THE RIGHT'S NEW' MESSIAH

...As long as tears represent a genuine release of emotion, they should be permitted to fall," he says...

...That's the way the game is played...

...Instead it was a rout...

...But he advocates civil war—"the civil war of values...

...Forty-three percent, that's the Republican base...

...By voting for a moderate pro-abortionist who might be more desirable in the short run...

...Wielding a $101 million yearly budget, he directs sixty-two ministries in seventy countries...

...A few months after the Bundy interview, Dobson used the publicity it generated to promote a new effort establishing a coalition of fifty "pro-family" councils...

...Critics say such legislation opens the door to a flood of school-curriculum challenges by parents, and increases the risk of child abuse...

...Dobson played a central role in the effort by Christian conservatives to preserve the purity of the party's anti-abortion platform...

...Through his network of organizations...

...Dobson stands as the leader of a broad coalition of Christian nationalists including Charles Colson, Bill McCartney and his Promise Keepers, Reed and Robertson's Christian Coalition, and Beverly LaHaye's Concerned Women for America...

...He spent weeks at home with his mother, whom he describes as the disciplinarian, while his father traveled for the Church of the Nazarene, a fundamentalist Protestant sect...

...Dobson was born in Louisiana, bul grew up in the small towns of Texas and Oklahoma...

...But Dobson says that was a "glorious investment...

...And when he issues a call to arms, within hours his constituent base springs to action...

...As they willingly walked the Jericho Road, we too must take up our cross and follow," he says...

...Those aligned with the religious right make up 14 percent of the total American population, according to a just-released "Survey of the Religious Right" conducted for the American Jewish Committee by the Gallup International Institute...

...The son of an evangelist and sometime artist...

...Today, these family councils carry out much of Dobson's political work...

...Around the time of the national elections, Dobson chastised both political parties for their "moral relativism...

...With the publication of Dare to Discipline...

...In long letters to his followers, Dobson has been outlining his own increasingly offensive questioning of the moral authority and legitimacy of the government...

...Over the years, Dobson has become adept at switchboard madness—mobilizing hundreds of thousands of phone calls to jam the switchboards of Congress and the White House, pressuring legislators and the President to adhere to the "family-values" line on late-term abortion, the religious-freedom amendment, same-sex marriage, tax cuts, parental rights, school prayer, and other hot-button issues...

...Gramm...

...A tall, round-faced man, Dobson speaks with the ease and intimacy of an old friend to his daily radio audience of five million...

...In 1994,43 percent of the total votes that put Republicans in power came from evangelical Christians and pro-lifers, Dobson said...

...Dobson takes an apocalyptic view, noting that when Jesus confronted the forces of darkness He played offense, constantly seeking out evil, confronting it regardless of the consequences...

...Dobson had highly publicized squabbles with Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour, former education secretary William J. Bennett, and Ralph Reed over their perceived compromises on the issues...

...Dobson provides the answers...

...The radical right took over the infrastructure of the Republican Party in 1994 and turned out the vote that seized both houses of Congress...

...While the Council distanced itself from Focus on the Family in 1991 for tax-exemption purposes, the two organizations are "legally separate but spiritually one," according to Dobson...

...All the while, he worked deftly at the grassroots to increase control of the party infrastructure...

...He joined Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, then the University of Southern California School of Medicine, making a name for himself researching the causes of mental retardation...

...scolding them for bragging about the tolerance and inclusiveness of their "big-tent" conventions...

...In June, Dobson pleaded with constituents to read a twelve-page diatribe he wrote dealing with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's remarks before the Mississippi College of Law that dealt with the "ridicule of Christians in the United States and the disdain in which their cherished beliefs are held by the cultural elite...

...we squander our influence on decision-makers...

...We claim nothing but His blood...

...No rules...

...felon, and Christian evangelist—who said the vote meant the government "had lost its moral legitimacy...

...Evangelicals represent 24 percent of registered voters, and 34 percent of self-identified Republicans...

...Dobson and on-air co-host Mike Trout called attention to some remarks by a friend of Dobson's, Charles Colson—the Nixon hatchet man...

