End of an Era: James Dobson Departs Focus on the Family

From LifeSiteNews
By Peter J. Smith

After 33 years at Focus on the Family, psychologist Dr. James Dobson bids farewell on Friday to the Christian ministry he founded, and brings his radio presence at the organization to an end. But the famous Christian commentator is not finished with the airwaves, as he has announced plans for a new, independent radio ministry following his departure.

Focus on the Family CEO and President Jim Daly told listeners of Focus on the Family’s radio program Wednesday that "this week marks the completion of a transition period that probably started more than 10 years ago."

Dobson stated that his intention in stepping down was to give responsibility to the younger generation, and ensure FOTF's future success by not inadvertently leaving it leaderless. Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink reports that Dobson, 73, will join Daly on the radio program later in the week “to discuss memories, his future and Focus on the Family's future.”

For decades, friends and foes have known Dobson - a signer of the recent Manhattan Declaration - as an outspoken champion of the right to life for the unborn, and tireless defender of the family and the institution of marriage.

Dobson's Focus on the Family radio program brought in an estimated 1.5 million listeners in the United States and over 220 million followers across the globe. There, Dobson made his voice a clarion call to pro-life and pro-family action through political involvement no less than prayer and ministry.

“If people of faith - the so-called values voters - don’t come out and let their voices be heard, there are going to be some major implications for this country,” Dobson warned his listeners in October 2006.

Dobson had no qualms about calling the recent federal “hate crimes” legislation “utter evil” coming out of Congress, and warned that normalizing same-sex unions was a necessary component of homosexualists’ strategy to make homosexuality acceptable among the youth.

On Terri Schiavo, the Christian psychologist denounced her court-ordered starvation and dehydration as "one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in American history."

Dobson took particular aim at the "heady abuse of power that is all too common among independent fiefdoms known as judges," when a federal court struck down obscenity laws as unconstitutional. He quoted as prescient Thomas Jefferson’s warning that entrusting the arbitration of “all constitutional questions” to judges was an idea that “would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy."

Dobson was also keenly aware of the need for a new generation of pro-life Christian leaders, and challenged the youth to rise up and courageously accept the mantle of his own generation of leadership.

“Who will defend the unborn child in the years to come? Who will plead for the Terri Schiavos of the world? Who's going to fight for the institution of marriage, which is on the ropes today?" Dobson questioned to the National Religious Broadcasters conference in March 2008.

Amid Dobson's transition from Focus, speculation remains on the fate of the organization he founded, and what new direction it may take without his influence.

A Wall Street Journal interview with Focus CEO Jim Daly in early February indicated that the Christian ministry may take a softer approach to controversial life and family issues than Dobson.

“I don’t see evil behind everything,” said Daly. The Journal reported the CEO did not care for Dobson’s strident attacks on political leaders such as President Obama. While Dobson called Obama’s ideas “fruitcake,” the Journal said Daly preferred to praise the President for having a White House event on fatherhood.

Additionally, Daly told the Journal that while he and Focus remains dedicated to ending abortion once and for all, they will likely not spend much energy working for a ban, but instead devote more resources to promoting abortion alternatives such as adoption.

However, Tom Minnery, a senior vice president at Focus on the Family, assured on CitizenLink that Focus on the Family will remain true to the guiding lights that Dobson imbued in their ministry.

"The pillars will remain the same," he said. "Our devotion to our cause of the family, our devotion to the notion that life is sacred, to the notion that marriage is one man and one woman, those will never change."

For Dobson, the end brings a new beginning: in December, he announced his plan to host a new 30-minute daily radio program with his son Ryan, called "James Dobson on the Family." The show is expected to tackle issues including “marriage, child-rearing, family finances, medical and psychological concerns, national issues, the sanctity of human life, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Dobson wrote that he did not feel he could simply live a quiet retired life with his wife Shirley while “our nation is facing a crisis that threatens its very existence.”

“We are in a moral decline of shocking dimensions. I have asked myself how I can I sit and watch the world go by without trying to help if I can,” Dobson stated. “That is what motivates me at this time.”

The program is set to debut May 3.

Focus on the Family's Masterstroke

Focus on the Family showed themselves to be brilliant at public relations, and the weeks of furor over their simple pro-life message demonstrated for all the world that the militant abortionists aren't about choice at all. They don't even believe in free speech. Blood-covered and conscience-hardened, they are about protecting the only kind of obscene profits the Obama administration supports.

Here is the full Tebow story told by Tim Tebow's parents.

Tim Tebow Pro-Life Superbowl Ad in the Works?

From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert

Rumors of a pro-life advertisement featuring the story of University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and angling for a Superbowl slot have surfaced following reports of a project in the works at the Evangelical organization Focus on the Family.

While as yet not publicly acknowledged, the Colorado Independent's Rich Tosches reported that the 30-second pro-life spot is expected by insiders at Focus on the Family to highlight the popular quarterback's mother’s refusal to abort Tebow, despite doctor’s advice to the contrary.

After taking drugs to battle amoebic dysentery during a trip to the Philippines in the 1980s, Pam Tebow refused the advice of physicians who suggested she abort Timothy because the drugs may have affected his development. Pam eventually gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby boy.

