Voice for the family

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, August 22nd. Good Morning this is The WORLD And Everything In It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

We end the week remembering a familiar voice.

DOBSON: You’re listening to Family Talk. The radio broadcasting division of the James Dobson Family Institute. 

For decades God used that folksy style to help strengthen families around the world.

DOBSON: What amazes me about children is they know precisely where your action line is.

From books to radio programs, his teaching on the family was a blend of his Christian roots as well as his training as a child psychologist.

MOHLER: James Dobson is one of those names that will go down as indispensable and telling the story of evangelical Christianity in the United States.

EICHER: Albert Mohler served on the Focus on the Family board for a decade beginning in 2004.

MOHLER: I don't know anyone who had a greater gift for being able to speak to children. It was very honest. You could tell he was a professor of pediatrics at one point, and that was translated into the ability to talk to moms and dads and parents.

In 1977 Dobson founded Focus on the Family. The daily broadcast, as well as children’s programming like Adventures in Odyssey, and a flood of books and teaching tapes made him widely known.

BROWN: Here’s an excerpt from one of the teaching videos Dobson produced back in the 1970’s. This one, on how to raise the strong-willed child.

DOBSON: You do not need anger to control children that teacher who said I have to stay mad all the time to control my class. You see, he was using anger to control. It doesn't work.

Mohler pointed out that in the heyday of Dobson’s public life, everybody knew who a boy was and who a girl was. All 50 states defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. But cultural forces were tearing at family life and the abortion battle was raging and that drew Dobson into activism.

MOHLER:It was a revolt in the entire civilization that called forth a conservative Christian response, and a part of that was a response in politics and public policy. I think Dobson discovered he had a very powerful voice there. He leveraged that.

EICHER: Dobson got involved with the Family Research Council in the 1980s.

He tells the story of being invited to speak at a conference on the family, where his conservative views stood out

So much so, one of the conference leaders suggested his perspective was missing and needed in the nation's capital.

Here is Dobson recalling what happened next. Audio courtesy of the FRC.

DOBSON: And I went back. I had seven buddies. There were eight of us there last night. And I told them what he had said. And we all agreed we have to change that. The voice of Biblical truth as related to the family must be represented in this town. We got on our knees that night and prayed and we asked the Lord to bless what we were going to try and do because it was not going to be easy. And that was the beginning of the Family Research Council. That’s what was organized that day.

Dobson served as an adviser to five U-S Presidents, including Ronald Reagan. Heard here in a 1985 conversation with Dobson. The audio from the Reagan Library.

DOBSON: Would you express your views on the degree in which healthy individual families are related to a strong and healthy nation? Is there a connection between those things?

REAGAN:Yes, I don’t believe you can have one without the other. A strong healthy nation. Without that the family unit is the very base. I just finished saying to another group a little while ago, as the family goes, so goes the nation.

BROWN: Dobson publicly criticized Republican leaders for not standing firmly enough for pro-family policies. In 2009, Dobson resigned from Focus and ended his broadcasting career there, citing “significant philosophical differences.” Not long after, he began his own nationally syndicated show, Family Talk.

The New York Times once called him the nation’s most influential evangelical leader. So who is to follow him? Again, here’s Mohler:

MOHLER: I think it would honor God in a way that would honor Jim Dobson as well, to say that parents take up the responsibility to raise their children in the nurtured admonition of the Lord, that Christian pastors make very clear a biblical theology of the family, and that Christians continue to contend for the things that uphold the family.

EICHER: Dobson leaves behind two children, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, and his wife of 64 years, Shirley.

SHIRLEY: My heart is aching. Jim will always be the love of my life. I want to thank you and millions around the world for opening your hearts to Jim over the decades.

James Dobson was 89 years old.

BROWN:Albert Mohler has a personal remembrance at WORLD Opinions, you’ll find a link in the transcript.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.