...What to do about an intransigent adolescent...

...In October 1994...

...Our cities began to burn during the long hot summer of racial strife...

...and the Watts riots...

...Or will the fight continue within the Republican Party...

...In 1977, upon resigning his faculty position, Dobson began addressing family issues from a conservative Christian perspective in a daily radio broadcast called "Focus on the Family...

...What is the nature of the conflict and the size of the enemy...

...Dobson's self-generated mailing list—which he's promised never to sell—is an impressive four million...

...Dobson speaks for the millions of conservative Christian voters who identify their cause with the Republican Party...

...All at once there were no definite values...

...People inside the Beltway do not know about the constituency I hear from," Dobson said in a rare appearance before the secular media on May 3, 1996...

...We're trying hard to support families and defend families and to teach the discipline in marriage and all the other things that go into family life," Dobson told his listeners recently...

...No absolutes...

...He entered a graduate program at the University of Southern California and received his doctorate in child development in 1967...

...He warned Republican leaders that abandoning the abortion issue would be "political suicide...

...Dobson is not content with winning elections...

...But the very best thing we can do for the home is to introduce people who don't know Jesus Christ to the 'Good News' that He's offered them as a free gift to anyone who will repent of sins and ask Him to cleanse them...

...A slap on the bottom of a multi-diapered thirty-month-old is not a deterrent to anything.' Dobson advertised the twenty-nine-minute video, peddling it in exchange for $25 donations...

...Hundreds of thousands responded...

...Dobson has involved himself in rightwing social causes around the country...

...During the 1996 Presidential season...

...Senate to override President Clinton's veto of the partial-birth abortion ban...

...Offering practical solutions for Nancy Novosad wrote "God Squad" in the August 1996 issue of The Progressive...

...Colson's article is part of a symposium entitled "The End of Democracy...

...The strongest of youngsters are tough enough to comprehend, intuitively, that the spanking must not be allowed to succeed...

...Other Presidential advisory-committee appointments followed, including the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography under Edwin Meese, which suggested a link between sexually violent pornography and actual sexual violence...

...To compromise on so fundamental an issue gives Republican Party leaders no incentive to defend the pro-life position," he wrote...

...A member of the highly secretive Council on National Policy, headed by former Attorney General Edwin Meese, Dobson meets with rightwing activists, industrialists, politicians, and professionals three times a year to strategize, network, and advance the theocratic goals of the religious right and Christian capitalism...

...He urged listeners to obtain a copy of the article...

...Only the Church collectively can decide at what point a government becomes sufficiently corrupt that a believer must resist," Colson writes...

...A slap with the hand on the bottom of a multi-diapered thirty-month-old is not a deterrent to anything...

...In a pamphlet entitled Parenting With Confidence, Dobson writes that the Bible teaches "we are born in sin" and says the purpose of parents is "to control that inner nature and keep it from tyrannizing the entire family...

...Officially maintaining his independence from the Republican Party, Dobson pressured its leaders and candidates to adhere to the demands of conservative Christians...

...Neither party, he says, "dealt with the great moral issues facing our nation— late-term abortion, same-sex marriage, condom distribution in the schools, a religious-liberty amendment, protection for parental rights, the Ldon't-ask...

...They push for that again and again...

...Thus, they stiffen their necks and gut it out...

...In September...

...What these Christian nationalists decide may determine the future of the Republican Party...

...Not surprisingly, Dobson encourages parental-rights initiatives that would legally mandate the inalienable right "of parents to direct and control the upbringing, education, values, and discipline of their children...

...Dobson wants to purify America through a nationwide revival...

...The solution is to outlast him and win, even if it takes a few rounds...

...that questions the legitimacy of the American "regime...

...The Strong-Willed Child, Dobson writes that he was greatly affected by two events that occurred in 1965: the birth of his daughter Danae...

...Issues that are important to them include not only abortion and homosexuality, but also property rights, taxation, gun control, and devolution of government power...

...A teething toddler...

