As I sit down to write my monthly contribution to Faith on View, I’m well aware that Dr. James Dobson has died. I’m bombarded with obituaries, memes, memorials, and condemnations of this man and his long history of influence on Christian America. It strikes me that my feelings are mixed because his voice was everywhere when I was a kid, especially as I was coming of age in the 1980s.
Evangelical Consumer
Back then, I was the quintessential consumer of all things in the subculture of evangelicalism. It was Dobson—along with other voices in the Christian industrial complex—who convinced me that it was right and necessary to remain a virgin until marriage, that spanking was both biblical and just, and that there were God-ordained differences between men and women that should be maintained no matter what popular culture was saying. And, of course, that we Christians were experiencing a passive-aggressive but growing threat from a left-wing cabal intent on eliminating all traces of Christianity from America.
I believed Dobson. I believed Ronald Reagan. I believed the cheeky songs of Carman and every sermon I heard in my small Pentecostal church.
I’ve resisted the urge to post on social media about Dobson’s death. I’m not in the mood to praise him, but I don’t really want to pile on either in some sort of progressive virtue signaling, although much of it is justified. As I told a friend this morning, I have mixed feelings—and I really do.
I recall a school-sponsored trip to the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville many years ago. Students and a few colleagues went along. At that point, I was emerging from my rabidly ultra-conservative Pentecostal years. I was still more “in” than “out,” but I was teaching at a Baptist college and starting to explore different perspectives. In retrospect, I had merely traded one set of dogmatic assertions for another, a cycle I would repeat several times before arriving at the place I am today.
Hero Unaware
At that conference, I had the opportunity to hear one of my heroes at the time, John MacArthur. Meeting him was a highlight. I remember telling him how much his teaching had helped me escape my small rural Pentecostal cult, and I was struck by how gracious he was in person. One evening, several of us went out to dinner at what was then the bastion of down-home conservative culture and food, Cracker Barrel. As we were leaving, I caught a glimpse of him—Dr. Dobson. He was deep in conversation with another man, their body language serious, as if eternity itself were at stake. I didn’t approach him. My group didn’t even recognize him, and some of the younger students didn’t even know who I was talking about. I was giddy to see the founder of Focus on the Family, but they couldn’t have cared less.
That moment has stayed with me. This is one of the burdens and gifts of getting older—you begin to see people in a different light. What they meant to you once is revealed to be something else entirely when new information comes to light. That has happened a lot in my life.
Questioning Myself
There was a time when I respected Dobson. Then I heard Mark Driscoll dismiss him with a sneer: “We shouldn’t focus on the family; we should focus on Jesus!” and I cheered. Now, I don’t respect Driscoll either. So, I find myself asking, “What the hell is wrong with me? Am I just the product of the last person I heard speak? The latest book I read? Am I only ever swept along in another predictable cultural current—whether fundamentalist, evangelical, or progressive?”
We all struggle with identity. When someone as monumentally influential as Dobson dies, it hits differently, because what is actually dying is a part of ourselves. A dogmatic “Christian worldview” that once defined me died with James Dobson.
And yet here we are: every fear Dobson stoked about Christianity under siege in America has been assuaged with a President casually saying he wants to do enough to get to heaven, and that maybe brokering a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia will increase his chances (never mind the gospel). White House staff pray aloud before press conferences, and public officials wear the largest gold crosses they can afford; this is the America Dobson dreamed about. But now he’s dead.
Were All the Gifts Good?
I’m not sure how to feel about that. On one hand, conservative Christianity shaped me in profound and painful ways. It traumatized me with shame, with an obsession over sexual purity, with rigid gender roles, with fear of an outside world supposedly conspiring to destroy us. I spent years under the weight of its legalism, convinced that my worth depended on obedience to rules and loyalty to those in authority. That system robbed me of joy, of freedom, of tenderness toward myself. It demanded conformity at the expense of curiosity. It was a faith that preached “grace” but practiced fear.
However, on the other hand, I must admit that surviving it gave me perspective. It sharpened my critical instincts. It forced me to ask hard questions. It made me more compassionate toward those who still feel trapped in its machinery, because I know what that cage feels like from the inside. The boy who once memorized Dobson’s talking points is gone, but the man he became is not bitter—at least not entirely. He is grateful to have been given a vantage point, however painful, from which to see the truth more clearly.
So yes, my feelings are mixed. I can’t celebrate Dobson’s death, but I can’t grieve it either. What I mourn is the way his version of Christianity has warped so much of American faith and politics, leaving us with a brittle nationalism dressed up in religious garb. And what I quietly give thanks for is the gift of having walked through it, having seen it from the inside, and having learned to leave it behind.
True Freedom
Dobson is gone. His America lingers. But I’ve been given a different kind of freedom—one that no movement, no institution, and no Christian celebrity can take away.