Tim Tebow, who was homeschooled before becoming a college football star, now frequently draws attention for his outspoken devotion to traditional Christian values. At the Allstate Sugar Bowl on New Year's day, Tebow's final collegiate game, the player continued a tradition of featuring a Bible passage on his eyeblack: this time, it was Ephesians 2:8-10.

Focus family formation studies director Glenn Stanton told LifeSiteNews.com that the organization has “no comment” about the rumors.

“But,” he added, “you will want to watch the Super Bowl.”

The ad would need to be approved by the National Football League and CBS, the network hosting the Superbowl game February 7. Last year, NBC and the NFL chose to nix an advertisement sponsored by the Catholic watchdog group Fidelis, which hailed the success of President Obama despite the difficult circumstances of his early life and featured the message "Life: Imagine the Potential."

Should Homosexuality Be a 'Litmus Test' for High Court?

"Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, contends the position held by Focus on the Family is the equivalent of 'moral retreat.' 'It's not just the damage caused by Focus on the Family's moral retreat on the issue,' Glenn argues. '[That explanation] will be used by homosexual activists and their allies in the media to further marginalize and delegitimize any pro-family organization that continues to take a Biblical standard.'"

From OneNewsNow
By Jim Brown

Conservative political activists are divided over whether homosexual behavior should disqualify a judicial nominee from consideration for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Focus on the Family's judicial analyst, Bruce Hausknecht, recently told liberal blogger Greg Sargent that Focus would not oppose a Supreme Court nominee solely because of their homosexual behavior. "Our concern at the Supreme Court is judicial philosophy," Hausknecht said. "Sexual orientation only becomes an issue if it effects their judging."

Ashley Horne, federal policy analyst at Focus, says just like a nominee's ethnicity and life experience, homosexuality should not be a litmus test.

"Someone's sexual orientation or their preferences, none of these things should come into consideration when we're talking about evaluating someone who will make decisions based on precedent under the law [and who will] practice judicial restraint," Horne explains. "Those are the things we look at for whether or not someone would make a fit justice on the Supreme Court."

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, contends the position held by Focus on the Family is the equivalent of "moral retreat."

"It's not just the damage caused by Focus on the Family's moral retreat on the issue," Glenn argues. "[That explanation] will be used by homosexual activists and their allies in the media to further marginalize and delegitimize any pro-family organization that continues to take a biblical standard."

Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council agrees with Focus on the Family that homosexuality should not be an absolute litmus test for a Supreme Court nominee. He argues in blog comments that "even Supreme Court nominees deserve some zone of privacy, and...there is at least a hypothetical possibility that somewhere in the country there is a judge who has experienced same-sex attractions, but who also respects judicial restraint and the original intent of the Constitution.

"In the real world, however, the chances of finding a highly-qualified judge who fits both of those descriptions are probably about equal to the chances of a camel passing through the eye of a needle," Sprigg concludes. "So don't hold your breath waiting for social conservatives to 'support' a 'gay' judicial nominee."

Dobson Accuses Obama of 'Distorting' Bible

By Eric Gorski
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP)

As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement's biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a "fruitcake interpretation" of the Constitution.

The criticism, to be aired Tuesday on Dobson's Focus on the Family radio program, comes shortly after an Obama aide suggested a meeting at the organization's headquarters here, said Tom Minnery, senior vice president for government and public policy at Focus on the Family.

The conservative Christian group provided The Associated Press with an advance copy of the pre-taped radio segment, which runs 18 minutes and highlights excerpts of a speech Obama gave in June 2006 to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal. Obama mentions Dobson in the speech.

"Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?" Obama said. "Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's?" referring to the civil rights leader.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application."

"Folks haven't been reading their Bibles," Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament.

"I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson said.

"... He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter."

Joshua DuBois, director of religious affairs for Obama's campaign, said in a statement that a full reading of Obama's speech shows he is committed to reaching out to people of faith and standing up for families. "Obama is proud to have the support of millions of Americans of faith and looks forward to working across religious lines to bring our country together," DuBois said.

Dobson reserved some of his harshest criticism for Obama's argument that the religiously motivated must frame debates over issues like abortion not just in their own religion's terms but in arguments accessible to all people.

He said Obama, who supports abortion rights, is trying to govern by the "lowest common denominator of morality," labeling it "a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."

"Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?" Dobson said. "What he's trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe."

The program was paid for by a Focus on the Family affiliate whose donations are taxed, Dobson said, so it's legal for that group to get more involved in politics.

Last week, DuBois, a former Assemblies of God associate minister, called Minnery for what Minnery described as a cordial discussion. He would not go into detail, but said Dubois offered to visit the ministry in August when the Democratic National Convention is in Denver.

A possible Obama visit was not discussed, but Focus is open to one, Minnery said.

McCain also has not met with Dobson. A McCain campaign staffer offered Dobson a meeting with McCain recently in Denver, Minnery said. Dobson declined because he prefers that candidates visit the Focus on the Family campus to learn more about the organization, Minnery said.

Dobson has not backed off his statement that he could not in good conscience vote for McCain because of concerns over the Arizona senator's conservative credentials. Dobson has said he will vote in November but has suggested he might not vote for president.

Obama recently met in Chicago with religious leaders, including conservative evangelicals. His campaign also plans thousands of "American Values House Parties," where participants discuss Obama and religion, as well as a presence on Christian radio and blogs.