The president of Oral Roberts University, which sits in the heart of America’s Bible Belt in Oklahoma, is accused of using donors’ money to buy his wife expensive cars, fund private jet trips for his daughter, remodel his home and maintain a stable of horses for his children.
The wife of Richard Roberts is also accused of sending hundreds of text messages to “underage males” who had been provided with university-issued mobile phones, and spending tens of thousands of dollars on clothes with university funds.
Three professors claim that they were dismissed after reporting the university’s allegedly illegal involvement in a political campaign.
The professors claim that they were dismissed after they turned over to the board of regents a copy of a report detailing moral and financial abuses by Mr Roberts and his family. The document…detailed dozens of alleged instances of misconduct. Mrs Roberts was given a red Mercedes convertible and sports utility vehicle at donors’ expense. The Roberts’s home, according to the document, has been refurbished 11 times in 14 years. Mrs Roberts spent more than $39,000 at a Chico’s clothing shop in less than a year, and had other accounts in California and Texas. According to the document, she also repeatedly said: “As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off”.
Lots more details in the article. I especially like the part about Mrs. Roberts texting male students between 1AM and 3AM. Does she have some special insomnia they helped her to cure?
#8 – Mister Miustard,
Seems you missed my comment in post #12. So, I’ll give you top billing this time and repost the text directed at you.
I just don’t get your comment this time. The comment by Awake demonstrates exactly the demarcation you would like to see. He strongly separated the “leaders of megachurches” from the sincere minions that “show up in sincere religious belief.”
I think you are making the mistake of which you frequently accuse others. Awake made no disparaging remark about believers. He very specifically said the leaders of megachurches. What part of that do you have a problem with?
>>Mister Miustard
Miustard? C’est Français, Monsieur Scott?
I didn’t miss your comment at all. In fact, it seems like I addressed it directly and immediately in #13. I said I had no quibble with Awake. I would take minor issue with your phraseology though. The alternative to “Leaders of Megachurches” is not necessarily “minions” of any sort. There are plenty of fine Christians with plenty of leadership and a full complement of of sincere religious belief. I even know some of them, although they don’t make the headlines quite as visibly as hypocritical fucks like Dumbya or Jimmy Swaggart.
I’m saddened that so many of the DU participants (the ones I was referring to in my reply to Awake) seem to spend so much time watching The 700 Club or PTL or tracking Man-Ass Meth Haggard’s shenanigans that they have not had the pleasure of the friendship of such people.
#56, Matt, my guess is you didn’t bother to read the actual article. There’s plenty of damning evidence.
Actually in Matthew 7:15-23 Jesus condemns many who claim to be his followers. Turns out not many churches read this.
Matt 7:15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
21″Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
Pretty clear condemnation. I suggest this may fit the ORU, Swaggerts, etc of the world to a T. To bad their followers never pick up a bible and actually read and think. To tough an assignment…
#61 Mister Mustard,
Oops and oops. Never mind. To whom were you referring in your post then? Or perhaps you were jumping the gun on that one. This was a point I had made on an earlier thread. It seems you often take that stance before anyone has said anything to trigger it. You accuse atheists of being religious and evangelical for doing the same. I now accuse you of being overly evangelical in your own campaign. If you want to fight against something, that’s fine. However, if it dies a slow quiet death and you keep harping on it, it will never go away.
#64 Amen
>>To whom were you referring in your post then?
I think we know the usual suspects I was referring to. The ones who jump in with the “Xian sheeple” and tales of the Inquisition, and stories about Ted Haggard and Jerry Falwell and the Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggart any time anything remotely related to religion is posted (and you just KNOW that any time a remotely religious story is posted, it’s going to be an unflattering account of some hypocrisy, fraud, theft, or sexual perversion).
As to me being an evangelist, I though we had a gentleman’s agreement that I would not call you one and you would not call me one.
I don’t recall ever having evangelized for my faith on dvorzhak dot org slash blog; in fact, I avoid doing that even in real life. That’s why I prefer my “faith-based” (in a good sense, of course) community services be restricted to things like Habitat for Humanity and soup kitchens/ homeless shelters and “discarded cell phones for the soldiers” programs, instead of activities like prison outreach programs, where I might be expected to tell other people what to believe. What other people choose to believe is none of my affair, unless they ask me.
#67 – MM,
Yes, we do have such an agreement. I apologize for breaking it.
I would point out though that none of the group to whom you refer had posted anything on this thread at the time of your posting. So, your post, at least potentially, continues such behavior after you have already made your point and stopped it.
You certainly do not evangelize your faith. However, you make a very hard sell against doing so. So hard, in fact, that it BORDERS on evangelism against evangelism all by itself. So, I guess my point is that you may want to hold off on making such points until someone actually makes an offending post. That way, if people actually wish to silently acknowledge your point by not making such statements again, they can do so and end this particular line of discussion.
See my point?
#65, 68 – M Scott
“It seems you often take that stance before anyone has said anything to trigger it.”
Mustard Superior jumped the gun…
#69 – Lauren, LOL!!
Lauren — Excellent “White Album” reference, and entirely appropriate for our “Mean Mister Mustard” of Abbey Road fame. It’s his own fault for being “Such a mean old man” 😉
Mister Mustard — When all else fails, we always have Beatles lyrics to use against you 😉
>>When all else fails, we always have Beatles lyrics to use against you
By the beard of the Prophet!!