...Hours before Bundy went to the electric chair, Dobson conducted a videotaped interview with him...

...Dobson urges parents to exert authority over and demand obedience from children...

...The councils would "affect legislation and affect our culture," he wrote in a letter to constituents...

...They distribute literature, conduct Community Impact Seminars, and engage in grassroots lobbying and political and legal activism...

...He had no qualms about taking a position on the elections: "It wouldn't hurt to pray about that election and that God would send His people into political office," he said...

...Taxpayers Party...

...A longtime supporter of Operation Rescue...

...Dobson will have a lot to say about that decision, since he commands the attention of the largest mobilized evangelical constituency, holds the support of major radical-right leaders, and possesses the media and lobbying organizations to support his efforts...

...Rather, when a significant number of votes are cast for a third-party/pro-life candidate, even in a losing cause, that fact will not go unnoticed by political leaders...

...In July, he wrote, "We plan to redouble our efforts to secure what has been called 'the defense of righteousness' in the culture" and quoted remarks by rightwing organizer Paul Weyrich calling for citizens to petition their representatives to initiate impeachment proceedings against the Supreme Court...

...When it comes to a strong-willed child, Dobson writes that if "he can outlast a temporary conflict, he has won a major battle, eliminating discipline as a tool in the parent's repertoire...

...In the book, Dobson provides detailed instruction to parents on using a switch or paddle to discipline children as young as fifteen months of age...

...Who is involved...

...don't-telf policy of retaining homosexuals in the military, fetal-tissue experimentation, the current epidemic of gambling, obscenity on the internet, etc...

...If you spank a child only on the 'behind' or on the upper part of the legs, I think you will be doing right...

...when Dobson wanted to influence Idaho's anti-homosexual Proposition One...

...Dobson sees himself in a battle of good versus evil...

...They will be more likely to court our support in the future, especially if they lost the last election...

...Dobson touches people at the center of their lives...

...Colson adds, "When peaceable means and limited civil disobedience fail . . . revolution can be justified from a Christian viewpoint...

...An unwanted pregnancy...

...Spanking should be confined to the buttocks area, he writes, "where permanent damage is very unlikely...

...Once these coalitions are in place, our state legislators will discover they can no longer write off the concerns of conservative Christian families...

...Colorado, high-school student challenged an award-winning Nova-produced videotape on evolution, Dobson's Rocky Mountain Family Council provided legal assistance...

...Dobson suggests that parents avoid spanking with their hands—the hand, he writes, should be seen as an object of love...

...Where are the battles raging...

...After graduating from high school in San Bonita, Texas, near the Mexican border...

...How to discipline an adoptive child...

...Family issues are the rallying cry for an increasingly powerful movement...

...There were no standards...

...Real crying, Dobson says, lasts two to five minutes...

...On September 30, Dobson devoted his radio broadcast to a vehement condemnation of the Senate vote...

...Family budget out of control...

...The 1996 Presidential race was supposed to be the radical right's defining moment—a race run on social issues that would yield both houses of Congress, the Presidency, and the jewel in the crown: control of the Supreme Court...

...Corporal punishment is of "vital importance to Christian parents who wish to transmit their love for Jesus Christ to their sons and daughters," Dobson says, and then explains why this is so important...

...In a spring newsletter, Dobson wrote that the abortion issue had such profound moral implications that any compromise would "be an affront to God Himself...

...family dilemmas, he speaks with the moral authority of a spiritual leader, yet has the credentials of the research psychologist and professor of pediatrics he once was...

...Dobson was an only child...

...Dobson says the "radical feminist agenda" of a mid-1970s global conference on women and the family drove him to abandon his career as a clinical research psychologist and professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine...

...The book, reissued in 1994 as The New Dare to Discipline, has sold more than two million copies...

...Where to seek help for a spouse's depression...

...In one of his books...

...Dobson joined forty Christian leaders in Washington...

...Should crying be allowed...

...While Ralph Reed demonstrated a willingness to compromise on the Republican platform...

...Dobson's next moves are unclear...

