CNN reports that Oral Roberts has died at age 91.
Evangelist Oral Roberts, founder of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University, died Tuesday from complications of pneumonia in Newport Beach, California, his spokeswoman said. He was 91.
The Washington Post asks
Was Oral Roberts, the influential and controversial TV evangelist who died Tuesday at age 91, the most important American religious figure of the 20th century?
Grant Wacker, professor of Christian history at Duke University, thinks so.
….
“The most obvious way was he brought Pentecostalism out of the backwoods and made it respectable. One cannot imagine the modern day Pentecostalism without him. He transformed its image, but also its practice.”