The religious economy paradigm sees churches as firms, pastors as marketers, and church members as consumers whose tastes shape the goods and services the ministers offer. Religious innovators operate within this framework as suppliers who thrive because they react quickly to changing cultural and social conditions. This article argues that Oral Roberts was a religious innovator who operated and thrived within this environment because he quickly reacted to changing cultural and social conditions and resourcefully supplied and packaged his spiritual products in ways that resonated with his followers’ needs and tastes.

Introduction

Oral Roberts was born in poverty in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, in 1918 and nearly died of tuberculosis when he was 17. He was bedridden for five months, and many of his family thought he would not recover. Yet he believed he heard God speak to him, saying, “Son, I am going to heal you, and you are to take my healing power to your generation. You are to build a university and build it on My authority and the Holy Spirit.” Afterward, his parents and elder brother took him to a tent revival where God healed him. The Pentecostal Holiness Church later ordained him. He pastored until 1947 when he left to become a full-time healing evangelist and held healing crusades all over the country. He became a nationally recognized figure overnight and made the national headlines after a gunman tried to kill him in 1947. His fame skyrocketed in 1955 when he started televising his tent crusades. In 1962, he financed and built Oral Roberts University (ORU), and by the 1980s, his organization was putting $100 million back into the Tulsa economy.[1]

Vinson Synan describes Roberts as one who bridged denominational gaps. He maneuvered himself to become one of the Charismatic Movement’s key figures, with his message appealing to Pentecostals, Methodists, and Roman Catholics alike.[2] Alan Anderson notes the same, stating that it was independent healing evangelists like Roberts that made Penectoslaim a popular subculture.[3] In a 2017 article titled “Oral Roberts: Son of Pentecostalism, Father of the Charismatic Movement,” Synan argues for precisely that. He describes Roberts as one of the most important religious figures of the 20^th century.[4]

He was one of the most prominent American religious leaders of his time, second only to Billy Graham. His emphasis on healing and prosperity still inspires millions of Pentecostals and charismatics around the world. In the end, Roberts was the most famous and influential leader ever produced by the Pentecostal Holiness Church. At the same time, he was the one man above all others who brought Pentecostalism to the attention of the world.[5]

With such acclaim, one would expect there to be more studies on Roberts. However, the few academic studies available are written of his role within the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement and focus on topics such as healing revivals, television, crusade rhetoric, faith, and prosperity. Daniel Isgrigg says that these few studies do not capture Roberts’ full impact on American religious life.[6] This study seeks to add to the literature and give fresh insight into Roberts’ contribution to religious life by placing Roberts within a religious marketplace framework and examining his role as a religious innovator.

Why a Religious Economic Analysis of Oral Roberts

The theory of a religious economy explains religious activity within an economic framework.[7] It is built upon the concept of religion operating within a deregulated open market where people are free to worship where and how they choose.[8] Within this framework, churches act as firms, pastors as marketers, and church members as consumers whose tastes shape the goods and services the ministers offer.[9] The effectiveness with which suppliers package and market their products in ways that resonate with the public’s existential needs and cultural tastes determines the supplier’s level of success in this complex market environment.[10] Lee and Sinitiere refer to the most successful of these suppliers as “holy mavericks.”[11] These are innovators who thrive because they are quick to react to changing cultural and social conditions. They are business savvy and resourceful in carving out a niche where they market spiritual products that match the religious consumer’s tastes.[12]

One of the benefits of studying Roberts within this framework is that it liberates Roberts from himself. For instance, David Harrell says that many academics and intellectuals are reluctant to objectively study Roberts because they struggle to take him seriously. Roberts’ claims that he heard God’s voice, personally beheld Jesus, and belief in miracles seem absurd, comical, or dangerous. Harrell also notes that Roberts contributes to the public’s unbalanced perception of him in many ways.[13] However, when a minister is examined using the marketplace framework, the success of the supplier’s religious product and ministerial activity is freed from divine endorsement.[14] So, rather than seeing God’s blessing, anointing, or listening to God’s voice as the result of Roberts’ success, this approach sees his success as lying squarely on the inventiveness of his role as a religious supplier. This approach frees Roberts from doctrinal and theological criticisms because doctrinal validity and spiritual integrity are not questioned within this framework.[15]  Moreover, locating Roberts within the historical context of the American religious marketplace helps assess his contribution towards today’s current religious-economic climate while also assisting scholars in understanding the changing needs and preferences of the religious consumer.[16] Essentially, by understanding the supplier, the consumer learns a little more about themselves.[17]

An Overview of the Study

This paper places Oral Roberts within this framework to examine how he fits a religious innovator’s characteristics. It analyzes four areas of Roberts’ ministry. The first area explores how Roberts’ innovative use of television is synonymous with how religious innovators use the cultural tools at their disposal to offer appealing messages and ministries to their contemporaries.[18] The second area explores how religious innovators use their abilities to touch the modern-day ills at the heart of America’s social and spiritual struggles.[19] Roberts did this through his stance on racial equality, which shows another quality of Roberts’ religious innovation—the ability to forecast market trends and market expansion. The third area looks at how Roberts’ product, like all religious innovators’ products, stood on its ability to provide his audience with an experience. The fourth area explores the global scope of Roberts’ enterprise by showing how Seed Faith flourished as a religious product in the African religious market because it offered consumers the fulfillment of their needs and promised spiritual rewards.