The freedom I’ve been given is not the kind that shouts from a stage or waves a flag—it’s quieter, deeper, more resilient. It’s the freedom to doubt without fear, to love without qualification, to believe without the suffocating need for certainty. It’s the freedom to let go of the endless performance of “good Christian living” and be human, fragile, and unfinished, but still embraced by grace. This freedom allows me to see faith not as a fortress to defend, but as an open road to walk—sometimes stumbling, sometimes singing, but always moving toward a God who is bigger than the cages we’ve built.
The freedom I’ve found is not in clinging to a movement, a system, or a personality. It’s not in focusing on a family—real or imagined—or on any man: not Dobson, not Driscoll, and certainly not Trump. The only one worth fixing our eyes on is Jesus.
Photo by Tá Focando on Unsplash
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This resonates with me! I grew up with JD, and bought so much of his teachings. Until one day I felt the stress of it all. Was I supposed to change society through protest and boycott? Through hating those who were changing the morals of our land? It felt like too much. It felt like something was added to our gospel. And now you’re right- we’re seeing the society JD wanted. And it feels wrong. Scary even. Not like Jesus at all. Thank you for your truthful words.
Thank you for this vulnerable window into your life experience and thoughts regarding Dr. Dobson.
I, too, have mixed feelings about Dr. Dobson, but more positive than negative, I suppose, still, at this point. Politically, I’d call myself now a “progressive”, although I still don’t support elective abortion and gay dating or marriage. I have a trans-identifying son whom I do call by his pronouns and desired name because who knows if, after God made us male and female, sin did not corrupt DNA to cause gender dysphoria? Homosexual behavior seems frowned upon in scripture, but gender dysphoria isn’t addressed. Maybe I’m just rationalizing. But otherwise, I’m pro-reparations for slavery, pro-taxing the rich and supporting those who can’t support themselves, etc. etc. etc. Generally, I’m very against much of what MAGA stands for.
I was stunned when our child told us as an adult that we had abused him as a child. Our kids were spanked only very rarely, and we always followed Dr. Dobson’s guidelines about never spanking if we were actually angry, about talking with them to make sure they understood, and that we loved them very dearly and this is why we need to teach them what we were trying to teach them. But now, we’re considered child abusers. I’ve read the research demonstrating that spanked children don’t fare as well when they’re older. I had no idea spanking the way, and with the rarity, that we spanked could still harm permanently. It crushes me to know I was a child abuser and harmed my children. My parents spanked us much more harshly and frequently than we did with our children. But apparently, any amount of spanking can cause permanent harm to a person.
Also, my parents followed Dr. Dobson’s “Tough Love” with we children, including with my brother adopted at age 6 from foster care. He was manifesting all types of behaviors I now understand to be trauma responses. My parents spanked him and with a punishing spirit; when, had they understood, they’d have probably had much different responses. When we kids were spanked, we had to lie face-down on my parents’ bed with our pants and underwear down, and Dad spanked us with a doubled-over leather belt. My poor brother. He got it the worst. He never learned to trust anybody and his girlfriend who lived with him for 15 years broke up with him a couple of years ago because he wouldn’t open up emotionally to her. I can’t help but think my parents’ punishments of his trauma responses may have contributed to his inability to heal from his pre-adoption life, which involved being neglected and abused (abused worse than spanking).
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I can’t agree with you, Mr. Loyd, that Dr. Dobson intended to put “the family” on a pedestal above Jesus. I’m sure you’ve heard him talk about placing God above anyone or anything. I’m sure the title of his radio show and ministry was to be to the point about what his organization was about: ministering to families. (Much to his credit, unlike many evangelical men, he didn’t make his NAME the name of the ministry…Allowing the ministry to continue long after he left the organization. It wasn’t all about him. This was a positive decision, in my view. It wasn’t built upon “ego”, at least, on the surface.)
I feel it’s dishonest to imply, as Mark Driscoll apparently did, that Dr. Dobson suggested placing our focus upon our family at the expense of Jesus! I’m sure he would never allow such a thought to enter his mind, let alone cross his lips as spoken words. This is an uncalled-for insinuation, an attack on Dr. Dobson’s actual love and reverence for Jesus. It just seems like another stupid evangelical sound-bite designed to get a cheer.
In critiquing Dr. Dobson, we should rightly limit our critique to those things which were actually harmful. No one I know of, and I’ve been in evangelicalism till about 4 years ago, has taken his phrase “Focus on the Family” as a call to place their family above God in their metaphorical hierarchy of priorities. Even if, in effect, they HAVE worshiped their family more truly and seriously than they worshiped God, in terms of how they spent their time, money, etc., they knew in their hearts that God wanted them to put Him above all else in their lives, and that Dr. Dobson unequivocally endorsed this theological understanding.
I generally love your columns. Please don’t think this means I don’t! – Thanks!