James Robison (televangelist)

In 2015, Robison launched The Stream, based in Fort Worth, Texas, a "national daily where those concerned about our nation's perilous course can gather for news, wisdom and inspiration."

Recently, however, Robison has become active in social conservative circles once again. In 2010, he convened a meeting in Dallas with several prominent conservative religious leaders, including Richard Land and Tony Perkins, in order to make plans to replace Barack Obama with a more socially conservative president in 2012.

Robison eventually rose to become one of the more prominent and popular conservative religious leaders in politics during the early 1980s. Some suggested he could, in time, inherit the vaunted mantle held by Reverend Graham. However, in the mid-1980s, Robison abruptly withdrew from his political activities. He instead began focusing on his own church community, on church unity, and on seeking forgiveness.

In 1979, Robison lost his regular slot on WFAA-TV in Dallas for preaching a sermon calling homosexuality a sin. He had 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 the organization Moral Majority.

In 1974, the James Robison Evangelistic Association purchased a hunting and fishing lodge near Hawkins, Texas, which the association developed into Brookhaven Retreat, a not-for-profit Christian camp and retreat center, still in operation today under different management.

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 late 2012.

H.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 19.

Since 1962, while he was still in college, Robison has spoken to millions of people—first through crusade evangelism, and now today through television. He has authored more than a dozen books, including True Prosperity, Thank God I'm Free and My Father's Face. His book The Absolutes: Freedom's Only Hope (Tyndale House), Living In Love (Waterbrook Multnomah), Indivisible (Hachette), and "God of All Creation" (Waterbrook Multnomah).

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