilize the Mabee Center frequently for their big concerts and guest speaker slash fundraising gatherings, and seem to have fairly well blended into the ORU campus.
I have never attended Victory, but I've heard Billy Joe (how stereotypical is his name, even!) Daugherty preach (briefly, as long as I could stand) on TV, and have seen his commercials since they're so ubiquitous. I did attend Grace Fellowship once or twice when it was a big new church of the "faith teaching" or "charismatic" variety (translation = fundie), and the more-than-2000-member congregation there was quite intimidating, along with all the electronic wizardry that these types use to enhance their reach and their appeal.
Can't stand those places, and long since ceased going to any church at all. The advantage taken of innocently believing members and willingly gullible visitors just rubs me the wrong way, and especially all the "prosperity teaching" that came into vogue bigtime and broadly in the 70's, if not before.
(After a scant few years in those circles during a bad period in my life when I was desperately seeking some "answers," I've been pretty much religion-free and happy that way ever since.)
Oral's "vision" of the "900-ft-tall Jesus" which told him, by his report, that He would "bring Oral home if he didn't raise $1 million for the City of Faith Hospital" by -- whenever the deadline was, but he did give a deadline -- just tore it for me with that man. Yeah, right. Being "taken 'home'" in their code meant of course that God would KILL Oral if he didn't raise the money! :argh: :puke:
Oral the huge, pathetic fraudulent conman, in my view. Preach about "prosperity" to come to your flock if they gave a lot and of course TITHED to YOU, and then demand that they do all that giving so you can build up your empire further! Scare them with fake "visions" that threaten your very LIFE, you bloody fraud. Bilk 'em for whatever they're worth by whatever means, fair or foul. Mostly foul.
No thanks. I used to ride my bicycle with a friend out past ORU when it was out there on South Lewis (my mom lives near there now in a non-ORU senior center) all by itself and nothing but countryside and wildlife all around. The road was two-lane, and now it's four-to-six-lane approaching and right in front of ORU -- actually between ORU and VCC. That curve just where the multi-lane roadway returns to two-lane again after you pass ORU used to be known as "Dead Man's Curve," and they never really took the curvature out of the road at that spot -- I think because it slowed everyone down just in time to take in ORU in all its shining golden splendor.
Add a huge WalMart SuperStore directly across the street from what used to be the City of Faith Hospital (now a multi-use office building and home of Cancer Centers of America -- I've worked there as a temp), plus the high-end chain and specialty stores in the stripmalls surrounding the immediate area, and you have the perfect mega-religio-marketplace for the very rich, IMO, and of course it's all ideally arranged to impress and make envious any poorer folk who drive through there and drool. :)
All lower-class stores and residences have pretty much been cleared out of that area -- and I have to wonder if "eminent domain" was utilized in behalf of the religous&wealthy to achieve that.
When I rode my bicycle around the ORU campus back in the early 70's, I used to ride all through the campus as well, just marveling at how vain a person it must have taken to construct (with poor people's money) such a lavish, gold-topped, gawdy and architecturally insane place. My friend and I used to make comments then about Oral and his "Wonderland" campus that, if made today, would get us jailed as "terraists"!
The "Praying Hands" monstrosity that was commissioned to stand at the entrance of the City of Faith Hospital, which never did make a go of it because (I felt) it was just too grandiose and overstretched "God's" limits even for Oral, finally put me over the top in my disgust with the old radio evangelist. It almost wasn't completed, either, along with the City of Faith complex, due to a shortage of funds, you may recall.
But when it was done, and set up at the end of the entry drive to the City of Faith, I thought it was the most obscene thing I'd ever viewed. Didn't even look like "praying" hands -- more like, as I said at the time, "clapping hands." Hah!
When the City of Faith went bust, as it was destined to do, blackmail-the-faithful effort by Oral or not, he moved the "clapping hands" to the main entrance to the ORU campus, where it still stands today, mocking all who pass by, IMO.
