Jonathan Root is a postdoctoral teaching fellow in history at the University of Missouri. His research explores the relationship between the prosperity gospel and American culture, specifically its consumer and therapeutic elements.
"Oral Roberts and the Rise of the Prosperity Gospel by Jonathan
Root is a beautifully researched addition to Eerdmans series of
religious biographies. Root offers an account that combines the
insight of biography with the breadth of scholarly research,
furthering the conversation about the origins of Prosperity Gospel
influences that have come to conquer Pentecostal and other
charismatic forms of Christianity. Root's work gives the reader a
deep understanding of Oral Roberts the person, and then follows the
growth of that fragile human into a figure whose success, according
to his own lights, must be the work of God. But what about his
failures? Jonathan Root helps us understand how Roberts, and
American Christianity, persist in Prosperity teaching and seeking
the Seed Faith that always promises a better tomorrow. A
much-needed work about a surprisingly overlooked figure in American
religion."
--Amy Artman, Missouri State University
"Fascinating. Timely. This lively book resurrects Oral Roberts as
the preacher of modern capitalism we can no longer ignore."
--Kate Bowler, Duke Divinity School
"No monochromatic portrait can ever capture Oral Roberts, America's
premiere televangelist. Roberts was, to his detractors, a cynical
pitchman; to his acolytes, an unabashedly sincere evangelist in
whose presence miracles were not unknown. In this important and
deeply contextualized biography, Jonathan Root meticulously
portrays the Oral who defined the crossroads of modern American
faith, combining deep sincerity and personal guile, yearning search
and steely eyed shrewdness, salvific promise and practical help.
Root meticulously portrays this religious pioneer as a fascinating,
frustrating man who mirrors back the calico qualities of ourselves
as seekers."
--Mitch Horowitz, PEN Award-winning author of Occult America and
Uncertain Places
"Few Americans could captivate an audience or sell them on the
gospel like Oral Roberts. Jonathan Root's smart, engaging, and
original biography demonstrates how Roberts, whose life was equal
parts hope and tragedy, engaged with the major issues of his era
and reshaped the Christian faith to reach a consumer culture during
the television age."
--Matthew Avery Sutton, author of Double Crossed: The Missionaries
Who Spied for the United States during the Second World War
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