By ‘Focusing On The Family,’ James Dobson Helped Propel Evangelicals Into Politics
(ANALYSIS) For decades, one name was ubiquitous in American evangelical homes: Focus on the Family. A media empire with millions of listeners and readers, its messages about parenting, marriage and politics seemed to reach every conservative Christian church and school.
And one man’s name was nearly synonymous with Focus on the Family: James Dobson.
Dobson, a primary figure of the Religious Right who died on Aug. 21, was born in 1936, when conservative Protestant Christianity was a far cry from what it is today.
As a sociologist of religion who has studied American evangelicalism for 30 years, I believe Dobson’s influence and moral authority were instrumental in transforming the Religious Right into the powerful cultural and political force it has been for half a century.
A household name
Dobson earned a doctorate in psychology from the University of Southern California, where he taught for several years. In 1970, he published “Dare to Discipline,” a book encouraging parents to use corporal punishment to instill unquestioned respect for authority in their children.
“Dare to Discipline” arrived at a time when many evangelicals were alarmed about how their children were being influenced by “secular” American culture. The book was updated in 1992 and reissued several times, and Dobson’s introduction to a 2018 version claimed that the book has sold over 3.5 million copies. “Dare to Discipline” became an important source for Christian families seeking advice rooted in a “biblical” understanding of family, parental authority and child development — and it made Dobson a household name.
Capitalizing on that success, Dobson founded Focus on the Family in 1977. The organization’s signature radio program took his message about family and faith virtually anywhere people could go, and grew increasingly political. By 1995, Focus on the Family had a budget of more than US$100 million, and by 2008, the radio program had aired on over 3,000 stations in 160 countries.
The primary theme throughout Dobson’s radio program and publications was that “family values” were under attack by a godless society embracing abortion, gay rights and gender equality. His views hearkened back to “Dare to Discipline”: Authoritarian patriarchal families with distinct gender roles for men and women would preserve the family and the future of the country.
From the family to the Supreme Court
Dobson left Focus on the Family in 2010 and founded the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, originally named Family Talk. He and like-minded hosts dispensed folksy advice, along with guests well known to their audience. But they also addressed explicitly political issues, such as opposing policies that support abortion, same-sex marriage and some protections for LGBTQ+ people that they believe conflict with their religious liberty.
In addition, Dobson helped found other powerful evangelical organizations working toward the Religious Right’s ideological and political goals, such as the Family Research Council and the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has supported several high-profile Supreme Court cases.
In 2022 and 2023, the Supreme Court made three rulings that advance long-held goals of the Christian Right. A slim majority overturned Roe v. Wade, the decision which established the constitutional right to an abortion in 1973. The ruling in a Colorado case, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, determined that business owners could not be compelled to create messages that conflict with their “sincerely held beliefs” – meaning, in this case, that a wedding website designer could refuse same-sex clients because of her religious beliefs. And the court continued to soften limits on using state funding for students at religious schools.
Attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom worked on the abortion case and 303 Creative. The group submitted an amicus brief in favor of using state money for religious instruction in the third case, Carson v. Makin.
Retreat and reemergence
The roots of contemporary “evangelicalism” trace back to the Protestant fundamentalist movement that emerged in the early 20th century. Ever since, the movement has opposed ideas that it believes could undermine the core of America as a Christian nation.
In the wake of the Russian Revolution, for example, fundamentalists identified “Bolshevism” as a threat to Christian America. Today, a century later, some Christian conservatives criticize many types of history education and diversity programs as “neo-Marxist” or “cultural Marxism.”
Conservative Protestant groups have not always been such major political players, however. Around the turn of the 20th century, evangelical institutions like the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, now called Biola University, focused on individual faith and Bible training. Personal faith was promoted as the engine for social change and resistance to “un-Christian” ideas and practices, not political advocacy.
The famous Scopes Trial, the 1925 case that pitched Biblical teachings about creation against the theory of evolution, prompted some fundamentalist groups to retreat from public affairs and politics. Following Scopes, evangelicals established broad networks of their own independent churches, K-12 schools, universities and media organizations — including publishers and electronic media — thus creating a subculture within which to worship and raise their children.
Yet these organizations also laid the groundwork for what would finally emerge in the late 1970s as the Religious Right – with leaders like Dobson, televangelist Jerry Falwell and pastor and novelist Tim LaHaye.
‘One nation, under God’
Dobson’s influence will continue through his writings and the organizations he founded and influenced. In particular, his legacy can be seen in conservative evangelicals’ emphasis on the “traditional” or “biblical” family, defined as a married mother, father and children. He long promoted a gender hierarchy in marriage, with the husband being in “authority” over wife and children, and viewed LGBTQ+ rights as a threat to the family and to the nation.
This conception of the family has found its way into most evangelical institutions. More broadly, within the conservative movement, the patriarchal family is understood as the authentic expression of God’s law and is often viewed as the ultimate model for social institutions, including a Christian nation.
Numerous fundamentalists and evangelicals have argued that evangelical Christianity should be the true basis for a “Christian America.” What distinguishes Dobson’s approach was how he adapted Christian nationalism, framing it as a crucial issue for parents and families: translating ideas about Godly societies into guidance on “proper” child rearing and child development.
His focus on the family as the foundation of Christian civilization mobilized millions of American evangelicals politically — on a scale that previous leaders never approached.
This article has been republished with permission from The Conversation.
Richard Flory is executive director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. He is a sociologist whose research focuses on religious and cultural change, religion and urban life, and the religious and spiritual lives of youth and young adults. He has published several books, including most recently, Religion in Los Angeles: Religious Activism, Innovation, and Diversity in the Global City (Routledge, 2021) and Back Pocket God: Religion and Spirituality in the Lives of Emerging Adults (Oxford University Press, 2020). Flory has also written for publications such as Religion Dispatches, The Conversation, Patheos and Zócalo Public Square, and has been quoted by a variety of publications, including the L.A. Times, the New York Times, Buzzfeed News and NPR.