This year’s presidential election will forever change America, bringing an end to “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” James Dobson warned in his October letter:
- Tens of thousands of churches will have nowhere to meet after public schools ban them.
- Christian schools and adoption agencies will shut down.
- Secular bookstores will ban books from evangelical publishers.
- Christian stations won’t be able to preach the Bible, and conservative talk stations will go belly up or switch to country or gospel music.
- Homeschooling will be outlawed, public school students will receive mandatory gender identity training in first grade, the Boy Scouts will no longer exist, citizens will lose their guns, Christian nonprofits will be threatened, gas will cost $7 a gallon, public school teachers will no longer lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance, and Russia will hit Israel with a nuclear bomb.
This was only part of the apocalyptic hellscape Dobson painted in his 8,000-word October 2008 warning millions of Focus on the Family supporters about the catastrophes to come by 2012 should Barack Obama be elected president.
President Barack Obama signs legislation in the Oval Office. (White House Photo/Pete Souza)
“Finally the far-left had the highest prize: complete control of the Supreme Court (and) everything that they had hoped for and more just took a few key decisions,” Dobson wrote in his 2008 letter — now considered a classic of the conservative Christian conspiracist mindset.
Dobson failed to prevent Obama’s win, and none of these dark prophecies came true. (He was right about the Supreme Court approving same-sex marriage, but wrong on timing: it happened in 2015, during Obama’s second term.)
None of Dobson’s many failed predictions and false claims against Obama ever were corrected or repented but have instead been recycled by fellow activist leaders every election season since.
In the short term, such wild claims can excite evangelical turnout for the GOP, but over time, apocalyptic rhetoric can radicalize Christians who actually believe evangelical doomsayers’ claims, says a terrorism expert who has examined Dobson’s decades-long history of us-versus-them culture war language.
In 2024, the James Dobson Family Institute, the nonprofit Dobson founded after leaving Focus on the Family in 2010, has issued dire warnings against both of this year’s Democratic presidential candidates.
A June “Open Letter to President Joe Biden” by 88-year-old Dobson and two co-authors excoriated the president and then-candidate for reelection: “You and your most dedicated allies in Congress regularly demonize and dehumanize anyone who holds Judeo-Christian or conservative values, as well as anyone who dares to resist your agenda to deconstruct the morals, laws and freedoms that have sustained our great Republic.”
Elizabeth Neumann
Elizabeth Neumann, an author and former counterterrorism official in George W. Bush’s administration, wrote about the radicalization of her fellow evangelicals in her book, Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace.
“Persecution narratives that claim an ‘out group’ poses an existential threat to our religion, and narratives that pit one religion against another group can promote religious terrorism, which is historically the bloodiest and most devastating form of terrorism there is,” Neumann said in an interview about Dobson’s culture war rhetoric.
Dobson’s anti-Biden letter also shows his deep and continued support for Donald Trump. Dobson supported candidate Trump in 2016, calling him “a baby Christian.” He served on President Trump’s evangelical advisory group and later criticized the Supreme Court for not supporting Trump’s claims that a rigged election caused his 2020 loss.
Dobson now sides with Trump in blaming the ex-president’s many convictions and indictments on Biden: “You have weaponized federal law enforcement against your political opponents. The lawfare your allies have waged against former President Donald Trump is reminiscent of a Soviet show trial, not our constitutional Republic. We are quickly losing our moral credibility to promote freedom and democracy abroad.”
September’s attack on the current Democrat candidate, Kamala Harris, has been handled by conservative Christian firebrand Michelle Bachman and other surrogates and co-hosts who now publicly represent JDFI for the mostly retired Dobson.
JDFI features an election countdown clock on its home page, and in one of its “Countdown to Decision 2024” videos, Bachman warns of “the consequences under a Harris-Walz administration — loss of freedoms, unchecked illegal immigration, and rising crime.” She does not discuss last month’s news from the FBI that crime in America is actually declining.
Without evidence, Bachmann claims illegal immigration costs Americans more than $200 billion per year. “And how do we get repaid for our generosity? With crime and fraud,” she says.
Owen Strachan
JDFI also highlighted its opposition to immigration in a post by Owen Strachan titled “Eating Cats and Securing Borders.” Strachan is a Calvinist theologian who studied at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and served as provost of Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Arkansas until June, when he left to join Dobson’s team.
Strachan dives into the controversy fueled by false claims made by Trump and running mate JD Vance that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pets as well as geese from local parks.
“This current national argument is over whether 20,000 noncitizens shipped to Springfield, Ohio, under the Biden-Harris administration’s resettlement policies, are harvesting cats (and geese) for food,” Strachan writes.
But Strachan fails to call out the false claims about the Haitians, which led to bomb threats and weeks of chaos in Springfield. Even though the Haitians in Springfield are there legally, Strachan links them to illegal immigration and “evil:”
“We have a real issue before us,” he says. “Whatever is going on in Springfield (and reports are not encouraging), America has been hit hard by leftist policies on illegal immigration. Numerous communities have buckled under the weight of a sudden influx of immigrants, with very little infrastructure to help handle such drastic infusions.
“Much evil has flowered under this dereliction of duty; for example, over 50,000 pounds of fentanyl has been trafficked into the country since Biden took office.
“America has historically been a ‘nation of immigrants,’ and happily so. Yet there is a straight line from the ‘open borders’ ideology to the national drug crisis. This is not a bug in the leftist software; it is a feature. Tragically, the Left wants — and has created — an unsecured border and an open nation.”
In another post, Strachan says attempts to assassinate Trump, COVID lockdowns and transgender surgeries are signs of “the outbreak of evil in our country:”
“Darkness has never slept, but spiritual powers and principalities seem to be especially roused in our time. … Some downplay this evil. They embrace what we could call a ‘perverted civility,’ acting as if wickedness is a glancing thing. It is not. This rising wave of unrighteousness should wake the church up.”
In another post, Strachan did call out Nazi-friendly historian Darryl Cooper’s offensive interview with Tucker Carlson. But Strachan didn’t criticize the antisemitism on display in Cooper’s interview. He criticized Cooper’s comments about Winston Churchill, a hero of Dobson’s.
James Dobson Family Institute had 2023 revenue of $10,106,778, down from $10,741,479 in 2022. Focus on the Family’s 2023 revenue was $135 million.
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