James Dobson, the Christian family psychologist and media mogul who became one of the key architects of the Religious Right, has passed away.
At his height, Dobson’s influence was vast. His Colorado-based organization Focus on the Family helped build American evangelicals into a political monolith. He enjoyed access to the highest levels of Republican administrations—so much so that the New York Times dubbed him “the nation’s most influential evangelical leader” in 2005. He served on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board in 2016 and supported his re-election bid in 2020.
As a family psychologist, Dobson trumpeted “family values” as the fundamental building block of a healthy society. For him, such values were inseparable from anti-abortion policies, traditional gender norms, and—famously—corporeal punishment for children. He was a staunch opponent of LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive freedom, and he would later resort to immigration fearmongering.
Dobson’s books, speaking engagements, and radio ministry won him a global audience. It also brought him a fair amount of criticism, including some pointed debates with us here at Sojourners. Here are a few times we disagreed with Dobson.
On Dobson’s advocacy for corporeal punishment
One of the regular features of Dobsonesque parenting is the idea of parents and children as opposing forces. It frames parenting as a series of battles that a parent must win to maintain authority from would-be usurpers. This way of seeing the world and our children did not come out of nowhere.
On Dobson’s anti-immigrant rhetoric
As a student of the history of biblical interpretation, the rhetoric employed by Dobson and other evangelical leaders is frighteningly similar to that of German pastors and theologians in the Third Reich. It appears that Christians have either forgotten or are ignoring the dark history of Christianity’s marriage to partisan politics and nationalist agendas.
Comparing current figures and events with Nazi Germany is fraught with difficulties, but the similarities in the language and dehumanization of a people group from a leader within Christianity are too obvious to ignore. I am not saying anyone is a Nazi; however, Dobson’s rhetoric of xenophobia and nationalism in combination with Christianity is not unlike Christian pastors who supported the Nazi Party.
On Dobson’s opposition to President Barack Obama
Obama said that religion is and always has been a fundamental and absolutely essential source of morality for the nation, but he also said that “religion has no monopoly on morality,” which is a point I often make. The United States is not the Christian theocracy that people like James Dobson seem to think it should be.
READ MORE: James Dobson Tried to Destroy Us
Political appeals, even if rooted in religious convictions, must be argued on moral grounds rather than as sectarian religious demands—so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond. Religious convictions must be translated into moral arguments, which must win the political debate if they are to be implemented. Religious people don’t get to win just because they are religious. They, like any other citizens, have to convince their fellow citizens that what they propose is best for the common good —for all of us, not just for the religious.
On tying Christian faith to Republican politics
Dr. Dobson, you of course have the same right as every Christian and every American to vote your own convictions on the issues you most care about, but you have chosen to insult the convictions of millions of other Christians, whose own deeply held faith convictions might motivate them to vote differently than you. This epistle of fear is perhaps the dying gasp of a discredited heterodoxy of conservative religion and conservative politics. But out of that death, a resurrection of biblical politics more faithful to the whole gospel-one that is truly good news-might indeed be coming to life.
On who speaks for family values
Dobson’s rhetoric leaves little room for dialogue with other people of faith (even other evangelicals) on a more wholistic understanding of family values. The challenge for other Christians is not to abandon the language of values, families, and cultural meaning to those who have defined such words in a narrow way. On the contrary, family values must be reclaimed as worthy of our attention, work, and prayer, in the context of our striving for a more just social order.
Dobson’s books, speaking engagements, and radio ministry won him a global audience. It also brought him a fair amount of criticism, including some pointed debates with us here at Sojourners.
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