Some mourned upon hearing of the death of James Dobson at 89 last month. Others rejoiced. All I felt was pity for the man and sadness for all the lives he ruined with his iniquitous, toxic theology.
His demise reminded me of how he was the primary reason why I lost my first academic teaching post at Hope College. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Like most conservative Christians of the 1980s, I was fed a daily diet of Focus on the Family propaganda.
I listened to his syndicated radio show and his cassette tapes on my Walkman. I read his magazines, newsletters and books. He taught me the “family values” of imposing my toxic masculinity in the household, hating the sin of homosexuality while loving the sinner, hitting my children, and believing that spousal physical abuse is not a reason for divorce.
I don’t believe in a physical location called “Hell.” However, if a place does exist for those souls that have inflicted great suffering, abuse and oppression in the lives of others, then that is where you will find Dobson.
Dobson advocated always voting Republican. In his later years, he supported Donald Trump’s presidency (whom he called a “born-again baby Christian”) along with Trump’s racist anti-immigrant agenda, claiming: “Many of them [immigrants] have no marketable skills. They are illiterate and unhealthy. Some are violent criminals. Their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture as we know it, and it could bankrupt the nation.”
Add toxic whiteness to toxic masculinity.
Throughout most of his so-called ministry, he maintained a veneer of being apolitical. However, in 2004, for the first time, he endorsed a presidential candidate: George W. Bush. It was this endorsement that I took issue with.
During an inauguration event before leaders of Congress, Dobson claimed the popular television character SpongeBob was “pro-homosexual.” At the time, I was a professor at Hope College and also wrote op-eds for the Holland Sentinel, which had a daily circulation of just a few thousand.
On February 1, 2005, I responded with an op-ed titled “When the Bible is Used for Hate,” a satirical piece making fun of Dobson’s “vigilant eye.”
Within a week, Dobson responded with his own editorial to the Holland Sentinel. Titled “Political Bias Distorts Facts,” he wrote: “Rarely have I been subjected to a more mean-spirited, inaccurate and sarcastic diatribe than this statement from the pen of a Christian academic – Rev. de la Torre.”
Vehemently denying he said what was reported in multiple news outlets, he instead deflected by questioning my orientation and hinted at a “hidden agenda that led [me] to distort the facts and spew [my] venom.” Dobson ended his op-ed expressing worry for “students who sit under [my] liberal tutelage,” expressing thanksgiving that his son and daughter weren’t among them.
What followed was a firestorm, as hundreds wrote letters to the newspaper, some condemning me as an antichrist while others praised me for telling the truth. Multiple letters to the editor would appear each day, many calling for my head. The controversy made national news.
I was shunned in public. Dead squirrels appeared in my mailbox and teachers mistreated my elementary school children. Worse, in a March 14, 2005, letter, the college president, James Bultmann, reminded me that “Hope is dependent on enrollment and gifts to drive the college financially.”
Bultmann went on to say gifts to the school were being withheld. Coupled with being denied a merit raise, which I had earned for publishing three books that year, and being told I first had to regain the president’s “lost trust and confidence,” I chose to resign instead.
Academic freedom is crucial if we seek to maintain an educated electorate, something which we are currently witnessing the demise of.
When the students learned about my resignation, 250 of them held a massive campus demonstration, delivering a petition with over 400 signatures protesting my departure. The president threatened them by stating their tuition would increase substantially if donors withheld gifts.
Once I was gone, one of those donors who had been calling for my ouster established a Chair in Reform Theology.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, Elsa Prince (1935-2022), another major donor (over $1 million) to the school, who was a native of Holland, Michigan, home of Hope College, once served as a trustee. As the wife of an auto-parts magnate, she laid the foundation for her family’s philanthropy and national political influence.
Through the Edger and Elsa Prince Foundation, she was also deeply integrated in the leadership and funding of Dobson’s two major organizations: Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council (FRC), donating millions. No wonder Dobson responded to my op-ed, leading to an uproar among the white elite of the community.
One last tidbit concerning Elsa Prince: Her daughter is Betsy DeVos, U.S. Secretary of Education during Trump’s first term; and her son is Erik Prince, founder of the private mercenary military group Blackwater (later known as Xe Services), which played an oversized role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dobson is dead, but his toxicity lives on. The anti-Christian fear of the Other he vomited over the decades has become one of the foundational planks of today’s white Christian nationalism.
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Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