...When he heard that the Administration was calling a White House Conference on the Family, Dobson told his listeners he wanted to be named a representative and asked that they write the White House, suggesting his nomination...

...Will a conservative Christian third party arise out of the ashes of 1996 determined to "take America for Christ," as Dobson's followers put it...

...Two opposing forces, representing the world views of subjectivism and Christian absolutes, are fighting in the public square...

...4 If it doesn't hurt, it isn't worth avoiding next time,' he adds...

...The swift, consistent application of corporal punishment is the biblically correct linchpin of Dare to Discipline...

...We're instructed to storm the fortress of Satan's kingdom," Dobson wrote in September...

...Dobson has made numerous threats over the past year and a half that he will leave the Republican Party and head up an anti-abortion third party...

...Dobson and others remained in the Senate gallery during the vote, which failed 57-41...

...Questions like these must be answered in order to direct the efforts of your soldiers...

...Wilson, and Alexander—made at least one pilgrimage to Dobson's "City on the Hill" during the primaries...

...But, with fear and trembling, I have begun to believe that, however Christians in America gather to reach that consensus, we are fast approaching this point...

...After serving on the anti-pornography commission, Dobson made a splashy, opportunistic move: In January 1989, he paid a visit to serial killer Ted Bundy on Florida's Death Row (supposedly at Bundy's request...

...In the process of serving people, Dobson amasses a tremendous base that he can then draw upon to amplify his own voice," says Douglas Triggs, co-founder of Citizen's Project, a grassroots Colorado Springs organization dedicated to pluralism and diversity...

...A network of thirty-five state Family Councils are technically independent, but are also affiliated with Dobson and Focus on the Family...

...he is trying to bring about a deep cultural change in society, according to Bill Martin of Rice University...

...He may still try to exercise political power from within the Republican Party...

...In the interview, Bundy says pornography played a role in making him a serial killer...

...With about twice as many active followers as the Christian Coalition, Dobson is less visible to the general public than Robertson and Reed, yet he is "extremely visible to evangelical Christians and to a wider range of people," says Bill Martin, professor of sociology at Rice University and an authority on the religious right...

...Yes, this is a defining moment...

...Spock...

...The moral crisis in our nation has been described as a 'civil war of values,'" states the seminar curriculum of the Community Impact Seminars...

...Dobson "would require him to stop the protest crying, usually by offering him a little more of whatever caused the original tears...

...Dobson's ninety-second radio and television commentaries reach eleven million people every week, and his daily half-hour radio show airs on 2,500 Christian stations...

...The strategy is simple: "The first thing required to win a war is soldiers . . . defending moral absolutes in the public square...

...That signaled the start of chaos to come...

...In short order, Dobson mobilized listeners to advocate against the Civil Rights Restoration Act and funding for the National Endowment for the Arts...

...Any longer and the child is "merely complaining...

...And what if a child cries...

...Dobson's pietistic roots, his perfectionist roots in the Church of the Nazarene, make it difficult for him to settle for anything less than 100 percent purity," Martin says...

...Every major Republican candidate— Dole, Buchanan, Keyes...

...The Family Research Council is considered one of the most effective lobbying organizations in Washington...

...Eighty thousand letters arrived, and the Administration named Dobson to the committee...

...He may declare independence and form a third party, or he may align with the U.S...

...Secondly, "an army needs intelligence...

...Weyrich, current CEO of National Empowerment Television and founder of the Heritage Foundation, suggested impeachment after the Supreme Court struck down Colorado's anti-gay-rights Amendment 2. These are "difficult days for the pro-family community where the nation's moral meltdown increases in intensity," Dobson says...

...Accompanying this social upheaval was a sudden disintegration of moral and ethical principles such as has never occurred in the history of mankind...

...Dobson receives more than 250,000 calls and letters a month at the sprawling, forty-two-acre campus headquarters of Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs...

...Taking the offense may be costly—after all, Jesus and most of His disciples lost their lives...

...Six out of seven voting-age Americans are Christian, and the more religious they are, regardless of their denomination, the more conservative they tend to be...