You're right about Rhema, too. I also rode my bike through there (I was gearing up for crosscountry rides at the time), and was amazed at the appalling power that could be exerted in small communities by one megachurch empire and one megalomaniac. Kenneth Hagin's Sunday services I attended one time, more out of curiosity than anything else, but I found it to be a carbon copy of Victory -- or the other way around. To me, these ultrawealthy churchmen all spring from the same fundie fountain, and I sorta blame Oral for starting it all, in a way, I guess.
Hagin, like Oral himself, also claims to have been miraculously healed from serious illness or injury and imbued with special spiritual "gifts" while a young man. But the horror stories I heard from some former Rhema students and generally around town were just terrible. How students there could be made to wear the scarlet A, metaphorically speaking, if they dressed improperly or didn't do everything just as they were told. Or didn't TITHE -- always a high priority for those leeches.
And Rhema has turned out probably more carbon copies of the "faith healing" type of preacher than anywhere else, overall. While ORU shifted gears to at least offer a great education in broader fields, Rhema and Victory still focus almost solely on cranking out thousands of new fundie robots. While raking in so much money it's just pathetic, in what it says about the preachers as well as the gullibility of the "flock."
You're right about Richard Roberts, too. He is "but a shade" of his father in charisma (hah!) and in every other way, I'd say. But also destined to retire in lavish comfort and splendor. Pitiful how even a poor copy of Oral can still do so well financially and maintain the key offering intake all these years.
Now a little story of a personal experience I had a long time ago while on the way to a midnight movie in a theatre complex just south of ORU on Lewis Avenue. Three friends and I were with my sister-in-law in her car, and while she remained sober and straight as the driver, we three were somewhat smashed from drinking before we left and more than a little bit high on pot as we anticipated a fun night with the Rocky Horror Picture Show crowd.
At that hour, another couple of drunk young women, with the most sauced one behind the wheel, failed to make that turn at Dead Man's Curve while heading straight for us! My SIL, thank goodness, being sober and an alert driver, jerked the steering wheel to the right which meant the drunk driver only grazed the side of our car ... but then carromed directly into the front of a pickup behind us which was driven by a young man who was out doing a good deed for his elderly grandmother at that hour.
The ensuing accident was horrific, and you never saw so many drunk people sober up fast as happened that night. As we all came to a stop after hearing the awful sound of metal screeching and then colliding with a major impact just behind us, the four of us in our car sat frozen in place for just a moment. Then I said, "Okay, people, we need to sober up fast ... it'll be easier outside in the crisp night air ... and go help some folks. Take a few deep breaths of that cold air. There's gonna be some badly injured people out there."
Indeed there were. My dad was a State Trooper here in OK for 23 years, btw, so I had a little extra insight into just how bad car accidents can be. We all bailed out of our vehicle and went to see if we could help someone and make sure an ambulance as well as the police were called ASAP in those days before cellphones and in an area where the only residences at that time were at the ORU-affiliated senior home near that curve. It was new then, and one of our number went to make the phone calls there.
I checked out the offending car, but the driver had stumbled out (with a fractured tibia, it turned out) and had wandered off into a pasture aimlessly but probably trying to escape justice for her sin of driving while VERY drunk. Her passenger was a young blond whose forehead had hit the windshield, no seat belts being worn, and bright red blood on her forehead and face more than hinted at serious head injury. She was conscious, but just barely. There were already other people trying to help her, though, so I moved on to the pickup right behind us.
It was smashed in badly in front, and when I checked inside, the young man driving it was almost in the floorboard, with his right leg that had been pushing into his brakes at the last minute as hard as he could was angled badly and I figured was surely broken -- or more like shattered. Never a good thing to hit the brake with a stiffened leg when you see you're about to be crashed into head-on.
He was semi-conscious also but clearly had at least a concussion in addition to the leg injuries, and all I could really do for him was to try to keep him from passing out and offer him a lot of verbal encouragement and comfort. I stayed there with him the whole time until the ambulance crews came, and later visited both him and the young blond lady who'd been taken to the same local hospital, in a room just down the hall from him. She was fine -- just a concussion and a few stitches in her forehead, and no memory at all of the wreck. He, on the other hand, suffered a shattered hip joint, which he said he could see plainly on the X-rays his doctor showed him. Shattered like splinters, like glass.