Four Areas Revealing that Oral Roberts was a Religious Innovator

Oral Roberts’ Innovative use of television

Finke and Stark look at the historical development of Christianity in America and account for its progress using economic terms. Tracing Christianity’s development from the early settlers to the present day, they observed individuals who thrived because they had the unique ability to change religious supply through energetic delivery and effective marketing.[20] Like those religious innovators that came before him, Roberts capitalized using the cultural tools available to him to offer appealing messages and ministries to his audience.[21] Roberts did this by using television. His use of which, Harrell says, was “innovative.”[22]

Oral Roberts’ journey into television began in 1952 when he produced a short film to play in churches and auditoriums that tried to tell a story of faith easy enough for everyone to understand.[23] The film’s success increased Roberts’ desire to develop a more extensive television ministry, which coincided with him feeling in 1953 that God wanted him on television. He told his partners, and with their backing, he broadcast Your Faith Is Power in January 1954. Hunter says that although Roberts had reservations, the program was a success.[24] Harrell paints a gloomier picture saying that the show was canceled and Roberts was “not satisfied” with it.[25] Roberts wanted to recast the program and add more atmosphere by shooting the show live in the tent crusades. However, NBC told him that shooting the tent crusades live was technologically impossible. His friend Rex Humbard encouraged him otherwise, and Roberts approached a different company (Pathescope Productions of New York). This company worked with Roberts, and he returned to television in 1955 with the atmospheric format he wanted. Roberts told his partners, “For the first time in the history of the world, the healing ministry is being filmed, completely unrehearsed, for television. And if you love our meetings, you will love the programs on television, for you will see the tent services exactly as they are—with the exception that they will be right in your own home and in the homes of millions of others from coast to coast.”[26] His newly formatted show opened to critical acclaim. Vinson Synan says this is the point where Roberts’ fame skyrocketed.[27]

Oral Roberts ended the first phase of his television ministry in 1967.[28] He took a break from television, but his controversial decision to join the United Methodist Church in 1968 rocked his financial base and reputation so significantly that he realized how vital his television ministry was as a means of publicity and financial support.[29] Roberts planned a comeback. He wanted to design a new show format to reach the 190,000,000 Americans who watched television.[30] Roberts asked Ralph Carmichael to help. Carmichael was a brilliant artist who assembled a top-notch artistic team to produce a new weekly television series and quarterly prime time entertainment specials, which were the first of their kind.[31] Roberts believed that his new show was a “first of its kind” and would become one of his ministry’s “greatest outreaches for souls,” reaching people of all “levels and ages.”[32] Laurence Moore quotes Ben Armstrong, who was head of the National Religious Broadcasters at the time, as saying that the show was “a sparkling new television presentation that had everything that would guarantee success for any series.”[33]

That Roberts jumped technological hurdles and produced a live television show in a way never done before and created a prime time show in a revolutionary format shows his innovation in this area. That other religious broadcasters duplicated his formats many times over demonstrates Roberts’ ability to use cultural tools to capitalize on untapped niches and that he successfully changed religious supply through the new delivery method of television. Roberts’ innovation with television falls in line with historical religious innovators who also used the cultural tools at their disposal to offer appealing messages and ministries to their contemporaries.[34] George Whitefield is an example of such a figure. With his friend Benjamin Franklin, who was a competent marketer, they printed sermons and journals and built up Whitefield’s popularity and the people’s excitement about his next campaign.[35] Television did this for Roberts in ways previously incomprehensible.  As it happened, Roberts’ innovative use of television was perhaps a little too successful because it showed others how effective television could be and contributed toward his ministry’s later decline.[36]

