James Dobson, a child psychologist who founded the conservative ministry Focus on the Family and was a politically influential campaigner against abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, died on Thursday. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
Born in 1936 in Shreveport, Louisiana, Dobson started a radio show counseling Christians on how to be good parents and in 1977 founded Focus on the Family. At its peak, the organization had more than 1,000 employees and gave Dobson a platform to weigh in on legislation and serve as an adviser to five presidents.
He became a force in the 1980s for pushing conservative Christian ideals in American politics alongside fundamentalist giants like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. He campaigned for bringing religious conservatives into the political mainstream, and in 1989, Falwell called Dobson a rising star. Decades later, he served on a board of evangelical leaders that advised President Donald Trump in 2016. He supported Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns.
He celebrated the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade — including Trump’s conservative appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court credited with the landmark decision that allowed states to ban abortion.
“Whether you like Donald Trump or not, whether you supported or voted for him or not, if you are supportive of this Dobbs decision that struck down Roe v. Wade, you have to mention in the same breath the man who made it possible,” he said in a ministry broadcast.
Dobson left Focus on the Family in 2010 and founded the institute that bears his name. He continued with the Family Talk radio show, which is nationally syndicated and is carried by 1,500 radio outlets with more than half a million listeners weekly, according to the institute.
“Dr. Dobson’s impact endures through the many lives he touched, the families he strengthened, and the unshakable faith he proclaimed,” his family said in a statement announcing his death.
Gary Bauer, a senior vice president at Dobson’s institute, called him a “pioneer” who helped families in a world of shifting values. Dobson interviewed President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office in 1985, thanking him for concentrating on issues important to families.
Dobson’s radio program promoted guests who said they abandoned their homosexuality and instead embraced Christianity.
Dobson was not just an influential voice that helped lead the rise of the Christian, conservative movement to today, where such a large portion of Republican voters consider themselves evangelical conservatives. He was also mentor to today’s leading Christian conservative voices.
Dobson, as a board member on Family Research Council, approached Tony Perkins, then a Louisiana state legislator, to become president of the organization. That was after Perkins grew up in his family church, watching Dobson’s films and following his lead with his own work in the Louisiana Legislature.
In Perkins’ first week as president, he and Dobson stood on the steps of the Alabama Supreme Court to support the installation of a monument to the Ten Commandments in the building. The action led to a court case and the monument’s removal.
Dobson belongs on the “Mount Rushmore” of the Christian conservatives, Perkins said, notably for leading an evangelical church-driven counter-movement to a family and parenting ethos of the 1960s embodied in the progressive teachings of Dr. Benjamin Spock.
“Very few people have had such a positive impact in the shaping of the American family, from what we would describe as a biblical standpoint,” said Perkins, who remains the group’s president. “While his passing is sad and it leaves a vacancy, he has a legacy that will live on.”
After developing a following of millions, Dobson considered running for president in the 2000 election, following in the footsteps of former television minister Pat Robertson’s surprise success in 1988.
“He had a big audience. He was not afraid to speak out. He became a very important voice and there was even talk that he might run for president,” said Ralph Reed, a Christian conservative political organizer and lobbyist who founded the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “If Jim had decided to run, he would have been a major force.”
Reed’s organization presented Dobson with a lifetime achievement award in 2017.
Despite their close association later in life, Reed’s enduring memory was as a younger political organizer traveling through rural America with Dobson’s voice as his sole companion.
“I’d be out there somewhere, and I could go to the AM dial and there was never a time, day or night when I couldn’t find that guy,” Reed said. “There will probably never be another one like him.”
An anti-pornography crusader, Dobson recorded a video interview with serial killer Ted Bundy the day before his January 24, 1989, execution in Florida. Bundy told Dobson that exposure to pornography helped fuel his sexual urges to a point that he looked for satisfaction by mutilating, killing and raping women.
At the time, Dobson’s Focus on the Family program was broadcast daily on 1,200 radio stations.
Months after the execution, Bundy’s attorney James Coleman downplayed the Dobson exchange in an interview with The Associated Press.
“I think that was a little bit of Ted telling the minister what he wanted to hear and Ted offering an explanation that would exonerate him personally,” Coleman told The Associated Press in 1989. “I had heard that before and I told Ted I never accepted it.”
Dobson is survived by his wife of 64 years, Shirley, as well as their children, Danae and Ryan, daughter-in-law Laura, and two grandchildren, his family’s statement said.
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Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey, and Meyer from Nashville, Tennessee. Associated Press writer Tom Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed.
