Welcome to the Holy Spirit Research Center
Mission
The Holy Spirit Research Center is dedicated to preserving materials related to Holy Spirit, healing ministry, and the history of the Spirit-empowered movement in order to inspire new generations to study and embrace the work of the Holy Spirit today.
****Special Note on Access****
The Holy Spirit Research Center will be closed from May to August 2023 as it moves into its new home in the new Library building set to open August 2023. Therefore, we cannot welcome any guests researchers during that time. Thank you for your understanding.
See this news post about the new library: https://oru.libguides.com/libraryNewsBlog/blog/JD-McKean-Library (opens new window)
About the HSRC
This special collection of resources on the Holy Spirit began in 1962, when Founder and President Oral Roberts and two other ORU administrators became aware that Pentecostals, their denominations, churches, and fledgling colleges were doing little to preserve their own materials. These leaders saw this need as an opportunity for ORU to serve the growing Pentecostal and charismatic constituency and the Christian church worldwide.
The Collection
The HSRC houses one of the largest and most comprehensive Pentecostal-Charismatic and Holy Spirit collections in the world. This collection contains a wide cross-section of materials from within Pentecostalism worldwide, its denominations and institutions, its teachings and practices, and its leading figures, including the classical, neo-Pentecostal (charismatic), "Third Wave," and later streams and their critics. With its vast resources on the Holy Spirit and related topics by some of the most important voices in the movement, the ORU Holy Spirit Research Center is the best place in the world to study the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit Research Center collection contains
- 15,000 books on the Holy Spirit and related topics such as healing, sanctification, spiritual gifts, and prayer.
- 1300 periodicals from various US and international ministries, denominations and ministers, some of which date back to the beginning of the movement.
- 9,000 audio/video preaching and teaching materials from some of the biggest names in the movement.
- 33,000 files on various ministries and subjects containing tracts, pamphlets, brochures, unpublished papers, newsletters, news articles, and more.
- hundreds of archival materials including donated special collections of sound recordings, films, artifacts, photographs, and microfilms.
- An online repository of thousands of freely accessed archival materials in the ORU Digital Showcase including audio, video, periodicals and books.
More Information
This collection contains a wide cross-section of materials from within Pentecostalism worldwide, its denominations and institutions, its teachings and practices, and its leading figures, including the classical, neo-Pentecostal (charismatic), "Third Wave," and later streams and their critics. This research-level collection includes resources advocating both the continuationist and cessationist views regarding manifestations and gifts of the Holy Spirit, including glossolalia; and primary and secondary sources pertaining to the movement’s historical events and current issues. Researchers from all over the United States and from other countries have come to ORU to use this special collection for many reasons, including writing books and dissertations. Among significant recent works that benefited greatly from this collection are these:
The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities by Kate Bowler (Princeton University Press, 2019)
Salvation with a Smile: Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church, and American Christianity, by Phillip Luke Sinitiere (New York University Press, 2015).
Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, by Kate Bowler (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Spirit Cure: A History of Pentecostal Healing, by Joseph W. Williams (Oxford University Press, 2013).
In cooperation with similar special collections elsewhere, our long-term goal is to develop and maintain a world-class research collection on Pentecostal-charismatic (and related) movements worldwide and on the person, work, and theology of the Holy Spirit.
To help us meet this goal and thereby to serve the church worldwide, we welcome gifts of archival and library materials, as well as gifts of funds. If you wish to learn more about the gifts most helpful to us now, please call or email the HSRC at 918-495-6899 or hsrc@oru.edu.
The primary source materials here require that all of the materials be used in the Holy Spirit Research Center. The Center holds a special, non-circulating collection.
Visit the HSRC