Oral Roberts’ Stance on Racial Equality and Expanding Markets

One characteristic of a religious innovator is their ability to touch the modern-day ills that lie at the heart of America’s social and spiritual struggles.[37] One of the modern-day ills affecting America at the time Roberts operated was racial inequality. Roberts grew up Pentecostal. Pentecostals tend to have an apocalyptic spirituality that isolates and withdraws them from worldly issues, making them focus on individualized mission and evangelism. This means that Pentecostals are not typically known for their socio-political involvement.[38] Harrell criticizes Roberts’ stance against racial inequality using that argument. He quotes W. E. Mann, who complained Roberts preached salvation without any social ethic.[39] Harrell also critiques Roberts for being sectarian and otherworldly in his response to racial injustice.[40] In some ways, Harrell’s accusations are evident in Roberts’ rhetoric towards social injustice, which tends to redirect the focus from the social issue onto Christ. However, this trait is consistent with Roberts’ belief that God had called him to help people of all races, colors, and denominations to see “Jesus as he really is” and experience the abundant life.[41] As Roberts said, “Jesus is the color of everyman.”[42]

According to Harrell, Roberts was “no social crusader.”[43] Daniel Isgrigg has a more favorable opinion of Roberts. He says that Harrell’s comments do not fully recognize Roberts’ views on America’s racial issues of that period or how Robert’s thoughts progressively developed over time. Isgrigg argues that Oral Roberts was a pioneer of racial integration and describes Roberts as a “voice for healing and reconciliation at a time when the black church needed a champion and the white church needed a prophetic voice.”[44] Notice that Isgrigg describes Roberts as a “pioneer” and a “prophetic voice.” These terms are associated with religious innovators. Religious innovators have societal foresight. They see how society is developing and move with those developments before others see what is happening.[45] Bearing in mind that a religious economy comprises current and potential customers and that religious innovators work within this economy,[46] the innovator’s ability to maintain profitability in the current market while projecting market trends is detrimental to their success.

Harrell’s criticism of Roberts being otherworldly and lacking social engagement does not recognize the tight rope Roberts walked along as a supplier marketing a product he wanted to appeal to both whites and blacks during a volatile social period in America. Yet, it was a tightrope along which Roberts saw value in walking because, being a religious innovator, he foresaw where society was heading. It has got to be said, though, that Roberts remained a realist during this process and did not lose sight of the fact that his major consumers were white. For instance, in his special television issue of Abundant Life, which was an issue meant to represent diversity and healing, most of the photos are of white people.[47] So, although Roberts was keen to expand into new markets, he did not lose sight of his primary customer base.

The delicacy with which Roberts used his innovative insight to maneuver himself into a position where he could reap the benefits of America’s social and spiritual struggles and move with the times paid off. Isgrigg identifies several changes Roberts made to ORU over the following decades, including strategically placing African Americans in positions of leadership and offering scholarships and grants, so that by 1992 the enrollment of African Americans has risen to 24.3 percent from 4.1 percent in 1980.[48] Evidently, Roberts developed an institution capable of self-propagating his brand while attaining a larger share of a more open African American religious market. His 1969 prime time special prayer with Mahalia Jackson over a specially manufactured golden globe for the healing of the nations was coming to pass[49]—at least in market terms.

One characteristic of a religious innovator is their ability to touch the modern-day ills that lie at the heart of America’s social and spiritual struggles. Yet, a question emerges concerning Roberts’ motivation/s for wanting to touch modern-day ills. Was his stance on racial equality motivated by his religious conviction, or was he motivated by his own ambition to work the system and get his product into a new market and stay relevant? Depending on how we approach that question, Roberts’ stance could just as easily be caused by his religious convictions and have nothing to do with him trying to influence the market. The question itself best deserves its own study, but it is worth stating two points on the matter.

The first point is really just an observation. It is crucial to note that Roberts’ product appealed to African Americans and others because it worked—plain and simple.  The people would never have invested in his product if it did not speak towards their social and economic needs, and Roberts could never have expanded into that market. The second point concerns this study’s methodology. This study uses a religious marketplace framework to assess Roberts. Using this framework means that the success of the supplier’s religious product and ministerial activity is freed from divine endorsement and is placed firmly on the religious supplier’s innovativeness.[50] This makes things easy because it omits the role of God or religious conviction from our study. However, this does not overlook the fact that Roberts was as complex as any individual. Harrell says that obedience to God was the motivating factor behind everything Roberts did[51] and that “the ministry and the man cannot be separated.”[52] I believe Harrell’s observations are accurate. So, although I claim that Roberts’ interest in expanding into new religious markets motivated his stance on racial equality, it is impossible to totally dismiss his religious convictions. I see a unity between Roberts’ drive for racial equality with the ambition and foresight he displays as a religious innovator. To paraphrase Asamoah-Gyadu: it is difficult to know how much of Roberts’ actions were motivated by what he believed his divine mandate to be and how much by human ambition.[53]

