James Robison (televangelist)

James Robison (born October 9, 1943) is an American televangelist and the founder and President of the Christian relief organization Life Outreach International.

Robison was born and raised in Pasadena, Texas; a suburb of Houston. Robison's mother, Myra Wattinger, was 40 years old at the time she gave birth to him. Robison has revealed that he was the product of rape and that his mother placed an ad in the Houston newspaper for a Christian couple to take care of him.

E.D. Hale, a local area pastor, and his wife answered the ad and took Robison in, after which he became a born again Christian at one of Hale's church services at the age of 14. He has talked often about his childhood, about the strained relationship with his biological father, who was an alcoholic, and whom he would wind up confronting in a violent manner at the age of 15. Robison eventually met his wife, Betty Freeman, while a student at Pasadena High School, and they wed on February 23, 1963, when both were 20. Two years later, in 1965, the couple graduated with honors from Middle Tennessee State University. The couple, who now host the daily television program LIFE Today, started their ministry together in late 1965 and then went into full-time television ministry, through the Rev. Dr. Billy Graham, in 1968. James and Betty have three children and 11 grandchildren, and reside in Fort Worth, where their program LIFE Today and their ministry LIFE Outreach are based. They lost their daughter Robin to throat cancer in 2013.

In 1979, Robison lost his regular slot on WFAA-TV in Dallas for preaching a sermon calling homosexuality a sin. He'd already made a name for himself when he called "for God's people to come out of the closet" and take back the nation. In response, Robison organized a "Freedom Rally" at the Dallas Convention Center that attracted 10,000 people. According to Mike Huckabee, who was Robison's communications director at the time, that rally was the genesis of Moral Majority.