James Dobson Had a Profound Impact on My Life, But Not for the Reasons Our Culture Might Think

Stories of “deconstruction” among millennials who grew up in the 1990s have become so common they’re rather passe.

Men and women my age are expected to talk about how purity culture, Promise Keepers, and Focus on the Family scarred them for life.

I, for one, am grateful for our past evangelical overlords, however.

The Christian conservative movements of the 1980s and 1990s weren’t perfect, but they kept traditional values alive in a way that benefited me, and this week one of the absolute giants in that movement passed away.

James Dobson

James Dobson, 89, went to join his heavenly father on Thursday. He left behind a loving family and a tremendous legacy for American Christians struggling to respond to family breakdown and a hostile culture.

Dobson fought the sexual revolution in the 1970s by emphasizing marriage and family. He founded Focus on the Family in 1977 in California, and moved it to Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1991. That city became known as “The Vatican of the Religious Right,” with Dobson as the implied pontiff.

The title seemed rather apt. Dobson spearheaded the movement to bring conservative Christianity to politics. He helped found the think tank Family Research Council in 1981, family policy councils that lobby state governments, and Alliance Defending Freedom, a premier conservative Christian law firm.

He fought against abortion and for the traditional definition of marriage.

Dobson eventually stepped down from Focus on the Family, handing the reins to Jim Daly in 2010. He continued writing and speaking on the radio until his death.

My Story

I grew up in Golden, Colorado, just north of the Protestant Vatican. I have fond memories listening to Focus on the Family’s radio program, “Adventures in Odyssey,” and my parents read Dobson’s books. I grew up attending Focus-aligned Promise Keepers conferences, which encouraged men to be faithful husbands and fathers.

My parents encouraged me to remain celibate until marriage, and I believe that has made my marriage and family stronger. Lessons from Focus on the Family helped me follow the “success sequence,” completing high school, entering the workforce, and delaying having kids until getting married. Research bears out my experience that this path isn’t just a way to avoid poverty but a road to fulfillment.

I grew up in a Christian family open to books like “Harry Potter,” but my parents shielded me from inappropriate content and inoculated me from harmful ideologies as I grew older.

American culture has a great deal to offer, but much of it has become hostile to conservative values. Parents cannot trust schools to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic without inserting climate, race, and transgender orthodoxy. These ideologies also enjoy a stranglehold in the legacy media, academia, Hollywood, and big business, despite President Donald Trump’s recent success in weakening that grip.

Dobson, long before Trump, understood that conservatives have to take the cultural fight to the Left, and cannot sit back as the sexual revolution redefines love, marriage, and what it means to be human.

Critics faulted Dobson’s movement for showing insufficient compassion to people struggling with same-sex attraction and gender confusion. While I doubt both the sincerity and the veracity of this complaint, I agree that Christians should emphasize God’s compassion—he offers eternal life through faith in Jesus to all sinners, both people like me and people who experience temptations different from mine.

However, the LGBTQ+ movement presents a false gospel, one that places “Pride” above following God’s commandments. The gospel is open to all sinners who repent, but it doesn’t celebrate same-sex marriage. It offers hope to those struggling with gender confusion, but does not endorse the idea that God made a mistake when he created us male and female.

The same hostility my generation feels toward purity culture also drives a hatred of the institutions Dobson strived to create.

Defending Dobson’s Legacy

The Southern Poverty Law Center smears many groups Dobson helped found—the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, and many family policy councils—as “hate groups” worthy of inclusion on a “hate map” alongside Ku Klux Klan chapters. A terrorist used this map to target the Family Research Council in 2012.

The SPLC once defended itself from claims that it is “anti-Christian” by noting that it did not put Focus on the Family on that “hate map.” This year, however, it did put Focus on the map, undermining its own defense and revealing that it is indeed an anti-Christian organization.

Many of the SPLC’s targets have helped me personally, and I believe they are fighting an important fight in America today. That’s why I wrote my first book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

In my own small way, I aim to repay some of my debt and to further Dobson’s legacy by exposing such attacks and creating space for conservative Christians to share our values in the public square.

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