...As Bible-believing Christians," Colson said, "we have to seriously, soberly, think what kind of support to give this country...

...D.C., to lobby the U.S...

...James Dobson dug in and gave no quarter to tolerance or compromise...

...No traditional beliefs on which to lean...

...Later, in a letter to constituents, Dobson said he had suspected the "secular press" would take offense at the linkage and question his ethics—he had been accused of cashing in on the interview when he suggested $25 donations for the tape...

...When a Wheatridge...

...He's a one-man media conglomerate, publishing best-selling books, churning out twelve monthly magazines, and producing seminars, conferences, videos, and audiotapes...

...As early as January 1995, in his newsletter, he flirted with a third party, and outlined his reasoning...

...a child-rearing book published in 1970, Dobson achieved celebrity as the authoritative Christian alternative to Dr...

...Dobson went on to Pasadena College, a Nazarene religious institution in California...

...What differentiates Focus on the Family from many other Christian groups is that it insists that "the government has to make second-class citizens out of everybody else who is not their brand of Christian," says Douglas Triggs of Colorado's Citizen's Project...

...If it doesn't hurt, it isn't worth avoiding next time," he adds...

...The Family Research Council is located in Washington, D.C...

...Such protest is not allowed...

...Gary Bauer, the president of the Family Research Council, was one of four anti-abortion leaders—dubbed 'the team that beat tolerance" by Dobson's political publication Citizen—who spearheaded the successful effort to exclude the words "tolerance" and "individual conscience" from the 1996 Republican platform...

...Because young children typically identify their parents . . . and especially their fathers . . . with God...

...When Dobson calls on his people to write, call, fax, bother, pester, plead, and importune, he can get a very impressive response," Martin says...

...Well, yes, but within limits...

...Later, according to a Los Angeles Times account, a number of psychologists objected that Dobson used the interview to link hard-core pornography to violent crime, "a correlation they claimed was unproven generally, and particularly in the case of Bundy...

...Dobson made his first big move into politics during the Carter Administration...

...Dobson designed the coalitions to provide regional support for his efforts to fight abortion, homosexuality, and pornography, and to aid such conservative political causes as home-schooling...

...Some of our authors examine possible responses to the laws that cannot be obeyed by conscientious citizens—ranging from noncompliance to resistance to civil disobedience to morally justified revolution," the introduction states...

...Dobson publicly endorsed Pat Miller, the Republican candidate for Colorado's second Congressional district, well known as an extreme rightwing anti-abortion candidate, who said she wanted to be the "voice" of Colorado's militia groups...

...Despotism is the present reality of the "regime," First Things suggests...

...Dobson says that "scriptural principles . . . must again be brought to bear on every aspect of life, including education, government, and law...

...You must control man's sinful nature so you have to have a repressive society...

...Jack Kemp's oldest son, Jeff, the former Seattle Seahawks quarterback, is the executive director of the Washington Family Council...

...he used the Idaho Family Councils mailing list to forward a letter supporting the measure to constituents and suggested recipients contact the Idaho Family Council for a voter's guide...

...How can a single parent juggle work and Johnny's Softball schedule...

...America...

...The conservativism of white, evangelical Protestants is clearly the most powerful force in American politics today," according to a study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press...

...He began to speak out on family values almost immediately, first at PTA's and Sunday schools that would have him, then on television shows like Dinah Shore and A.M...

...For Dobson, the wall between church and state does not exist...

...But he cautions that "crying can quickly change from inner sobbing to an expression of protest aimed at punishing the enemy...

...Therefore, if Mom and Dad are not worthy of respect, then neither are their morals, their country, their values and beliefs, or even their religious faith...

...The poll's respondents expressed strong support for what has come to be known as Christian Nationalism—the "idea that America's political troubles can be alleviated by bringing Christianity into the government" and "having the state become the partner of the church in carrying out God's plan...

...Such talk is familiar to Dobson's audience...

...Dobson called the attention of his millions of listeners to an article by Chuck Colson in the journal First Things...