"The YouTube video is almost too corny to believe. The year is 1955. A young boy, about 6 and afflicted with polio, is sitting on Oral Roberts's lap. With praise and prayer, the preacher touches the boy all over his legs, ankles and feet, begging the Lord to restore movement to the limp and paralyzed limbs. 'Oh, Jesus,' he says, 'let his little limbs be healed.' Then a look of astonishment crosses the boy's face. He lifts his legs, one by one. And it happens: in one of perhaps millions of miracles Roberts performed in his lifetime, the little boy hops off the preacher's lap and walks away.
"Believe what you want about Roberts's healing powers. One of America's most important preachers died Tuesday at the age of 91. He brought ministry to television, spawning generations of followers. 'He was a televangelist before the word 'televangelist' was invented,' says Michael Cromartie, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Ministers as different, in theology and personality, as Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen, T. D. Jakes, and Robert Schuler are all in his debt.
"Roberts brought legitimacy to Pentecostalism by founding an accredited university in his name: the television personality Kathie Lee Gifford and the disgraced evangelical pastor Ted Haggard both attended the Tulsa, Okla., campus. He initiated millions into the theology of what we now call 'the prosperity gospel,' the idea that God wants his people to be healthy and well off. His famous slogan was this: 'Something good is going to happen to you today.'"
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