Remember Oral “Send me $8 million or the Lord will kill me” Roberts, founder of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma? Oral’s still around, but he’s well into his dotage and has long since turned over day-to-day operation of ORU to his son Richard.
Three former ORU professors are suing the university for wrongful termination. The case centers on allegations that Richard Roberts compelled professors and students to do work for the spectacularly unsuccessful 2006 campaign of Tulsa mayoral candidate Randi Miller, then take one for the team during an Internal Revenue Service investigation by denying that Roberts and the university ordered the campaign work.
The complaint also alleges some less-than-seemly financial shenanigans on the part of Roberts and his wife, Lindsay, “including: 11 remodels of their university home, $800/month cell phone bills, horses for their children and scholarships for their friends, all on the school’s dime.” The firings allegedly happened after the professors questioned some of the shadier expenditures.
As with his father before him, Richard Roberts is apparently favored of the Lord and has a direct communications pipeline to the throne room in heaven. Jesus has spoken about the lawsuit, saying:
The president of Oral Roberts University responded Wednesday to a lawsuit filed against him and the private Christian school, saying God spoke to him and told him to say the suit was about “blackmail and extortion.”
“Here’s what he told me to say to you,” Roberts told students and faculty at his weekly chapel. “’We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not.
“’This lawsuit … is not about wrongful termination. It is about intimidation, blackmail and extortion,”’ he said.
If the reports are complete, neither Jesus nor Roberts is actually denying that the complained-of misconduct took place; they’re only questioning the motives of the plaintiffs and their counsel.
MORE – 10/11/07: Illusory Tenant offers more information regarding the monstrous fraud that it Lindsay Roberts, along with some typically first-rate commentary, right here.
Subject to Complete Defeasance 
Comments
“intimidation, blackmail and extortion.”
Accordingly, I understand the complaint was amended to include allegations of defamation. However the Defendants were not amended to include Roberts’ counsel, given the notorious practical difficulties in serving Judean tribal deities.
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