Let me preface this by saying I hope one reads this in the sincere spirit of concern in which it is written. I have long listened to James Dobson’s radio broadcasts and am familiar with who he is and what he’s about. I think he means well. But I think he, like so many other Christian leaders in this country, skate about it the wrong way. While I am interested in politics on a person level, thus why I write about it, I believe Christian discourse should, as much as possible, stay above that fray. If it doesn’t, the door stands wide open for the problems I will point out in this post. When Christians become so irrevocably married to a political party or to a certain world ideology (i.e. left-wing or right-wing), it tends to cloud judgment and control all a person says and does. Thus, Christ becomes not the most important topic of discussion, but a tool or vessel used to begin conversations that support a manmade party or ideology. This is the flaw I see in this broadcast, and these comments are intended not to intentially blast someone (because I do think Dobson is sincere in some ways), but an exhortation to keep a Christian-based program what it should be: about Christ.
Near the end of a broadcast from Focus on the Family Action, Christian leader James Dobson and Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy for Focus on the Family Action, dissected one of Barack Obama’s speeches from way back on June 28. 2006. Dobson told listeners he could spend two days going over Obama’s speech to “let people know what Barack Obama thinks of religion …”
First, I think it would have been more prudent to allow people to watch Obama’s speech for themselves, rather than filtering it, pulling out sound clips out of context and dictating to folks about how they should feel about Obama. To that end, watch for yourself:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFOdOht5Ccs]
And follow this link for the other parts of the speech, or download the text.
The broadcast about Obama’s speech on citizenlink.org seemed to construe some of Obama’s points, thus unraveling the Democratic principles summoned by Dobson and Minnery in mentioning the Constitution and George Washington in their broadcast. One point of contention mentioned in the broadcast was Obama’s failure to acknowledge that 75 percent of people in the country identified with the Christian religion. It’s true. Obama merely said “organized religion” and did not specify that that religion was Christian, but I think given the long tradition of Christianity in this country, that was not necessary. Given the venue and since everyone under his voice probably fell into that 76 percentile, it was likely assumed. Prefacing the percentages, Obama said:
… But over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives … and I think it’s time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy. And if we’re going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people.
After presenting the figures, he said:
This religious tendency is not simply the result of successful marketing by skilled preachers or the draw of popular megachurches. In fact, it speaks to a hunger that’s deeper than hunger that goes beyond any particular issue or cause.
Here, it’s clear Obama is speaking about the “something” inside us that makes us unsatisifed with this life and the “something” that makes us long for that which is above and beyond our carnal selves. And that is a hunger for the spiritual, at its most rudimentary expression, and a hunger for God Almighty in its fullest form. After relating an upbringing that was at best skeptical of religion and at worst, atheistic, Obama, who has publicly made no qualms that he believed in Christ as his savior, told of how he became active in church. He said:
Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities.
Faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts,” he said a couple sentences later. “You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away – because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.
But this personal testimony was left out of the broadcast, and instead, the choice was made to denigrate Obama. After presenting the percentages, Minnery read a portion of Obama’s message (which skipped at least 500 words or more down into the speech), where he said America is not just a Christian nation, but a Muslim nation, a Hindu nation, a Jewish nation, etc. etc. followed by Minnery’s exacerbated sounding, “Excuse me?”
First, can I ask: Are we a theocracy? If the answer is no, then in no way can it be concluded that we are a Christian nation. So long as 1 percent of the population is something else, we can’t logically be described as anything but a mix. Yes, the percentage of Muslims, Hindus and Jews in the country is small, but the percentage of non-believers is not as small, at 14 percent. While Christianity may be the pervailing religion of choice in this country, we can’t act as if is it is the only religion or even that is should be the only religion. This is not a Christian nation, and nor should it be. This is only my opinion, but the religious DNA of a country should be inconsequential to the call of a Christian, for Christ didn’t come to earth to die just for white, Republican evangelicals or for America in general. He came for all, and guess, what? He came to die for Muslims, Jews and atheists too. As He loved them so should we. One must ask oneself: if I were a Muslim or Jew or Hindu or atheist listening to this broadcast, would I be more inclined to believe in Christ or more inclined to become exacerbated with the level of flippancy toward those of other faiths. To me, this is the test of whether a broadcast, like Focus on the Family or like the organization, Focus on the Family Action (which seems to be the politically opinionated branch of Dobson’s outreach and supported by contributions that aren’t tax deductible). I myself am a Christian, and I was growing increasingly agitated by listening to this broadcast. The level of vitriol is enough to leave a sour taste in anyone’s mouth.
