It took Mrs. Bachmann seven years to graduate; she took a four-year hiatus that began before the birth of her first child. And the school itself was short-lived; it ran out of money and closed in 1986. The future congresswoman’s tenure spanned its entire existence, a time of great ferment among Christian conservatives who, buoyed by the political rise of Ronald Reagan, were flexing their political muscles.

Mrs. Bachmann, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was among them. As a student here, she put her legal skills to use working with Chris Klicka, another Oral Roberts graduate, who helped found the Home School Legal Defense Association. Together, Mrs. Bachmann told an evangelical Christian audience earlier this year, they researched state laws on home schooling, favored by many Christian parents (including, later, Mrs. Bachmann and her husband, Marcus) as an alternative to public education. That kind of activism was promoted.

“We were encouraged to make a difference,” said Rich Gradel, an Oral Roberts law graduate and solo practitioner in Tulsa. “A lot of us could have gone elsewhere. We came here because we felt — not everybody, but a whole lot of us — felt like God led us here.”

‘Mind, Body and Spirit’

With its 30-ton bronze sculpture of praying hands and 200-foot prayer tower offering a panoramic view of the 263-acre campus, Oral Roberts University was chartered in 1963 as an educational home for charismatic Christians. It placed a “particular emphasis,” its literature says, on “the Spirit-given ability to speak in tongues,” which Mr. Gradel and others said was common in chapel services here.

By the time Mrs. Bachmann arrived, the school was expanding. Chancellor Roberts, as he is still known here, envisioned an array of graduate schools — in medicine, nursing, dentistry, business, theology and law. He hoped for “cross-pollination,” so that budding lawyers, businessmen, theologians and health professionals could talk about how to carry God’s message “into every person’s world.”

The O. W. Coburn School of Law, financed largely by an Oklahoma businessman by that name (the father of Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma), opened in September 1979 with one dean, three professors (including Mr. Titus) and a law librarian. Byron R. White, the Supreme Court justice, spoke at the dedication ceremony.