So is the Christian Right as he knew it
It wasn’t long ago that the death of an important figure in the Christian Right would have been big national news. These were people held in high esteem by the political establishment, credited with electing Republican politicians to high office and protecting the nation’s moral character. But last week one of the most influential religious right figures in our history, Dr. James Dobson, passed away and it was a passing story even in right wing media. Now that they have a full-fledged demagogue and cult leader running the country, it appears the American right is no longer interested in the conservative Christian leaders of yesteryear. But you would think they would at least give them a proper memorial. After all, Donald Trump and his MAGA movement would never have come to power without them.
There have always been charismatic preachers with devoted followers in American life. It’s one of our defining characteristics. But there was a time when they, and the activists who sold their ideas, were more important than the politicians. Billy Graham and his crusades, Pat Robertson of the 700 Club and the Christian Broadcasting Network, Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority among others were prominent figures in the conservative moment and helped shape American politics for more than 50 years. But James Dobson was one of the most instrumental of those leaders in cultivating the culture war we are still dealing with today.
Dobson grew up in the fundamentalist Church of the Nazarene, one of those extremely conservative evangelical faiths that don’t allow dancing or dating, and remained a devoted adherent his entire life. But he was an ambitious type who saw the possibilities of combining his Christian faith with something a little bit more modern in the field of psychology. That led him to get a Phd from the University of California where he went on to teach as a professor for over a decade. But he came to national prominence with the publication of his book, Dare to Discipline, in 1970.
The timing was propitious. The baby boomers were charging through American society at warp speed challenging all the prevailing morals and mores, terrifying large numbers of American who felt that the fabric of the nation was unraveling. His book was little more than a permission slip for corporal punishment, something that a good many people believed was sorely lacking in the homes and the schools of all those young people with their long hair and their loud music. It was a big hit (no pun intended) and the sequel called The Strong-Willed Child was even bigger.
Dobson believed that children are little performers who manipulate adults and need to be tamed. It wasn’t enough to simply spank them, they had to be spanked until they lost their will to protest. In The Strong-Willed Child there is a very famous and horrific description of his beating of the family daschund named Siggy (for Sigmund Freud) when he refused to go into his crate:
“I had seen this defiant mood before and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The only way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me ‘reason’ with Mr. Freud….. “I hit him again and he tried to bite me . . . That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt.”
This was how the great conservative Christian psychologist recommended people behave toward the innocent people and creatures who depended upon them. It was truly sick stuff.
Dobson entered the political scene around the same time as Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority in the late 70s. His schtick was a little different — he was a far right evangelical but he wasn’t a preacher. His fame as an author was such that he was soon ready to get into media full time and he started Focus on the Family a “parachurch” organization that openly combined his family psychology practice with evangelical religion and politics. His show was heard daily on stations all over the country and it tilled the ground for what later became right wing hate radio. Many years before Rush Limbaugh became a household name James Dobson was spewing patriarchal vitriol.
He pushed creationism, religious home schooling, anti-pornography and gambling the whole wish list of the Christian Right. But he spent most of his energy excoriating LGBTQ people and feminists, particularly those who advocate for abortion rights. Over the years his show became more and more explicitly partisan as the Republicans embraced the Christian Right as their most important organizing faction. Millions of people heard the call.
During the 1980s he created the Family Research Council with a couple other conservative psychologists to be a sort of evangelical think tank, writing and recommending policy to Republican office holders. By the 2000s he was a kingmaker in the Republican Party feted by every GOP politician who coveted his endorsement.
An entire generation of conservatives grew up in households that were under the influence of this man and his work. They heard him day in and day out on the radio and were indoctrinated into the hard right culture war mentality that still pervades the Republican Party today.
However, the Christian Right has today been usurped by the MAGA movement, a quasi religious cult of personality devoted to Donald Trump and Dobson became an enthusiastic supporter. Sure, many of the MAGA voters still consider themselves to be Christians and some no doubt still attend church. But they have shown remarkable flexibility when it comes to the morality of their new leader and while their culture war still goes on, it’s not explicitly religious anymore. Today it’s all about fighting the “woke” left, which refers to the same enemies (LGBTQ people and feminists mostly, along with Black and brown people who want to acknowledge their presence in American society) as before. But there’s nary a peep about the Bible in GOP politics these days except for a few lone holdouts like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who sounds like a voice from the past when he brings it up. But then, how can there be with a mendacious, felonious, libertine as their standard bearer?
James Dobson spent many years at the pinnacle of social power and political influence in America. He lived to see Roe vs Wade overturned which must have made him happy. And the right still hates the same people he hated so there was probably some satisfaction in that. But the Religious Right as it was when he died last week was no longer the political powerhouse it was during his era. Donald Trump is the GOP’s messiah now and Christian leaders like James Dobson paved the way for his ascension. You have to wonder if, at the end of his life, he realized whose work he had really been doing all those years.
Salon