One can also see Roberts’ foresight for expanding into new markets in his attendance at the evangelical World Congress on Evangelism held in Berlin in 1966. Roberts’ belief that the historic denominations would be open to his ministry reveals his vision for market expansion.[54] Also revealing Roberts’ vision was his wish to open ORU’s seminary to students from mainline denominations and his decision to join the Methodist Church, which also increased his market base. That the Methodist Church became the fastest-growing charismatic denomination after he joined shows that his presence helped the Methodists grow their market.[55] Roberts’ ability and attempts to increase and forecast cultural developments and move into new markets fit the criteria for a religious innovator. Roberts even saw himself as a forerunner. He described in one ORU chapel service how he was “overwhelmed by God reminding me that He had set me in the Body of Christ to be a forerunner of that healing and health He is going to bring to the Body of Christ.”[56]

How Roberts’ Product Delivered Experience and Proved Itself Effective

James Twitchell says that the product religious groups offer in a religious marketplace is the born-again experience, which is the experience (think sensation) of a fresh start.[57] It is the promise of, “I made a few mistakes Saturday night, but I’ve got a fresh start with God because I repented and said the sinner’s prayer on Sunday.” This may be an oversimplification, but the product, according to Twitchell, is all about the experience. In Roberts’ terms, the promise is, “That something good is going to happen to you,” that “God is a good God, and the devil is a bad devil.” As Lee & Sinitiere say, religious innovators speak the cultural language of their time and offer a timely message to their audience.[58] The way Roberts used buzzwords and phrases like those above corresponds to product branding, where suppliers and marketers create taglines to go with their products with which people can identify.[59] In a religious marketplace, an innovator’s product stands or falls on its ability to deliver experience.

The development of Roberts’ product and his rise in the late forties and fifties coincided with a sense of optimism for Christianity in America. Hollywood helped spread this optimism among the 97% of Americans who believed in God by producing biblical epics like Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, The Robe, and other movies. However, a general unawareness of the practical power of faith in Christian lives countered this public optimism. People like Fulton J. Sheen and Norman Vincent Peale capitalized by helping Christians grasp the practical power of God for their own lives and overcome their inadequacies and insecurities. Some believed this to be a step forward. Still, others thought people like Sheen and Fulton were diluting the gospel with culture and creating a new Christianity that identified with the American way of life.[60] Roberts emerged in this environment with a message that was optimistic and practical to his audiences’ needs. Like Peale and Sheen, Roberts settled into the niche of marketplace culture,[61] providing the public with the product of practical American optimism. The timing in which Roberts appeared on the scene was no accident. After all, Roberts was “God’s man for the hour.” He came to the fore supplying the people with a religious product that provided sensation and experience, which God wanted all the people to have. And it certainly delivered. Hunter says that The Christian Century referred to Roberts’ early television success in 1955 as “sensational.”[62] Moore says that many people watched his television shows “as much out of curiosity as conviction.” Some critics likened the hysteria they saw to the Cane Ridge revivals.[63] Hunter, though, says Roberts’ meetings were relatively modest, and hysteria and emotionalism were not characteristics of his services.[64] Nonetheless, many who saw Roberts’ tent meetings for the first time were “captured by the intensity of the drama.”[65]

Besides sensation, Roberts’ product promised results, and Roberts’ own life was one of the most significant proofs. Roberts reminded his audience that miracles were real because he received one when God healed him from tuberculosis as a teenager.[66] Roberts wrote in Abundant Life,

He spoke to me, a 17-year-old boy dying with tuberculosis. He spoke to my heart He spoke to my sister who said to me, “Oral, God is going to heal you.” Lying there bedfast for five months with the papers signed to take me to the sanitarium for tuberculosis in Talihina, Oklahoma. I didn’t have anything to look forward to. My life was blasted. Forty-five pounds had gone from my body. I was skin and bones. There was no way for me. I didn’t know there were miracles. And then I learned the secret of life—that you can expect a miracle and if you have a miracle it settles the issue! The most wonderful moment in your life is when you launch out in your faith and expect a miracle from God.[67]

The same issue of Abundant Life narrates a few of Roberts’ partners’ personal testimonies and how acting on Roberts’ message brought results in their lives. Pamela D. Williams describes how engaging in Roberts’ ministry product brought healing.[68] Mr. and Mrs. Sparks were in financial difficulty. They listened to what Roberts said in his book The Miracle of Seed Faith and sowed out of their need. Nearly three years later, the Sparks earned so much that they sowed an amount greater than their previous annual income.[69] Most of Roberts’ partner magazines are full of the life stories of partners validating the authenticity of Roberts’ religious product by giving their own testimony of how Roberts’ message affected their lives. In these testimonies, we see Roberts’ giftedness at using his own struggles to bridge the gap between himself and his audience, who then narrate the effectiveness of Roberts’ message to others. What takes place is a process of product validation through story and the emergence of a brand community. That is, “a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of the brand.”[70] Brand communities help consumers know who they belong to, find their identity, and communicate it to others while also identifying who else is part of the community. But the nucleus of brand communities is the communication of narrative experience within the brand (i.e., storytelling or, in other words, providing product reviews).

