In this exceptionally excellent piece, "
James Dobson: Dr. Doubt-free" one of the formally trained theologians working with Solon Street presents some of the background, philosophies and tactics
Dr. James Dobson and his "Focus on the Family" launched their "Focus on the Family Action" and focusing on
several states (New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania).
From Forward:
"Coming to Michigan at this juncture, Dobson's being a dutiful foot soldier for the mega-wealthy DeVos family making a non-attributed TV ad crafted to gin up Dobson's socially conservative ChristianTM base to boaster the sagging self-funded campaign of a lackluster DeVos."
From Essay:
"Chastening and hectoring the whole country with what have become increased demands and "family friendly fatwas," Dobson is now a dangerous threat to our two party system and to religious liberty in the country."
Recommended:
James and the Giant Jihad (5280 Magazine)
Is DeVos the Dobson of Michigan? (Frederick Clarkson Talk2Action)
Crossposted at MichiganLiberal.
Dobson in Michigan and a the Essay "Dr. Doubt-free" below...
Note: In the course of creating "The Doctrine of Dick DeVos" series, a number of excellent essays were written, but not all used. We will continue to post some of them as time permits (even after Nov. 7).
Forward
Dr. Dobson invaded the politics of Michigan this week with his special brand of fiery cultural war and fear-bound bigotry--euphemistically called "traditional values."
Dobson's effort in the 2006 cycle in Michigan is primarily focused on electing Dick DeVos. Dick and Betsy DeVos and their extended families have given multi-millions to associated Dobson endeavors. It `s now payoff time for the DeVos and their religious right infrastructure (See "The Doctrine of Dick DeVos: Tithes that buy the Christian Right" and "Mission ala D. James Kennedy").
Coming to Michigan at this juncture, Dobson's being a dutiful foot soldier for the mega-wealthy DeVos family making a non-attributed TV ad crafted to gin up Dobson's socially conservative ChristiansTM base to boaster the sagging self-funded campaign of a lackluster DeVos.
Dobson's TV spot--simply featuring himself--is designed to appear non-partisan. In it Dobson is seen attacking an unnamed Michigan contributor--using the same "enemy of God's people" attack Dobson mounted against US senators who opposed Dobson's hamfisted intrusion into the Supreme Court selection process two years earlier.
James Dobson has cultured a huge network of listeners and admirers which in recent years, he has skillfully crafted his personally driven agenda into a "values voter" crusade with high impact on the election of public officials. One example, Dobson personally went to South Dakota and vigorously campaigned against Tom Daschle in a vicious attack which resulted in the then U.S. Senate minority leader's upset defeat. Dobson held in-state rallies to reach over 70,000 South Dakota residents with his partisan/targeted message.
As the Michigan gubernatorial election draws near over 600,000 voter guides have been placed in churches (e.g. First Assembly of God in Grand Rapids) flirting with the strict rules of the government (IRS) and the law against churches directly endorsing candidates as an organization or from the pulpit.
Dick DeVos has bragged about Pastor Winans' endorsement from the pulpit this week . Hundreds of pastors and congregants have been trained and schooled by far right organizations prior to this week placing them in the GOP mechanism as extensions of the GOP efforts to elect Republicans to office--skirting and violating the rule of law.
The following essay is designed to give readers some insight and depth of understanding of who Dobson is and why his abuse of his well earned reputation as a trusted friend of families is both dangerous and just plain wrong.
NOTE: More links will be added as time permits
ESSAY: James Dobson: Dr. Doubt-free
"Men are not flattered by being shown that there is a difference in purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however...is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told..."
-- Abraham Lincoln
Dr. Doubt-free--James Dobson--raised in the Church of the Nazarene-- holds the belief that he can achieve a "sinless perfection" in his personal life and behavior--found his way by invitation into the intimate lives of trusting parents nationwide through giving strict fatherly advice [1] .
