<div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-0"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">James Dobson, the evangelical Christian broadcaster who waged war on homosexuality and championed “family values” in a long crusade that made him one of the nation’s most influential leaders of the religious right, died on Thursday at his home in Colorado Springs. He was 89.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">A spokeswoman for the family, Jessica Kramer, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">In an era of change that revolutionized concepts of family life, child-rearing, marriage and sexual identity, Dr. Dobson was for countless conservative Americans a rockbound beacon of resistance who denounced the “wickedness” of abortion and same-sex marriage, and who advised parents how to communicate better with each other and how to educate and discipline their children.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">A former professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and a psychologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Dr. Dobson began worrying about the unraveling social order in the 1960s, appalled by the impact of sexual and cultural permissiveness on people he encountered in family counseling.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">In 1970, he published a child-rearing manual, “Dare to Discipline,” that advocated corporal punishment in moderation to curb disruptive behavior. It earned Dr. Dobson a name as an evangelical antithesis to <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/17/us/benjamin-spock-world-s-pediatrician-dies-at-94.html" title="">Benjamin Spock</a>, the prominent pediatrician who favored greater flexibility in raising children.</p></div><aside aria-label="companion column" class="css-ew4tgv"></aside></div><div data-testid="Dropzone-1"></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-1"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Dr. Dobson founded the nonprofit, nondenominational religious group Focus on the Family in 1977. Over three decades, it became a $140 million multimedia empire that produced radio programs hosted by Dr. Dobson, published 11 magazines, made films and videotapes and promoted his more than 70 independently published books. The output turned Dr. Dobson into a national celebrity.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Without a church or an ordained minister’s credentials, Dr. Dobson reached vast audiences daily with “Focus on the Family” broadcasts over a network that, at its peak in the 1990s, included 2,000 radio stations and several television outlets in the United States. He said his radio programs were also translated into a dozen languages and heard by 220 million people in 157 countries worldwide.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Focus on the Family was founded in Pomona, Calif., but moved its headquarters to Colorado Springs in 1991. In 2004, Dan Gilgoff, then an editor at U.S. News &amp; World Report, visited the group’s 88-acre campus, interviewed Dr. Dobson and chronicled his organization’s rise in “The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War” (2007).</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">“Dobson’s avuncular manner,” Mr. Gilgoff wrote, “and his capacity for letting grown men break down with the tape rolling were a sharp break with Christian radio’s customary fire-and-brimstone sermons.” Eventually, Mr. Gilgoff said, Dr. Dobson supplanted <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/obituaries/16falwell.html" title="">Jerry Falwell</a>, of the Moral Majority and <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/us/pat-robertson-dead.html" title="">Pat Robertson</a>, of the Christian Coalition, as the primary political spokesman for America’s evangelical Christians.</p></div><aside aria-label="companion column" class="css-ew4tgv"></aside></div><div data-testid="ImageBlock-3"><div data-testid="imageblock-wrapper"><figure aria-label="media" class="img-sz-medium css-1hs5yzu e1g7ppur0" role="group"><div class="css-1xdhyk6 erfvjey0" data-testid="photoviewer-children-figure"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Image</span><div class="css-nwd8t8" data-testid="lazy-image"><div data-testid="lazyimage-container" style="height:577.4222222222223px"></div></div></div><figcaption class="css-gbc9ki ewdxa0s0" data-testid="photoviewer-children-caption"><span class="css-jevhma e13ogyst0">Dr. Dobson spoke at a meeting of the Family Research Council in Washington in 2006.</span><span class="css-14fe1uy e1z0qqy90"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Credit...</span><span><span aria-hidden="false">CQ Roll Call, via Associated Press Images</span></span></span></figcaption></figure></div></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-2"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Because Focus on the Family was officially nonpolitical, dispensing mainly marital and family advice, Dr. Dobson for years insisted that his remarks were not endorsements for candidates or legislation, although he often brought his perspectives to bear on political issues, especially his opposition to abortion, homosexuality, divorce, drugs, pornography and the teaching of evolution.</p></div><aside aria-label="companion column" class="css-ew4tgv"></aside></div><div data-testid="Dropzone-5"></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-3"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">He grew more openly political in the mid-1990s. In 1996, he charged that Republicans and Democrats alike were ducking serious discussion of moral issues, preferring arid debates over spending and tax cuts. Meanwhile, he said, millions of Americans “grieve over what we’re doing to unborn children.”</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">In 2004, he addressed thousands of conservative Christians gathered in Washington to protest same-sex marriage and, for the first time, endorsed a presidential candidate, George W. Bush, who was running for re-election. He also urged Mr. Bush to endorse a proposed federal marriage amendment to the Constitution, which would define marriage as a union of one man and one woman.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">During the 2008 presidential primaries, Dr. Dobson attacked Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, for his support of abortion rights, saying that he wanted “to go to the lowest common denominator of morality” and impose “his bloody notion of what is right in regard to the rights of tiny babies.” Dr. Dobson also rebuked Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate, saying that he had not spoken out energetically enough against same-sex marriage.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Dr. Dobson began withdrawing from leadership roles at Focus on the Family in 2003 and was succeeded as president by Donald P. Hodel, who had served as secretary of energy and secretary of the interior under President Ronald Reagan. In 2005, Jim Daly became Focus on the Family’s president. Dr. Dobson resigned as its chairman in 2009, citing differences with Mr. Daly.