A great social and political figure

James C. Dobson, the Christian psychologist known to hundreds of millions merely as “Dr. Dobson,” passed away on Aug. 21 at the age of 89. Few Christian figures loomed as large in the latter half of the 20th century, and despite the opinions of his critics, few have deserved it more.

Dr. Dobson founded Focus on the Family in 1977, and the ministry’s daily radio program was broadcast worldwide to more than 7,000 stations in a dozen languages to over 200 million people and aired on 60 American TV stations. Dobson sold millions of books on subjects like parenting, youth challenges, marriage, and child psychology, and became a household name not just in America, but around the world.

My mother owned a well-worn copy of The Strong-Willed Child, as a kid we listened to Adventures in Odyssey, and as a teen I read Life on the Edge: A Young Adult's Guide to a Meaningful Future, which I found very helpful. I don’t agree with every one of his positions, but he was a titan who benefited countless families. I was thrilled, several years ago, when he quoted several of my columns.

Dobson was also a founding figure of the political religious right. He served as an advisor to five U.S. presidents; interviewed Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office; and famously spoke with serial killer Ted Bundy the night before his execution about the impact of violent pornography on Bundy’s twisted psyche. He founded the Family Research Council in 1981 to promote life and family in the political arena and spearheaded the creation of Family Policy Councils in almost every state for the same purpose.

On every moral issue of national importance, Dobson was at the barricades. Unlike so many others who rose and fell in a cloud of scandal, Dobson’s public and personal lives were beyond reproach, and his influence grew as millions of Americans who sought his advice for their personal lives also gave heed to his political counsel. His political endorsement mattered, because millions knew and trusted him.

It has become trendy of late to criticize the religious right from the right. In his seminal 2016 book The Benedict Option, for example, Rod Dreher made the case that the religious right failed miserably by relying on politics as an answer to cultural problems. Repeatedly, he excoriates the religious right—the first generation of leaders to respond to the sexual revolution—for their miscalculations and neglect of “thick communities” that could help American Christianity survive the coming secular storm.

It isn’t just Dreher. As America moves into a post-Christian age, it has become convenient to blame the religious right for failing to defeat the forces they faced. Interestingly, this is in part because conservatives are prone to making the very mistake that they accuse the religious right of making: judging the fruits of a man and a movement only on political results.

Both left and right are primarily interested in Dobson as a political figure and miss the fact that the bulk of his life’s work was poured into the families of ordinary people. They are missing the point; Dobson didn’t. His intergenerational impact was a subterranean social influence that saved many marriages and ensured intact homes for millions of children. That cannot be measured, but it was deeply felt—and it is the source of the outpouring of gratitude greeting the sad news that he is no longer with us.

Similar accusations have been leveled at Dr. Jerry Falwell, as if his primary legacy is the now defunct Moral Majority rather than the alumni of Liberty University. The religious right made plenty of mistakes to analyze in historical hindsight, but the career of Dr. James Dobson is evidence that much of the criticism of it is misplaced. I suspect that there is not a single keyboard culture warrior today who could fill his shoes or match his legacy, and the conservative movement today has benefited tremendously from his singular prescience and prophetic witness.