Using stories is something religious innovators excel at, and no story is more vital for Roberts than his healing from tuberculosis when he was a teenager. The indented quote above referenced Roberts’ healing from tuberculosis. The story became a mainstay of his ministry and is often told in the media his ministry distributes. However, the widespread testimony that Roberts’ consumers know differs from the earliest record of Roberts’ healing testimony from 1939.[71] The 1939 account describes Roberts’ recovery from two different conditions (flu and a nervous disorder) through family prayers. It does not mention that he suffered from tuberculosis and was healed at a revivalist’s tent meeting. Isgrigg and Synan suggest some reasons for the differences. One reason is that Roberts tailored his testimony to lend credulity to his evangelistic calling. A second reason is that Roberts may not have wanted to confirm his Pentecostal tradition’s assumptions that disobedience and God’s judgment caused sickness. A third alternative is that Roberts was uneasy about the negative association between tuberculosis and Native Americans and how this would affect his popularity as an evangelist. [72]

Like all religious innovators, Roberts excelled at tailoring his messages and using his struggles to bridge the gap between himself and his audience.[73] The differences in Roberts’ healing testimonies show his skill at adapting his life’s events to fit his ministry’s narrative and the product he was developing. Ministry narratives are those stories within ministries that communicate the essential characteristics of that ministry through their products. By adapting his healing testimony to suit his ministry’s development, Roberts engineered his story to fit his product. This is a form of product branding. Branding takes place “to aid consumers in making and maintaining a personal connection to a commodity product.”[74] James Twitchell describes branding as a way of marketing goods by using stories to produce consumer emotions. He refers to this process as “storifying things.”[75] Oral Roberts excelled at this because he linked everything he preached back to his own life story. He storified his healing from tuberculosis into his product of Seed Faith and his broader ministry narrative. Roberts also used his financial success to prove the effectiveness of his product. He writes, “If God could raise me up from poverty, from stammering and stuttering, and then heal me of tuberculosis—He can perform miracles for anybody.”[76] Stephen Pullum describes Roberts as the “personification of financial healing.”[77] Although Harrell says Roberts was not wealthy,[78] Roberts’ testimony conveys the rags to riches story that makes up much of the American Dream. As Pullum notes, Roberts “stands as a testimony to “the true believer” that his message is truth.”[79] Therefore, when Roberts asked his audience to touch the screen or sow their seed, he is living proof that what he said worked.

The Success of Seed Faith in Africa as an Example of Roberts’ Global Scope

This paper has explored Oral Roberts as a religious innovator operating within a North American religious marketplace, but Roberts’ influence exceeds North America and is felt worldwide. The African religious market provides an example of his global reach. In his case study of Reinhard Bonnke, Edlyne Anugwom talks about transnational evangelism and how Africa’s indigenous religious leaders’ search for credibility and authority led them to invite leaders from the global north to the global south. He describes “religious icons,” that is, “powerful men of God from the West.” Anugwom explains that these visits were significant events that helped improve local churches and the visitor’s ministry status. People from both sides of the globe saw these events as opportunities through which Christianity could respond to the needs of Africans.[80] Oral Roberts was one “religious icon” who brought with him his product of Seed Faith.

Seed Faith teaches the believer to demonstrate their faith by the giving of seed. This involves a process in which the believer (i.e., the sower) sees God as the complete source of their supply, gives their best out of their need, and then expects a miracle harvest and receives the desired result.[81] Roberts says, “If you want a miracle in your life, back up from the prayers you’re praying… from the begging you’re doing… from the wishing you’re engaged in… use seed faith as taught by Jesus.[82] Seed Faith is a branded product in its own right and profoundly embodies Roberts’ life and ministry story. It provides the consumer with a storified theology that they can take part in, and it promises the results that Roberts himself embodies.

Seed Faith functions exceptionally well as a religious product because it resonates with the audience’s existential needs while also offering spiritual rewards (i.e., results). Roberts distributed Seed Faith to the African consumer through his healing crusades, radio, television, and literature, and he influenced many African Pentecostal leaders.[83] Asamoah-Gyadu reports that receiving Roberts’ free literature thrilled the recipients who then widely circulated it.[84] Roberts’ Seed Faith became a product within the African religious marketplace. It taught the African consumer that if they sowed seed (i.e., money), God would bless them, and they would reap more than what they invested.[85] Considering that Africa suffers from “endemic poverty, corruption at the highest level of governance, and broken medical and economic systems,”[86] as a religious product, Seed Faith met the needs of Africans and promised them a better future. Seed Faith proved very marketable in the African market. Its legacy is found within the prosperity gospel (i.e., the exercise of faith for spiritual and material breakthroughs), which still provides Roberts with a place in the African Christian imagination.[87]