</p></div><aside aria-label="companion column" class="css-ew4tgv"></aside></div><div data-testid="Dropzone-7"></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-4"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">The next year, Dr. Dobson gave up his long-running radio show and created a new one, “Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk,” which he hosted with his son, Ryan, an author of “Be Intolerant: Because Some Things Are Just Stupid,” a 2003 broadside against moral relativism. Ryan Dobson left the program in 2016.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">The new program, eventually heard on 1,300 stations, allowed greater leeway to address political issues. “Our nation is facing a crisis that threatens its very existence,” Dr. Dobson said at the program’s founding. “We are in a moral decline of shocking dimensions. I have asked myself how can I sit and watch the world go by without trying to help if I can. That is what motivates me at this time.”</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">James Clayton Dobson Jr. was born in Shreveport, La., on April 21, 1936, the only child of James and Myrtle (Dillingham) Dobson.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">He was the son, grandson and great-grandson of Church of the Nazarene ministers. The family avoided dancing and movies. His father, who never attended college, was a traveling evangelist, primarily in the Southwest, and young James lived mostly with his mother in Bethany, Okla., and graduated from San Benito High School, in San Benito, Texas, in 1954.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1958 from Pasadena College (now Point Loma Nazarene University) and a master’s degree in 1962 from the University of Southern California.</p></div><aside aria-label="companion column" class="css-ew4tgv"></aside></div><div data-testid="Dropzone-9"></div><div data-testid="ImageBlock-10"><div data-testid="imageblock-wrapper"><figure aria-label="media" class="img-sz-medium css-d754w4 e1g7ppur0" role="group"><div class="css-1xdhyk6 erfvjey0" data-testid="photoviewer-children-figure"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Image</span><div class="css-nwd8t8" data-testid="lazy-image"><div data-testid="lazyimage-container" style="height:257.77777777777777px"></div></div></div><figcaption class="css-gbc9ki ewdxa0s0" data-testid="photoviewer-children-caption"><span class="css-jevhma e13ogyst0">Dr. Dobson and his wife, Shirley, arrived at the White House in 2007 for an event marking the National Day of Prayer.</span><span class="css-14fe1uy e1z0qqy90"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Credit...</span><span><span aria-hidden="false">Charles Dharapak/Associated Press</span></span></span></figcaption></figure></div></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-5"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">In 1960, he married his college sweetheart, Shirley Deere. She survives him, as do his son; a daughter, Danae Dobson; and two grandchildren.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">After four years as a teacher and counselor at high schools in Hacienda Heights and Covina, Calif., he earned a doctorate in child development in 1967 from U.S.C. He was then on the faculty of the Keck School of Medicine for 14 years and simultaneously on the staff of Children’s Hospital.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">During his decades of broadcasting, Dr. Dobson served on White House and congressional panels on juvenile delinquency, gambling, pornography, missing children and other issues. He received awards from evangelical and conservative groups, and his program was <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.radiohalloffame.com/focus-on-the-family" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">inducted</a> into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2008.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">He was also denounced by women’s organizations; gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups; and other activists who said he had made a career of vitriolic attacks on homosexuality and abortion rights. Social scientists, psychiatrists and psychologists accused him of misrepresenting their research to support his religious ideology and political agenda.</p></div><aside aria-label="companion column" class="css-ew4tgv"></aside></div><div data-testid="Dropzone-12"></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-6"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">The culture wars continued in recent years as Dr. Dobson echoed President Trump’s policies on immigration. “Millions of illegal immigrants will continue flooding into this great land from around the world,” Dr. Dobson said after visiting a migrant detention center in McAllen, Texas, in 2019. “Many of them have no marketable skills. They are illiterate and unhealthy. Some are violent criminals. Their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture as we have known it, and it could bankrupt the nation.”</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Other religious organizations vehemently disagreed. “The rhetoric employed by Dobson and other evangelical leaders is frighteningly similar to that of German pastors and theologians in the Third Reich,” Sojourners, a Washington-based interfaith group website, reported in 2019. “It appears that Christians have either forgotten or are ignoring the dark history of Christianity’s marriage to partisan politics and nationalist agendas.”</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Dr. Dobson was used to dealing with dissenters. “Left-wing activists typically hate committed Christians and the Christian faith,” he wrote in a 2019 newsletter to followers. “It begins with resentment for everything we stand for, especially our belief in immutable standards of right and wrong that are based on biblical truth. They despise this belief system because it threatens their godless worldview.”</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Along with other conservative evangelicals, Dr. Dobson supported President Trump’s failed re-election campaign in 2020. In 2022, he was jubilant when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade — which effectively granted the constitutional right to <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/us/politics/biden-abortion-democrats.html" title="">abortion</a> — and returned the legality of abortion back to the states.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">“There have been times of despair, real despair, and disappointment along the way,” he <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.drjamesdobson.org/broadcasts/a-historic-victory-for-life-dr-dobson-reacts-to-the-reversal-of-roe-v-wade-part-1/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">said</a> after the conservative-leaning high court ruled in 2022. “At last, the tide has changed, and the legality of abortion has been giving to the people to decide — where it belonged in the first place.”</p><p class="css-798hid etfikam0">Adam Bernstein contributed reporting.</p></div><aside aria-label="companion column" class="css-ew4tgv"></aside></div>