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Dobson, Is This a Good Thing?
By Jeremy | January 13, 2005
[James] Dobson, perhaps more than anyone, will be most credible in leveraging evangelical power at the voting booth. That's partly because, politics aside, he's unrivaled as an evangelical leader. "Given Billy Graham's advanced age," says Richard Land, president of the 16 million-strong Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, "it's James Dobson who's stepped in to fill the void." Unlike Graham, though, Dobson's not a preacher.... Dobson has never been so baldly political. Before the election, he stepped down from the presidency of Focus [on the Family] (he's still chairman) to launch Focus on the Family Action, a fundraising and grass-roots organizing engine free of the political spending limits imposed on the nonprofit Focus. The move allowed Dobson to make his first presidential endorsement (for President Bush), to write to hundreds of thousands of Focus constituents in states with tight Senate races with political advice, and to appear in ads to unseat then Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota. Last fall, Dobson hosted huge "stand for family" rallies--widely seen as supportive of Republican candidates--in close Senate race states, while Focus helped distribute an eye-popping 8 million voting guides. "I can't think of anybody who had more impact than Dr. Dobson" on social conservatives this election, says Richard Viguerie, the GOP direct-mail pioneer. "He was the 800-pound gorilla."From "The Dobson way: An evangelical leader steps squarely into the political ring," by Dan Gilgoff in US News and World Report (1/17/05)
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Note from January 16: Apparently other folks are struggling with this. Check out this blog for Chuck Colson comments, as well as a few from ordinary evangelicals like you and me.Topics: evangelical, faith, media, news, politics | No Comments »
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