Resident within the religious economy paradigm is the mutuality of product exchange and consumer choice, otherwise known as Rational Choice Theory (RCT). In simple terms, RCT describes the dynamic of exchange between consumers and suppliers. Within this exchange, the supplier has a product they think is valuable; the consumer thinks the same and invests in the product. Questions arise within this interaction about the extent to which the distribution of Seed Faith in an African context might border on exploitation. As Asamoah-Gyadu says,

Unfortunately, preachers exploit the same vulnerable people with principles of sowing and reaping that many have practiced for years without the expected results, keeping the cycle of poverty running by blaming insufficient tithes and offerings and demons for the unworkable principles that they are taught.[88]

The quote from Asamoah-Gyadu is what he witnesses among contemporary African ministers. He assesses Roberts more favorably, noting how Roberts’ message was inspiring and motivational.[89] Yet, whether Seed Faith functioned exploitatively under Roberts’ ministry is open to debate, and if it did, was Roberts aware of it? Moreover, considering he created and distributed the original product, what are his and his legacy’s responsibilities with exploitation cases? One thinks of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus and how he recompensed those he exploited (Luke 19:1-10). The discussion at this point moves into the area of ethics. Rules and regulations exist in secular markets that aim to protect consumers and motivate organizations to behave ethically and responsibly. However, there is little accountability outside the supplier’s conscience or denominational affiliation within the religious market. Naturally, the deregulation of religion works both ways. It allows freedom of trade, but because trade is unregulated, there is a higher potential for shoddy products and customer exploitation. It is sometimes hard to know when obedience to God ends in a religious market and human greed and ambition start.

Conclusion

The religious economy paradigm sees churches as firms, pastors as marketers, and church members as consumers whose tastes shape the ministers’ goods and services. Oral Roberts was a religious innovator who operated and thrived within this framework because he was quick to react to changing cultural and social conditions, was business savvy, and resourcefully supplied and packaged his spiritual products in a way that resonated with the consumer’s needs and tastes. He was an innovator in television and forged a path for others to follow; he spoke into society’s struggles by supporting racial integration; he expanded into new markets and had a global influence.

There were other areas of exploration open to research during this study, which would further reveal Roberts as a religious innovator, but those discussed satisfy this paper’s aim and provide a glimpse into the fruitfulness of viewing Roberts’ life within an economic framework. There is still much to learn from studying Oral Roberts within this framework. This paper only touched the tip of the iceberg. One of the most essential avenues of future study is perhaps his influence in the global marketplace. Christianity has steadily moved to the global south over the last few decades. This move correlates with an economic understanding of religion is a fruitful avenue of study, especially considering the roles western religious innovators like Oral Roberts have played in developing foreign religious markets. Such studies are essential since scholars increasingly use the religious marketplace model to describe international and national religious trends. Besides providing insight into non-American contexts, these studies help broaden the religious economy paradigm’s analytical scope and feedback into our understanding of the American religious marketplace’s complexity.

Endnotes

[1] Jim Ernest Hunter, “A Gathering of Sects: Revivalistic Pluralism in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1945-1985” (Ph.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1986), 53. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.

[2] Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Traditiion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 222.

[3] Alan Anderson, Introduction to Penetcostalism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 158–59.

[4] Vinson Synan, “Oral Roberts: Son of Pentecostalism, Father of the Charismatic Movement,” Spiritus 2, no. 1-2 (2017): 5.

[5] Synan, “Son of Pentecostalism, Father of the Charismatic Movement,” 18.

[6] Daniel Isgrigg, “Oral Roberts: A Brief Bibliography,” Spiritus 3, no. 2 (2018): 385. Wonsuk Ma provides four reasons why studies on Oral Roberts are necessary: to develop ORU as a premier research institute; to assess Roberts’ contribution towards American church history; to expore his contribution towards the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements; and his influence in the role of global Christianity. See, Wonsuk Ma, “Why Oral Roberts Studies,” Spiritus 3, no. 2 (2018): 157–67.

[7] Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, “The Dynamics of Religious Economies,” in Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, ed. Michelle Dillon (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 99.

[8] Stephen Warner, “Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 5 (1993): 1049–50.

[9] Shayne Lee and Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2009), 160.

[10] Lee and Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 150.

