Unscriptural scandal is a blow to religious right

America Letter:Students at Oral Roberts University, a Christian college in Tulsa, Arizona, named after its televangelist founder, sign an honour code promising to avoid lying, cursing, cheating and telling tales. They forswear alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs and "unscriptural sexual acts which include any homosexual activity and sexual intercourse to one who is not my spouse".

This week, however, as scandal broke over the heads of the founder's son and current university president Richard Roberts and his wife, Lindsay, it was unclear what honour code bound the family of Oral Roberts.

Three former professors are suing the university for wrongful dismissal, claiming that they lost their jobs after they exposed wrongdoing by Richard and Lindsay Roberts, including funding a lavish personal lifestyle with college funds. They claim that Roberts illegally mobilised students to campaign for a local mayoral candidate and encouraged one of the plaintiffs to lie to the internal revenue service about it because it breached the university's rules as a registered charity. They claim that the Roberts' home on campus was remodelled 11 times in 14 years, that the university jet was used to fly the Roberts children to the Bahamas and that Lindsay Roberts charged tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothes to the university.

The lawsuit also claims that text messages were regularly sent in the middle of the night from Lindsay Roberts' phone to under-age males who had been provided phones at university expense.

The professors said they omitted from the lawsuit "some of the more salacious entries . . . to preserve, as much as possible, the remaining positive image of the university".

Richard Roberts initially told students that the Lord had told him that the charges were baseless and the professors were motivated by greed.

"Here's what he told me to say to you: '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, which was filed yesterday . . . is not about wrongful termination. It is about intimidation, blackmail and extortion. Make no mistake about it, this suit is about money, as most suits are'," he said.

Yesterday morning, however, Roberts acknowledged on a Tulsa television news show that there may have been "some mistakes or oversights" and he welcomed the start of an independent investigation into the allegations. He said that his father had reminded him that he had faced attacks throughout his ministry , but he declared that he was "astounded" when he first heard what the professors were saying about him.

Oral Roberts University alumnae were less surprised, however, and Adam Willard, who graduated from the university in 2005, has been posting responses to the scandal from graduates on the internet.

"It was widely understood that when a student or faculty member openly voiced any disagreements with any aspect of Richard's management or teaching directly to any high-ranking administrator, the person who disagreed was expelled or fired. For that reason, disagreements were either quietly murmured in very private settings among people one could closely trust or they were completely silenced altogether," Willard writes. "Nonetheless, abuses of assets or actions of questionable moral nature seemed to be frequently flaunted by the Roberts."

One Oral Roberts alumnus who has so far remained silent on the scandal is former Colorado televangelist Ted Haggard, who resigned after it emerged that he made regular visits to a male prostitute.

The latest scandal comes as the religious right is feeling more beleaguered than at any time in the past 25 years, with almost half of Americans saying that the churches have too much influence on public policy. More worrying for Christian conservatives is the fact that the Republican Party seems willing to ignore them for the first time in a generation by choosing a presidential candidate they oppose.

Conservative Christian leaders have warned that they will support a third-party candidate if Republicans choose pro-choice, pro-gay Rudy Giuliani, and there is little enthusiasm on the religious right for most of Giuliani's rivals. What conservative Christians fear is that, if both parties can field candidates without their approval, the religious right, which has seen its hold on the faithful loosen slowly in recent years, will also see its political influence shrink.