James Dobson, the evangelical Christian broadcaster who waged war on homosexuality and championed “family values” in a long crusade that made him one of the nation’s most influential leaders of the religious right, died on Thursday at his home in Colorado Springs. He was 89.
A spokeswoman for the family, Jessica Kramer, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.
In an era of change that revolutionized concepts of family life, child-rearing, marriage and sexual identity, Dr. Dobson was for countless conservative Americans a rockbound beacon of resistance who denounced the “wickedness” of abortion and same-sex marriage, and who advised parents how to communicate better with each other and how to educate and discipline their children.
A former professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and a psychologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Dr. Dobson began worrying about the unraveling social order in the 1960s, appalled by the impact of sexual and cultural permissiveness on people he encountered in family counseling.
In 1970, he published a child-rearing manual, “Dare to Discipline,” that advocated corporal punishment in moderation to curb disruptive behavior. It earned Dr. Dobson a name as an evangelical antithesis to Benjamin Spock, the prominent pediatrician who favored greater flexibility in raising children.
Dr. Dobson founded the nonprofit, nondenominational religious group Focus on the Family in 1977. Over three decades, it became a $140 million multimedia empire that produced radio programs hosted by Dr. Dobson, published 11 magazines, made films and videotapes and promoted his more than 70 independently published books. The output turned Dr. Dobson into a national celebrity.
Without a church or an ordained minister’s credentials, Dr. Dobson reached vast audiences daily with “Focus on the Family” broadcasts over a network that, at its peak in the 1990s, included 2,000 radio stations and several television outlets in the United States. He said his radio programs were also translated into a dozen languages and heard by 220 million people in 157 countries worldwide.
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The post James Dobson, Influential Leader of the Religious Right, Dies at 89 appeared first on New York Times.