[11] Lee and Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 19–23, provides a multifaceted profile of a religious innovator that includes: 1) A religious innovator capitalizes on untapped niches using a broad range of cultural tools to offer appealing messages and ministries to their contemporaries. 2) Religious innovators construct narratives of national sentiment and links them with spiritual integrity and biblical precedents. 3) A religious innovator exhibits “pragmatic shrewdness” at touching the heart of many Americans’ social and spiritual struggles. 4) Unlike the leaders produced by mainline religious institutions who are not typically dynamic or relevant, religious innovators are often self-taught. 5) Religious innovators are pragmatic, focusing on effective communication rather than doctrinal diatribes, and are quick to forfeit church tradition if they consider it cumbersome. 6) They have an inert ability to scratch where people are inching and use their struggles to connect with what their audience is experiencing. 7) They are always under construction continually evolving with culture and investing in their personal development.

[12] Lee and Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 2 & 3.

[13] David Edwin Harrell, Oral Roberts: An American Life (Indiana University Press, 1985), viii–iv.

[14] Lee and Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 9.

[15] Although I highlight one of the benefits of studying Roberts using religious economic theory, it must be said that this benefit can also be a hinderence. For, although doctrinal validity or spirutal integrity are not questioned within this framework, they remain factors that contirbute to the construction of the product and consumer demand.

[16] Many scholars already recognize Roberts’ contribution and his role as a religious supplier in the religious marketplace, but none examine him in-depth. For instance, Lee and Sinitiere Holy Mavericks (2009) provide case studies for five contemporary ministers who operate as religious innovators. They recognize Oral Roberts as a precursor to their chosen ministers, but the authors only make passing comments to Roberts’ role. Similarly, Shayne Lee’s T. D. Jakes: America’s New Preacher (2007) and Paul McGee’s Brand-New Theology (2017) although analyzing T. D. Jakes, also comment on Roberts’ role as an influential figure. R. Laurence Moore’s Selling God (1994), which explores American religion, culture, and the marketplace, only pays Oral Roberts passing comment. These works, and the many others that examine the American religious market and the role of critical individuals within it, although they recognize Oral Roberts, none thoroughly analyze his contributions or capture his impact.

[17] This is a good point for me to position myself in the study. I am a first-generation Pentecostal present within a context that is influenced and inspired by Oral Roberts. In some ways, I am very much a product of his life and legacy’s work. However, although I am grateful for input, the more I know about him, the more questions I have about him. I cannot discount his contribution to Pentecostalism and my own life. Yet, I often question to what extent his success as “God’s man for the hour” was motivated by his tenacity, desire to succeed, and expertise in fund-raising. In some respects, this study’s research is part of my journey to understand Oral Roberts and get to grips with my own feelings about him.

[18] Lee and Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 19.

[19] Lee and Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 20.

[20] Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New York, NY: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 3.

[21] Lee and Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 19.

[22] Harrell, Oral Roberts: An American Life, viii.

[23] Pete White, “A New Venture into Faith,” Healing Waters, August 1952, 11.

[24] James E. Hunter, “Where My Voice Is Heard Small” The Development of Oral Roberts’ Television Ministry,” Spiritus 3, no. 2 (2018): 241.

[25] Harrell, Oral Roberts: An American Life, 126-127.

[26] Oral Roberts, “Second Call to Action,” America’s Healing Magazine, January 1955, 6.

[27] Vinson Synan, “Son of Pentecostalism, Father of the Charismatic Movement,” 11.

[28] Hunter, “Where My Voice Is Heard Small,” 239-240. Hunter identifies three phases of Roberts’ television ministry, 1952-1967, 1969-1977, and 1977-1985.

[29] Hunter,. “Where My Voice Is Heard Small,” 245.

[30] Oral Roberts, “Yes, We’re Back on Television,” Abundant Life, March 1969, 2.

[31] Hunter, “Where My Voice Is Heard Small,” 245.

[32] Oral Roberts, “We are Returning to Television,” Abundant Life, February, 1969, 3; 6.

[33] R. Laurence Moore, Selling God (Oxford, UK: OUP,1994), 248.

[34] Lee and Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 19.

[35] Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, “Sanctified Business: Historical Perspectives on Financing Revivals of Religion,” More Money, More Ministry, ed. Larry Eskridge and Mark A. Noll (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 84.

[36] Hunter, “Where My Voice Is Heard Small,” 251.

[37] Lee and Sinitiere, 20.

[38] Anderson, Introduction to Pentecostalism, 283.

[39] David E. Harrell, Jr., White Sects and Black Men in the Recent South (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971), 102, citing W. E. Mann, “What About Oral Roberts?” Christina Century, September 5, 1956, 1019.

[40] Harrell, White Sects and Black Men in the Recent South, 102.

[41] Oral Roberts, “Oral Roberts Answers Your Questions,” Abundant Life, December 1986, 12.

[42] Oral Roberts, “Hate, Love and the Christian,” Abundant Life, March 1968, 13.

[43] Harrell, White Sects and Black Men in the Recent South, 101.

[44] Daniel Isgrigg, “Healing for All Races: Oral Roberts’ Legacy of Racial Reconciliation in a Divided City,” Spiritus 4, no. 2 (2019): 247–48.

