James Robison

James Robison was born on October 9, 1943, in the charity ward of a Houston hospital — an extraordinary beginning to an extraordinary life. His mother, a 41-year-old nurse named Myra Wattinger, placed an advertisement in the Houston Chronicle seeking a Christian couple to raise him. Reverend H.D. Hale and his wife answered that ad and lovingly cared for James through his first five years. When his biological mother reclaimed him at age five, James spent the next decade living in poverty with her in Austin, a shy and uncertain boy with no clear path forward. Everything changed in the summer of 1957. At fourteen, James visited the Hales and experienced a profound, life-changing encounter with Christ. Within a few years he had returned to live with the Hales in Pasadena, Texas, and felt unmistakably called to ministry. There, too, he met Betty Freeman, the woman he would marry on February 23, 1963, just days after his nineteenth birthday. By 1962, James was preaching at small church revivals. By 1965, he had founded the James Robison Evangelistic Association, and with the encouragement of Billy Graham, moved into full-time television ministry in 1968. What had begun in modest church halls grew into one of the most sweeping crusade ministries in American evangelical history — more than 600 citywide crusades attended by upwards of 20 million people. Early in his career he earned the nickname "the Southern Baptist's angry young man" for his fiery, uncompromising preaching style. In August 1980, Robison delivered his landmark "Freedom Rally" address at Dallas's Reunion Arena, declaring: "It's time for God's people to come out of the closet, out of the churches, and change America!" The rally helped galvanize what would become the Moral Majority. Yet in the mid-1980s, James quietly withdrew from political life, seeking personal repentance and a deeper call to humility and unity. From that renewal emerged a new chapter. In 1992 he refounded his organization as LIFE Outreach International, and in 1995 he and Betty launched LIFE Today, a daily television program that eventually reached an estimated one billion homes worldwide. Through LIFE Outreach, James led the drilling of more than 9,000 wells bringing clean water to over nine million people, fed 350,000 children daily in crisis areas, and fought to rescue victims of human trafficking. James Robison is survived by his beloved wife Betty, two children, eleven grandchildren, and a global legacy of faith and service. He passed away on May 17, 2026, at age 82, leaving behind a world changed by his voice and his hands.