The "strict father" is now also the arch-paradigm for the current hard right stance of the Republican Party and strident social conservatism: harsh rules, strong punishments, belief in absolutes.
Dobson's seemingly harmless, but helpful advice has grown in popularity over time to a level where he is enabled to use his accumulated trust to create a homogeny over Evangelicals and others who are seeking meaning and comfort dispensed from a trusted religious authority figure. Giving advice on how to raise children or how to deal with an "unbeliever" spouse is one area where Dobson may be helpful and reassuring.
Chastening and hectoring the whole country with what have become increased demands and "family friendly fatwas," Dobson is now a dangerous threat to our two party system and to religious liberty in the country. In 1998 Dobson made blunt demands of the Republican Party and even threatened to create his own third party if the GOP chose not toe-the-line submitting to his ideology and religious dogmas.
Strict-father-knows-best thinking leads to a co-dependency amongst the some 7 million people who daily hear Dobson on Christian radio. Dobson tells them what to think and what the "truth" in current events is. Listeners are carefully instructed by Dobson to act upon his myopic interpretations with specific directive actions. He has used the build-up trust of his listeners to establish "an accepted wisdom" on various "values" which Dobson then easily transmigrates into the broader areas of partisan politics. Dobson thus has an effective mechanism to apply a religious test to those in or running for political office.
Unsurpassed in ability to motivate his followers, Dobson has shown that a call to action from his lips transmitted to his devoted millions--many of them submissive, adoring women--can shut down the switchboards in Washington. (See U S News & World Report article, An Evangelical Leader Steps Squarely into the Political Ring, 1.17.05)
Dobsonian campaigns can become silk nooses that politically lynch politicians--mostly Democrats--who dare to cross the doubt-free Dobson. He threatened to "put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators `in the 'bull's-eye'' if they were to decide to block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court." (See New York Times article, Evangelical Leader Threatens to Use His Political Muscle Against Some Democrats, 1.1.05)
Dobson proudly claimed the credit for the defeat of Tom Daschle goes to social conservatives like himself who actively worked to oust the former Democrat Senate leader. "One of Focus on the Family's publications, Citizen, noted that Dobson held two ...rallies (in Daschle's state) within the last three months of the campaign, speaking to `approximately 70,000 people - about 10 percent of the state's population [2].'" The New York Times reports Dobson warned, "Let (Daschle's) colleagues beware especially those representing 'red' states. Many of them will be in the 'bull's-eye' the next time they seek re-election."
Dobson's absolute certainty and "sinless perfection" may seem non-threatening--as holy and harmless as doves if they were the treasured practice of his private faith, if they were personal beliefs related to private religious observance and customs. However, when Dobson seeks to inflict his private inflexibility on others by forcing changes in the law that is a different matter.
Dobson's absolute certainty and "sinless perfection" can seem non-threatening--as holy and harmless as doves. Certainly as his personal beliefs relate to private religious practice, such doctrine inflexibility would be acceptable, if it were not for his penchant to maintain his unholy and nasty connection to the powerfully connected and super wealthy.
Dobson has built with alliances with assorted NeoCons, other far right types and ultra-conservative Washington powerbrokers. Like Uriah Heep Dobson maintains a super-humble, self-depreciating stance designed to avoid too much media and public attention.
Dobson's dark side function is as a surrogate enforcer of many strident partisan agendas which help hold together the base needed to enable the current GOP cabal to carry out other objectives [3] (See The religious right's new kingmaker, By Michael Crowley, Slate, Nov. 12, 2004) [4] :
+ Dobson's powerful influence effectively provides significant cover for: Political and corporate corruption (Dobson's involvement with Abramhoff and Ralph Reed in the Indian Casino scandals),
+ Promotion and support of unjustified war,
+ Fostering egregious loss of Americans' constitutional freedoms,
+ Aggressive attacks on the rights and civil privileges of groups and minorities--including gays--for which Dobson has little or no tolerance or love.