Never defile the lyrics of Beatles songs, infidel! I have powerful friends. Very powerful. (You perhaps know the reputations of Magneto? Titanium Man? Polythene Pam? Crimson Dynamo?)
Unless you want to defile “Revolution #9”. That’s just about the only song they did (White Album, to boot) that sucked.
#72 – MM,
Wrong!! Honey Pie and Mr Moonlight are both pretty damn awful. And, yes, I do love most of the music of the Beatles. Oh, can I defile the one and only drum solo of Ringo’s? The one so simplistic that even I can play it. And, I don’t play the drums.
Wrong!!
Well, OK, “Honey Pie” blew. I don’t even know Mr. Moonlight. But how many other bands put out that many great songs in 6 years??
And feel free to ridicule Ringo. He’s the only one who wasn’t a visionary, a mystic, cute, or even musically inclined. He shoulda joined the Monkees.
Just remember that the majority of evangelicals are not proud of this bunch of yahoos.
#58 – Hey… Avril Levine! Use the language. There is nothing hip or cool about spelling like a reject from the Prince School of Grammar.
As for the Dylan lyrics, nothing he wrote will ever help me understand your faith in whatever mythology you have faith in. Can I say it in a clearer way?
#59 – Some of us are not ashamed of being smart.
#62 – I’m saddened that so many of the DU participants (the ones I was referring to in my reply to Awake) seem to spend so much time watching The 700 Club or PTL or tracking Man-Ass Meth Haggard’s shenanigans that they have not had the pleasure of the friendship of such people.
Hey… I’m obligated to be nice to these people at the picnic and at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don’t wanna have to be nice to these people at any other times…
Wait…
You were talking about my family, right?
>>Some of us are not ashamed of being smart.
Har! As I said, those who trumpet their “intelligence” the loudest….. 😉
>>nothing he wrote will ever help me understand
Why do I have the feeling that nothing anyone ever wrote, said, or did will help you to understand anything? Even to understand that there are tings you don’t understand. You are truly at Prochaska’s “first stage of change”. Precontemplation. You don’t recognize the problem.
May your horizons broaden in the future, compay.
#74 – MM,
No argument from me there. As I said, I love the Beatles’ music. There are a few notable exceptions though. In fact, let me add “Why don’t we do it in the Road?” It’s not as awful as Honey Pie and Mr. Moonlight, just boring dumb and simplistic, a very poor fit for the rest of their music from the peak of their musical careers.
Aw, I hate “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road”. I was a little kid, and my mother heard me listening to that on the stereo, asked me “what does that mean?? Do WHAT in the road??”. We didn’t talk about that sort of thing in those days. I was very embarrassed.
So yeah, they had a couple of duds along the way. Nothing that would make me run screaming to change the station though, like “Stacie’s Mom Has Got it Going On”, or other horrors of the new millenium. Even though I used to live near the Fountains of Wayne store on Rt 46 in Wayne (NJ), and should have been sympathetic to a band named after the local lawn-ball store.
#77 – Why do I have the feeling that nothing anyone ever wrote,
Because you the most passive aggressive superiority complex of anyone who has ever posted here.
>>Because you the most passive aggressive superiority complex
>>of anyone who has ever posted here.
You’re ceasing to make sense, OFTLO, if you ever did.
#79 – MM,
Wayne, NJ. You have my sympathies. That’s probably even worse than growing up in New Hyde Park on Lawn Gisland. I had no idear that you were from Joisey. Sounds like my Mom was a bit cooler than yours though.
>>Wayne, NJ. You have my sympathies. That’s probably even worse
>>than growing up in New Hyde Park on Lawn Gisland.
Save some of that sympathy, Scottie. I didn’t grow up in Wayne, or anywhere else in New Jersey. I’m a proud patriot from the Bay State. But I have lived many places, and Wayne NJ is one of them (as well as West Orange, East Rutherford, Passaic (Passaic Park, actually) and Princeton). Wayne was pretty shitty, but I’ve seen worse (hey, I lived in NYC as well!).
>>Sounds like my Mom was a bit cooler than yours though.
I think I’m a bit older than you, son. No matter how cool one’s mom was, discussing public fornication in the middle of the street was not on the menu when the White Album came out.
#83 – MM,
When the white album came out was probably a year or two later than when I asked my Mom the usual question about where babies come from. She took me to the library and got me a book that explained it all in terms a child could understand, complete with some diagrams.
I believe my reaction was something like, ‘So, how could that happen by accident?’
84 Scottie
OK, you win. Your mom was cooler than my mom. My mom was a Catholic (disenfranchised, but old habits die hard). What can I say?
#85 – MM,
Don’t feel bad. I’m not making a claim about better, just cooler. I think I was in around 4th grade and my older sister in 6th when Mom sat us down to talk about drugs. She said something like “I know I can’t stop you. If you ever decide to try drugs, I hope you will do them here in the house where I know you’re safe.”
#80 – OFTLOTFF
Brother, did you ever get that one right!
#81 – You’re ceasing to make sense, OFTLO, if you ever did.
I left out one word (have) by way of a typo… Or do you just not get that you are smug, condescending, and generally everything you accuse me of being…
I don’t buy your fairy tale. So you think I need to broaden my horizons? That’s pretty presumptuous of a guy who believes in God.
>>So you think I need to broaden my horizons?
Nope. Keep ’em just as narrow as they are now. We all like it that way.
>>Brother, did you ever get that one right!
Get a room.