Oral Roberts Prayer Tower
Tulsa, Oklahoma
The Oral Roberts Prayer Tower in Tulsa is a powerful magnet for those seeking spiritual shock therapy -- or fundamentalist fun. This "20th Century Cross", with a stylized crown of thorns and an outer skeleton of plastic PVC pipes (you can still see the printed specs scrawled on them), offers visitors a heavenly view of Oral Roberts University. A recording of Oral's son Richard in the observation deck reveals its construction philosophy: "No second-class buildings for God."
One highlight of the deck is the door to Oral's special prayer room. Visitors are asked to submit prayer requests (the envelopes are paper-money-size) and told how Oral would scatter them, hundreds at a time, across the carpeting and furniture. When he waved his arms over the envelopes, the Prayer Tower's elevation combined with Oral's direct line to God to help get those prayers answered.
The spindly red decorations encircling the Tower are a Googie-style tribute to Jesus's bloody crown of thorns. Way up at the tip of the tower burns an eternal flame, difficult to see from the ground, but perhaps easy to spot from heaven.