[45] Lee & Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 24.

[46] Finke & Stark, The Churching of America, 9.

[47] OREA, Abundant Life, February, 1969.

[48] Isgrigg, “Healing for All Races,” 243–4.

[49] Roberts, “We are Returning to Television,” 7.

[50] Lee and Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 9.

[51] Harrell, Oral Roberts: An American Life, 480.

[52] Harrell, Oral Roberts: An American Life, xi.

[53] J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “Your Miracle is on the Way”: Oral Roberts and Mediated Pentecostalism in Africa,” Spiritus 3, no. 1, (2018): 22.

[54] Hunter, “Where My Voice Is Heard Small,” 245.

[55] Synan, “Son of Pentecostalism, Father of the Charismatic Movement,” 16.

[56] Harrell, Oral Roberts: An American Life 475, citing Oral Roberts, Chapel Transcript, December 10, 1982. 15.

[57] James B Twitchell, Shopping for God (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 50.

[58] Lee & Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 155.

[59] Lee & Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 152.

[60] Moore, Selling God, 239-244

[61] Moore, Selling God, 241.

[62] Hunter, “Where My Voice Is Heard Small,” 242, citing “Oklahoma Faith-Healer Draws a Following,” The Christian Century, 29 June 1955, 750.

[63] Moore, Selling God, 247.

[64] Hunter, “Where My Voice Is Heard Small,” 241.

[65] Harrell, Oral Roberts: An American Life, 95.

[66] Stephen Pullum, “A Rhetorical Profile of Pentecostal Televangelists: Accounting for The Mass Appeal of Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Kenneth Copeland, And Ernest Angley,” (Ph.D. diss. Indiana University, 1988), 81.

[67] Oral Roberts, “The most wonderful moment in your life is when you launch out in your faith and expect a miracle from God,” Abundant Life, September 1978, 18.

[68] Abundant Life, September 1978, 19.

[69] Abundant Life, September 1978, 20-1.

[70] Mara Einstein, Brands of Faith (New York, NY: Routledge, 2008), 86.

[71] East Oklahoma Conference News, 5 October 1939, 1. See Daniel Isgrigg and Vinson Synan, “An Early Account of Oral Roberts’ Healing Testimony,” Spiritus 3, No. 2, (2018): 170–72.

[72] Daniel Isgrigg and Vinson Synan, “An Early Account of Oral Roberts’ Healing Testimony,” Spiritus 3, No. 2, (2018): 173–74.

[73] Lee & Sinitiere, Holy Mavericks, 22.

[74] Einstein, Brands of Faith, xi.

[75] James B Twitchell, Shopping for God (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 74.

[76] Pullum, “A Rhetorical Profile of Pentecostal Televangelists,” 88, citing Oral Roberts, The Miracle Book (Tulsa, OK: Pinoak Publications, 1972), 12.

[77] Pullum, “A Rhetorical Profile of Pentecostal Televangelists,” 81 & 82.

[78] Harrell, Oral Roberts: An American Life, xi.

[79] Pullum, “A Rhetorical Profile of Pentecostal Televangelists,” 84.

[80] Anugwom, Edlyne, “The Bonnke Effect: Encounters with Transnational Evangelism in Southeastern Nigeria,” in Religion Crossing Boundaries: Transnational Religious and Social Dynamics in Africa and the New African Diaspora, ed. Afe Adogame and James V. Spickard (Leiden, Netherlands, Brill, 2010), 211.

[81] Samuel R. Thorpe, “An Overview of the Theology of Oral Roberts,” Spiritus 3, no.2 (2018) 271–72.

[82] Oral Roberts, “Unlock Your Door to Miracles,” Abundant Life, August 1978, 3.

[83] J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “Your Miracle is on the Way”: Oral Roberts and Mediated Pentecostalism in Africa,” Spiritus 3, no. 1, (2018): 5-26,

[84] J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “Mediating Spiritual Power: African Christianity, Transnationalism, And The Media,” in Religion Crossing Boundaries: Transnational Religious and Social Dynamics in Africa and the New African Diaspora, ed. Afe Adogame and James V. Spickard (Leiden, Netherlands, Brill, 2010), 88.

[85] Asamoah-Gyadu, “Mediating Spiritual Power,” 88.

[86] Asamoah-Gyadu, “Your Miracle is on the Way,” 20.

[87] Asamoah-Gyadu, “Your Miracle is on the Way,” 8.

[88] Asamoah-Gyadu, “Your Miracle is on the Way,” 23.

[89] Asamoah-Gyadu, “Your Miracle is on the Way,” 23–4.

Originally published in Pneuma: Journal for the Society of Pentecostal Studies, 44 (2022): 83-99. doi:10.1163/15700747-bja10034.