Paul Tuns:

James C. Dobson, a child psychologist who founded Focus on the Family after seeing first-hand the toll of the social tumult of the 1960s, died on August 21 at the age of 89. A cause of death was not provided by the family’s spokesman.

Dobson was an evangelical Christian, the son of a preacher in the Church of the Nazarene, who helped other Christians live a life of faith by providing resources for families. He started the Focus on the Family radio show in 1977 to promote Christian virtues. He promoted marriage and inveighed against restrictions on school prayer, abortion, and the LGBQT agenda. He called Roe v. Wade “one of the court’s most shameful moments.” At its peak, the radio show had seven million daily listeners.

Focus on the Family also produced the long-running children’s series, Adventures in Odessey, about a fictional town centered on its most prominent citizen, a Christian ice cream shop owner named John Avery Whittacker. First broadcast in 1987, it is still airing, with more than 1050 episodes. At its height, Odessey garnered more than one million listeners.

Focus on the Family also provided couples and pastors with resources to buttress family life, including counseling. The organization puts pro-life in action by supporter pregnancy care centers, providing sonograms and other services to pregnant mothers.

The Washington Post reported that Focus on the Family took “some of the first steps, two years before the Rev. Jerry Falwell launched the Moral Majority, toward bringing evangelical Christianity explicitly int the realm of conservative politics.” In 1983, Dobson founded the Family Research Council, a think tank and advocacy organization based in Washington. In 1994, he joined D. James Kennedy and four others to launch the Alliance Defense Fund, which would become the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy organization that supports pro-life, pro-family, and pro-faith litigation. In 2004, he founded the Family Policy Alliance, in order to lobby politicians on issues of life and family. Dobson promoted pro-life and pro-family candidates, and said in 2004 that failure to cast a ballot for such candidates was a sin. During Republican primaries, he would encourage Christians to support the most pro-life candidate and in the general election implored them to vote for pro-life Republicans over pro-abortion Democrats.

Dobson stepped down as president and CEO of Focus on the Family in 2003, and resigned as chairman of the board in 2009.

Writing in the Washington Examiner Elisha Krauss, a former producer with the Sean Hannity show, said Dobson “stood up for his Biblical beliefs with empathy and compassion for the person experiencing hardship.” Christianity Today reported that Dobson led his ministry with “gentleness.”

Jonathan Van Maren wrote in World magazine that Dobson is too often viewed merely as “a political figure and miss the fact that the bulk of his life’s work was poured into the families of ordinary people.” Van Maren said Dobson “was a titan who benefited countless families.”

Dobson is survived by his wife, Shirley, and two children.