James Dobson : biography
James Clayton "Jim" Dobson, Jr. (born April 21, 1936) is an American evangelical Christian author, psychologist, and founder in 1977 of Focus on the Family (FOTF), which he led until 2003. In the 1980s he was ranked as one of the most influential spokesmen for conservative social positions in American public life.Fritz Detwiler, Standing on the premises of God: the Christian Right’s fight to redefine America’s public schools (1999) Although never an ordained minister, he was called "the nation’s most influential evangelical leader" by Time while Slate portrayed him as a successor to evangelical leaders Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson.
He is no longer affiliated with Focus on the Family. Dobson founded Family Talk as a non-profit organization in 2010 and launched a new radio broadcast, "Family Talk with Dr. James Dobson", that began on May 3, 2010 on over 300 stations nationwide. As part of his former role in the organization, he produced Focus on the Family, a daily radio program which according to the organization was broadcast in more than a dozen languages and on over 7,000 stations worldwide, and reportedly heard daily by more than 220 million people in 164 countries. Focus on the Family was also carried by about sixty U.S. television stations daily. He founded the Family Research Council in 1981.
Background
Dobson was born to Myrtle Georgia (née Dillingham) and James C. Dobson, Sr. in Shreveport, Louisiana,http://www.sanbenitohistory.com/projects/Famous_San_Benitians_8th/Dobson.html and from his earliest childhood, religion was a central part of his life. He once told a reporter that he learned to pray before he learned to talk. In fact, he says he gave his life to Jesus at the age of three, in response to an altar call by his father. He is the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Church of the Nazarene ministers, reprinted at although he does not speak for the denomination in any capacity.
His father, James Dobson Sr. (1911–1977) never went to college. He was a traveling evangelist, chiefly in the southwest. The parents took their young son along to watch his father preach. Like most Nazarenes, they forbade dancing and going to movies. Young "Jimmie Lee" (as he was called) concentrated on his studies.
Dobson studied academic psychology, which in the 1950s and 1960s was not looked upon favorably by most evangelical Christians. He came to believe that he was being called to become a Christian counselor or perhaps a Christian psychologist. He attended Pasadena College (now Point Loma Nazarene University) as an undergraduate and was captain of the school’s tennis team. In 1967, Dobson received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Southern California and served in the faculty of the university’s Keck School of Medicine for 14 years. For a time, Dobson worked as an assistant to Paul Popenoe at the Institute of Family Relations, a marriage-counseling center, in Los Angeles.David Popenoe, War Over the Family, Transaction Publishers, 2005. ISBN 0-7658-0258-7. Chapter 14: Remembering My Father: An Intellectual Portrait of "The Man Who Saved Marriages".
Dobson first became well-known with the publication of Dare to Discipline (1970), which encouraged parents to use corporal punishment in disciplining their children. "his breakthrough book, Dare to Discipline, […] challenged the permissive child-rearing techniques of Benjamin Spock. The book, published in 1970, encouraged parents to spank their children with belts or switches and to leave such items on the child’s dresser to remind her of the consequences of challenging authority" Dobson’s social and political opinions are widely read among many evangelical church congregations in the United States. "Dobson is one of the single most important religious intellectuals and political leaders in America today, and many people take his words very seriously. When Dobson makes such a statement, it is the Evangelical equivalent of a Vatican Decree that is meant to communicate a policy position not only to church goers, but to social conservatives as a whole-specifically, the Republican Party." Dobson publishes monthly bulletins also called Focus on the Family, which are dispensed as inserts in some Sunday church service bulletins. "Like a religious version of Walt Disney, Dobson started with a small idea and built it into a multimedia empire: 10 radio shows, 11 magazines (including specialty publications for doctors, teachers and single parents), bestselling books, film strips and videos of all kinds. Then there are the basketball camps and the curriculum guides, the church bulletin fillers and suggested sermon topics, faxed weekly to thousands of pastors."