They did what they could to repair it, but this young fella, married and responsible for a young family, had been working as a pest control person, crawling around under houses, and he would never be able to do that again, most likely. He was upbeat, though, and I learned that he had been returning keys left behind by his forgetful grandmother to her at her home. Went out late at night to do a good deed, and got himself crippled (to some degree) for life thanks to yet another drunk driver. An all-too-common sort of outcome, sadly.
But my reason for telling this detailed story (sorry, my vivid memories carried me away) was that throughout that entire evening, the only help any of the victims of that major three-vehicle accident received was from passing motorists and the professionals who were called to the scene. Other than the night desk clerk at the ORU-affiliated old folks home who made their phone available to our friend who'd gone there to call for help, there was not one person associated with ORU who turned out to assist in any way. It just sort of made a statement in my own mind about how "Christian" the people at ORU were. They kept clear of involvement.
And this wasn't a one-time thing. On another occasion in broad daylight as I rode my bicycle along the same route, same time period, early 70's, I witnessed a motorcyclist driving too fast completely underestimate the sharpness of Dead Man's Curve and fly off the roadway behind me, launched by his speed into the air and eventually colliding head-on with a stout post to which a billboard was attached. About as hefty as a telephone pole.
He had on a helmet and protective biker clothing, so to my shock he survived the accident. He even got back up on his feet, some little distance off the roadway in the weeds, and walked on his own steam, staggering quite a bit, though, toward me as I was approaching him.
He was wearing a full-coverage helmet, in fact, and the only injury other than some scrapes and scratches that he appeared to have was that he kept holding the outside of the helmet and saying, when he could speak at all, "My head hurts ... my head hurts."
Passersby in cars stopped, several of them, I think, and one of them jumped back in his own car and went to call for the ambulance and cops also. Another couple and I were trying to get the biker to stop stumbling around and sit down on the grass, while someone began slowing and diverting traffic, which there wasn't much of back in those days.
Turned out, can you believe it, the ambulance people refused to respond when a citizen called them but instructed the good Samaritan who phoned them to call the police FIRST, because the POLICE had to ascertain the degree of injury to any victims and summon them to the scene! We were appalled at such procedures, though we could understand the reasoning.
So during the long wait I was glad that a nurse was among the volunteers who'd stopped and was trying to calm the injured biker. He wouldn't stop pulling at his helmet strap, though, continuing to complain of the major pain in his head and wanting that helmet OFF. He was adamant about it.
After failing to convince him to leave it on until medical crews arrived to help him, the nurse reluctantly assisted him in unfastening his helmet. Just as the ambulance crew arrived with lights and siren running full blast and jummped out of their vehicle to do their thing, the standing biker and the nurse got his helmet off ... and immediately his fractured skull collapsed without the support of the helmet and he died on the spot.
The nurse had known of this risk, as she was an ER nurse, and that was why she tried so hard to get him to leave the damned helmet ON. There was nothing the ambulance crew could do at that point but put the guy into their "bus" and take him as fast as possible to the ER, but it was a futile effort by then. Poor guy was dead because we couldn't get him to leave the helmet on. The nurse later told me she'd seen that happen in the ER before, so she'd been well aware of what might occur.
But again, there was no help on that scene from anyone at ORU at midday right in front of their campus. The only ones who played "good Samaritan" that day were those who were simply passing by.
Longwinded ways to tell about my experiences with ORU, but it's all factual and documented.
In addition to the Fundie Fountain, I have also called Tulsa "the buckle on the Bible belt" and have lamented the degree of harm and swindling done to so many unsuspecting people by the supposedly "good" churchpeople of this area. They may well do some good; it's just that I've seen far more damage wrought by their presence in our community than goodness or demonstrations of true "Christian values."
Little wonder I would encourage your "sport" of trying to penetrate the minds-or-what's-left-of-them of these people, huh. If only they could be bothered to engage in some critical thinking instead of relying on the teachings and sorry examples of their leadership, we'd all be a lot better off, IMO.
Sad but true, drama and destruction from the Fountain of Fundie madness in the Heartland....
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