By the way, in this portion of the broadcast, Minnery said: “He’s (Obama’s) not even acknowledging the strong Judeo-Christian tradition” in the country. But, let’s point to another portion of Obama’s speech that was not mentioned, where Obama clearly states: “Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
Minnery then moved to a portion of Obama’s speech which mentioned James Dobson. Minnery sequed and said, “and then, he begins to diminish you,” speaking of Dobson. In the next clip, Obama asked the rhetorical question that if we expelled every non-believer in the country, whose form of Christianity should we follow: James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s. To me this is an easy questioned compared to a more perplexing one that I’m sure non-believers ask frequently: In lieu of the 10+ major denominations of Christianity in this country alone, including Catholism, Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Lutheran and others, which should we follow?
For some reason, Minnery said that Obama was comparing Dobson to Sharpton, when in fact, Obama was contrasting the two, saying they have two distinct ways of reading the Bible. This would be a true statement. The nature of Obama’s argument was in the form of a contrast, not a comparison. That was pretty clear from reading the speech. Yet, Dobson, who noted he had read the speech, said:
Obviously, that is offensive to me, I mean, who wants to expel people who are not Christians? Expel ’em from what? From the country? Deprive them of constitutional rights? Is that what he thinks I want to do? … He also equates me with Al Sharpton, who is a reverend. I am not a reverend. I’m not a minister …
At least the final portion is true. While Obama was contrasting Dobson and Sharpton, perhaps mentioning the two in the same sentences garners some level of comparison. True, Dobson is not a minister, but he is clearly one of the most revered Christian leaders in the country. He has as much influence as any pastor, with the exception, perhaps, of Billy Graham. I understand the humbleness, but why would Dobson skirt away from that and attempt to deny that he isn’t one of, if not the most influential white Christian leader, while Sharpton is one of the most influential black Christian leader. When the average American thinks of Christian leaders, it cannot be denied that names like Graham, Robertson, Falwell and Dobson are immediately summoned.
Next, the broadcast looks at the next portion of the speech, where Obama, again rhetorically, asks whether we should follow the precepts of the Old Testament or the New, and in my mind, levels one of the greatest defenses of Jesus I have heard:
Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application?
First, this was a rhetorical thought and the portion of this quote about the Old Testament was, if one listens to the speech, said tongue-in-cheek. Second, the final sentence of this quote speaks to me as much as any sermon ever has. Simply, the Sermon on the Mount is so radical that our own supposed peace-keeping entity would crumble under its weight. We can’t fathom the peace and forgiveness implied by its application.
Third, Dobson and Minnery are, of course, correct that those laws mentioned by Obama are specific to the Israel people and to their time. But what of the thousands today who would desire to put up copies of the Ten Commandments in every courthouse and school in the country? What portions of the Old Testament should we adopt as pertaining to our lives and what portions should we religate as being bound to a specific time and for a specific group of people? Obama is not a theologian, and despite these criticisms, Dobson minutes earlier admitted he wasn’t either. Regardless, for non-believers looking on, if we were to assume Obama was serious (which I believe he wasn’t with regard to the Old Testament comments) these are legitimate questions, and I don’t feel should be glossed over, and they certainly shouldn’t be viewed with such exacerbation, as if to say, “How dare someone ask that question?!?” Believe me, millions around the world ask that question. A better use of the broadcast’s time during this segment might have been to explain more in depth the old law versus new law and Jesus’ impact on both.
Now, for my last point (I could chew up 10,000-plus words on this), Dobson claims in this broadcast that the speech had just recently “gone viral on the Internet.” This is not true. Try it for yourself. Search “Obama’s June 28, 2006 speech” in Google and what do you find? Go on … browse to the second of third page of search results. One finds transcripts of it and articles about Dobson’s reaction to it. One doesn’t find that Obama’s speech had gone viral prior to Dobson’s broadcast but because of it. It’s two years old; it was going to go viral, it would have done so long before now. We are just now reading about it two years after it was delivered!
Conclusion: I want to believe Dobson is sincere. In some ways, as a Christian, I believe he is in many ways sincere in what he says, but like George Bush and others, I believe he’s being fed lines from “trusted officials,” like Minnery, who tell him what to say and who feed him misconstrued messages that he either has no time to investigate for himself or no inclination, thus fueling punditry in the guise of Biblical exposition.
In either case, if he has no time or inclination to weed through the biases and figure out for himself what presumptive presidential candidates truly believe and deliver a Biblically sound, sincere analysis based on his own studies, he has no business running broadcasts like this. And further, I would argue he has no business running broadcasts like this for either a) the purpose of contention and b) for the purpose of denigrate one political party or its ideologies over another. That’s not the call of a Christian. The call of a Christian is to denigrate no one, love all and make disciples of every nation. The Great Commission indeed becomes a challenge when one spends air time talking about personal issues and politics.
If I were in a position of leadership, or in any position, some one else would not tell me what to believe, nor would another person in my organization give me “his version” of current events. I would have the honor, as poet John Milton, to seek and know pray and read for myself. Either Dobson seeks and knows for himself or he does not. The current evidence, while we should hope it’s not true, at least based on this broadcast leans toward the latter.