Dobson chafes over his inability to affect inclusive negotiations and general consensus with his enemies. It's impossible for him to "compromise" based on the tenets of his native religious doctrine. (See , James Dobson's War on America, By former associate, Gil Alexander-Moegerle) It `s not within his moral lexicon to ever give in on the key issues that he holds inviolate. As a religious voice, not an ordained minister, Dobson holds forth such stances as he believes are righteous altogether. Given his "standards" upon which he can brook no compromise and will entertain no dialogue as to accommodation, Dobson is unable to enter honest open debate and cannot arrive at logical resolution through political consensus.
Consider Dobson's fright evoking statements made in his book, Marriage Under Fire: Why we must win this battle, p.41; 1.) "Like Adolf Hitler, who overran his European neighbors, those who favor homosexual marriage are determined to make it legal, regardless of the democratic processes that stand in the way." 2.) "With the legalization of homosexual marriage, every public school in the nation will be required to teach this perversion as the moral equivalent of traditional marriage between a man and a woman... it is already happening in the state of California." (P. 56)
Dobson truly believes his ideas about social morality applied to civic life are God's own ideas. Dobson has constructed his distorted view of the danger posed by homosexuality telling his faithful homosexuality is a threat to the entire world and "will destroy" it.
Dobson's demanding edicts/fatwas cannot be allowed to become the normal modality of statesmen or the ideal vision of politicians, whose tasks--by definition--are to bring about consensus and agreement between differing points of view in order to achieve the civic betterment of our democratic republic.
The church Dobson and his father and great-grandfather (both ordained Church of the Nazarene ministers) share is historically racially segregated and very intolerant of the "worldliness" of other denominations and traditions--which do not share the Nazarene's specific standards of holiness and sanctification.
Somehow there's an inherent inconsistency in Dobson's tradition between high religiousness and basic social justice. Another Nazarene, the thinker and scholar, Dr. Timothy Smith, by contrast, saw the role of revivalism and social reform in a very different light. Dr. Smith composed his idealism in a much more compassionate and collaborative modality. Smith carefully sited cases showing how enlightened the Evangelical methodology worked to elevate American values in the nation's historic development as a pluralistic nation.
When Dobson's beliefs--uncompromised--slip over into politics they become clamorous demands made on Congress and the courts. Such threats or actions, instigated by Dobson, carried out by his followers--without compromise--as "the" agenda and model for the nation--politically and morally, that becomes the most dangerous slippery slope toward religious demagoguery and sectarianism.
Dr. Doubtfree's religious demagoguery, if left unanswered, will result in no civic good, no doubt.
Footnotes:
[1] "What made Dobson's books successful wasn't, as you might think, bilious jeremiads about modernity, but rather their highly practical advice about daily challenges from midlife crises to sibling rivalry. In these books and elsewhere, Dobson can sound like a perfectly sensible, if conservative, pop psychologist, not too different from Dr. Phil." The religious right's new kingmaker, By Michael Crowley, Slate Magazine, Nov. 12, 2004
[2] James Dobson, AU Separation of Church & State, The Religious Right's 800-Pound Gorilla, Jeremy Leaming, http://www.au.org/..._
[3] Dobson "proselytized hard for Bush this last year, organizing huge stadium rallies and using his radio program to warn his 7 million American listeners that not to vote would be a sin. Dobson may have delivered Bush his victories in Ohio and Florida." The religious right's new kingmaker, By Michael Crowley, Slate Magazine, Nov. 12, 2004
[4] Dobson is "(a)n absolutist disgusted by the compromises of politics, he sneers at those who place `self-preservation and power ahead of moral principle.' He has always kept his distance from Washington. Unlike Reed, a canny strategist above all, Dobson has talked about bringing down the GOP if it fails him." The religious right's new kingmaker, By Michael Crowley, Slate Magazine, Nov. 12, 2004