Photo courtesy of Focus on the Family. CC BY-SA 3.0.
James Dobson, the founder of the religious right group Focus on the Family, died on August 21, 2025, according to the obituary in The New York Times (August 21, 2025). "In an era of change that revolutionized concepts of family life, child-rearing, marriage and sexual identity," the obituary explained, "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."
Although neither Dobson nor Focus on the Family was particularly invested in creationism or climate change denial, they regularly amplified the messages of those who were. In 2001, Dobson described the seven-part "Evolution" series on PBS as "little more than evolutionary propaganda because no new evidence for Darwinian naturalism was presented," as Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross reported in their Creationism's Trojan Horse (2004). He also endorsed the Ben-Stein-fronted propaganda film Expelled, claiming that it "makes a powerful case for 'Intelligent Design' in explaining the origins of life and the creation of the universe. It also exposes an entrenched and aggressive Darwinist establishment in academia that suffocates all competing points of view." Focus on the Family regularly featured a variety of creationists — including William Dembski, Duane Gish, Phillip Johnson, David Rives, and Hugh Ross — on its broadcasts and websites. As for climate change denial, Dobson was among the signatories of a 2007 letter urging the National Association of Evangelicals to take action against Richard Cizik, then its vice president for government relations, who was urging evangelicals to take climate change seriously, according to The New York Times (March 3, 2007). Focus on the Family's website currently offers for sale Ken Ham and Jessica DeFord's Climate Change for Kids, which NCSE's Glenn Branch described as "a mix of error and fantasy, with the errors resembling those of secular climate change deniers and the fantasies emanating from their own reading of — and creative additions to — the Bible."
Dobson was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on August 21, 1936. After earning a bachelor's degree in psychology from Pasadena College (now Point Loma Nazarene University) in 1958, he studied at the University of Southern California, where he earned a Ph.D. in psychology in 1969. He was associate clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine and a staff member at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles before founding Focus on the Family in 1977. He served as Focus on the Family's president and CEO until 2003 and chaired its board until 2009.
