James Dobson, Focus on the Family founder and key leader on the
Christian right, dies at 89
[August 22, 2025]
By MIKE CATALINI and HOLLY MEYER
James Dobson, who founded the conservative Christian ministry Focus on
the Family and was a politically influential campaigner against abortion
and LGBTQ+ rights, died on Thursday. He was 89.
Born in 1936 in Shreveport, Louisiana, Dobson was a child psychologist
who launched a radio show to counsel Christians on parenting and started
Focus on the Family in 1977. Alongside fundamentalist giants like Jerry
Falwell and Pat Robertson, he became a force in the 1980s for pushing
conservative Christian ideals in mainstream American politics.
At its peak, Focus on the Family had more than 1,000 employees and gave
Dobson a platform to weigh in on legislation and serve as an adviser to
five presidents. His broad reach includes authoring more than 70 books,
being translated into 27 languages, and airing on 4,000 radio stations,
according to the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
His death was confirmed by his institute. He is survived by his wife of
64 years, Shirley, as well as their two children, a daughter-in-law and
two grandchildren.
‘Mount Rushmore’ of conservatives
Dobson interviewed President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office in 1985,
and Falwell called him a rising star in 1989. Decades later, he was
among the evangelical leaders tapped to advise President Donald Trump.
in 2016.
In 2022, he praised Trump for appointing conservative U.S. Supreme Court
justices who 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 broadcast.
Dobson belongs on the “Mount Rushmore” of Christian conservatives, said
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, another group
Dobson founded. He promoted ideas from “a biblical standpoint” that
pushed back against progressive parenting of the 1960s, Perkins said.
Weighing Dobson's legacy
In his 1970 parenting book “Dare to Discipline,” updated in 1992, Dobson
said parents should spank kids to discipline them and enforce
boundaries. Children should not be struck in anger, but “the spanking
should be of sufficient magnitude to cause genuine tears.”
“I know that some of my readers could argue,” he wrote, “that the
deliberate premeditated application of minor pain to a small child is a
harsh and unloving thing to do. To others, it will seem like pure
barbarism. I obviously disagree.”
John Fea, an American History professor at Messiah College in
Pennsylvania, is critical of Dobson’s ideas. However, he recounted how
his father — a tough Marine — was a better parent after becoming an
evangelical Christian and listening to Dobson’s radio program.
“Even as a self-identified evangelical Christian that I am, I have no
use in my own life for Dobson’s politics or his child-rearing," he said.
"But as a historian what do you do with these stories? About a dad who
becomes a better dad?”
Possible presidential run
After developing a following of millions, Dobson considered running for
president in 2000, following in the footsteps of former television
minister Pat Robertson’s surprise success in 1988.
“He was not afraid to speak out,” 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.”
[to top of second column]
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In a Tuesday, March 11, 2008 photo, Christian evangelical leader and
founder of "Focus on the Family", James Dobson, listens to President
Bush, not pictured, address the National Religious Broadcasters 2008
Convention at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in
Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, file)
Still, Reed’s enduring memory is traveling through rural America as
a younger political organizer, 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.”
Focus on the Family moved from California to Colorado Springs,
Colorado, in the 1990s, establishing the city as a hub for
evangelicals sometimes nicknamed the “Vatican of the West.”
A political juggernaut for decades
James Bopp, a lawyer who has represented Focus on the Family, said
Dobson could rally public support like few other social
conservatives.
Dobson helped create a constellation of allied Family Policy
Councils in around 40 states that push a socially conservative
agenda and lobby lawmakers, said Peter Wolfgang, executive director
of one such group in Connecticut.
“If there is one man above all whom I would credit with being the
builder — not just the thinker — who gave us the institutions that
created the space for President Trump to help us turn the tide in
the culture war, it would be Dr. James Dobson,” Wolfgang wrote in an
online column last month.
Records compiled by the watchdog group Open Secrets show Focus on
the Family and Family Research Council together spent more than $4
million on political ads and nearly $2 million lobbying Congress
since the late 1990s.
Opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights
Dobson left Focus on the Family in 2010 and founded the institute
that bears his name. He continued with his nationally syndicated
radio show Family Talk, carried by 1,500 radio outlets with more
than half a million listeners weekly, according to the institute.
Guests on his show have discussed the importance of embracing
religion and promoting the idea that people could change their
sexuality.
“The homosexual community will tell us that transformations never
occur. That you cannot change,” he said in a 2021 video posted on
his institute’s site that touted “success stories” of people who “no
longer struggle with homosexuality” after attending a ministry. He
said there is typically “pain and agitation” associated with
homosexuality.
Conversion therapy is the scientifically discredited practice of
using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or
traditional gender expectations.
The practice is banned in 23 states and the District of Columbia,
according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights
think tank.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in March to hear a Colorado case about
whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning
conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.
___
Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey, and Meyer from
Nashville, Tennessee. Associated Press writers Tom Beaumont in Des
Moines, Iowa, Tiffany Stanley in Washington, Geoff Mulvihill in
Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut,
contributed.
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