Dobson Quits
By Brian on Nov 12, 2006
AP, 11/7/06:
Citing a lack of time, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson withdrew Tuesday from the team overseeing counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard, the evangelical pastor who was fired amid allegations of gay sex and drug use.
“Emotionally and spiritually, I wanted to be of help - but the reality is I don’t have the time to devote to such a critical responsibility,” Dobson said.
There’s a lot I want to say about this right now. That Dobson is a fraud, a hypocrite, a Pharisee of the highest order. I’m mad. I was mad before that Dobson said this the day after the Haggard accuasations surfaced:
“It is unconscionable that the legitimate news media would report a rumor like this based on nothing but one man’s accusation. Ted Haggard is a friend of mine and it appears someone is trying to damage his reputation as a way of influencing the outcome of Tuesday’s election—especially the vote on Colorado’s marriage-protection amendment—which Ted strongly supports.”
I’m so mad I can’t even think of an adjective to describe it. Especially because in Dobson’s “lack of time” for Haggard he still had time to do this:
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson on Thursday blamed Republicans’ crushing defeat on abandoning “values voters” and predicted the GOP would stumble further if it charts a more moderate course.
A panel of conservatives on Dobson’s national radio program also lambasted Republicans, credited some Democrats for seizing on moral values and argued - in contrast to conventional wisdom - that Tuesday’s results validated their cause.
“If (Republicans) hope to return to power in ‘08, they must rediscover the conservative principles that resonated with the majority of Americans in the 1980s - and still resonate with them today,” Dobson said in a statement. “Failure to do so will be catastrophic. Values voters are not going to carry the water for the Republican Party if it ignores their deeply held convictions and beliefs.”
Which means Dobson on Monday (11/7) announced he doesn’t have time to focus on the family of Ted Haggard but on Thursday had time to focus on his political powermongering on his radio show and through a statement. Haggard and his family should be Dobson’s highest priority right now, but instead Dobson has shirked his responsibility.
I can’t write any more about this. I’m boiling over and want to spew forth all sorts of vitriol about Dobson’s hypocrisy. But I don’t have to. His own words condemn him.
hat tip: Craig at XXXChurch
You are correct. I too am dismayed that Christian leaders are spending more time on politics than on the kingdom. It simply shows how far we have drifted from the early church. Would love to have you visit my blog as well and leave your thoughts.
Ron Mosby | Nov 12, 2006 | Reply
I am relieved Dobson retired, because his political statements muddied his excellent works regarding the American family.
I wonder if you have as much concern about the Kingdom in Greensboro?… Joel has accused many local evangilical churches and ministries of antinomianism. I am sure he is right on about this, having been a guilty party of starting a church rife with it.
chip atkinson | Nov 12, 2006 | Reply
Holy Cow!! It seems like you had some major axe to grind with Dobson way before he quit “the team”. Hey, who the heck has to put together a “team” for accountability? It seems like this Haggard guy didn’t have real relationships with other men. Dobson is smart enough to realize the time and effort it would take to be a true accountability partner for someone who has obviously been without one for so long.
Get off Dobson’s back; he’s doing all he can to help promote your family values to as many people as he can.
Vince Powell | Nov 12, 2006 | Reply
Nah, I don’t have an axe to grind with Dobson. He’s done some great stuff over the past few decades. We have a bunch of his books and even made the Focus on the Family pilgrimage when we were in Colorado a couple years ago. But I think he’s gotten off course the past few years and gotten way too into political power games.
And I agree that having to put together an emergency accountability team is ridiculous and is a huge reason why Haggard got in the trouble he did in the first place. And his accountability should be coming from the guys who are around him all the time, not a group of all-star pastors from all over the place (though Dobson, for one, is in the same city as Haggard).
And yeah, an accountability relationship like that takes a lot of time and effort. But shouldn’t that be one of Dobson’s highest priorities right now? If he would have begged off for philosophical reasons (Haggard needs to be accountable to people in his church or to his close friends) then I’d be all for it. But in Dobson’s own words he begged off because he didn’t have the time for it, and seemingly those higher priorities are political. And I think that’s crap.
And you’ll say the same thing to me when I “don’t have time” for accountability in 2008 when I’m spending too much of my time using this highly influential blog for political powermongering among the Alamance-Burlington school board and Alamance County commissioners.
brian | Nov 13, 2006 | Reply
True, true. Saying he doesn’t have time is the easy way out. Should he go into all the other reason why he needs to be the point of the spear to drive home an accountability lesson to someone who has spent years building up a formidable defense? Not in my opinion. I’ll take it for what’s it’s worth, which to me, was “I choose to spend my time helping others.” Did he mean Haggard wasn’t worth it? Maybe. Did he mean Haggard is too messed up for even me to fix? Maybe. Not sure he could stay Biblical if he raked him over the coals in the press like that. Now, has Dobson gone to Haggard man to man and had some difficult conversations with him? That’s the question that should be asked and Dobson is the only one who needs to ask and answer it.
I live in the same city as lots of people I would like to have accountability relationships with but, guess what, I don’t have time either.
What’s this school board talk? You running?
Vince Powell | Nov 13, 2006 | Reply
Nope, just making a point. We can’t let politics become more important to us than relationships.
brian | Nov 13, 2006 | Reply
Brian,
Have you considered giving Dobson the benefit of the doubt? Perhaps he was telling the truth about his available time? If he is a true friend and really doesn’t have the time, wouldn’t it be the most loving thing to let someone who can invest the necessary time and effort take the role instead?
Dobson’s organization is political, and he has already committed himself to that organization (not to mention the other things I am sure he is already committed to as well). It is a “Christian” thing to uphold one’s commitments by not overburdening oneself, even if what one has to say “no” to is important.
I’m shocked at the harshness of your words spoken in ignorance. You condemn as if you have inside knowledge of what their relationship really is like. You seem way too rattled by this when you really have no idea what is going on in the lives of Haggard and Dobson, and their personal relationship.
What you are condemning Dobson for not doing, he may very well be doing privately, for hours and days, with Haggard, but just didn’t have time for scheduled group meeting commitments. You just don’t know. Your high-horse position reads as if you know exactly what is going on, on the inside, and just how to condemn him for it. What happened with “bearing with one another” and giving someone the benefit of the doubt? Why do you fail to extend the grace and mercy to Dobson that you demand he extend to Haggard (which he may be doing anyway, privately)? A relationship doesn’t have to be public or high profile to be genuine.
There’s nothing wrong with pointing out what you perceive to be a lack of consistency from your ignorance vantage point, but name-calling is unnecessary, especially when you are clueless as to what truly may be happening outside of the public eye.
Could it be perhaps that you just don’t like Dobson’s politics personally, and you resent the influence his political organization has? If I recall, this isn’t the first time you’ve failed to give Dobson the benefit of the doubt, and pilled onto him with the rest of the world: http://www.brianbaute.com/archives/2005/01/james_dobson_and_spongebob.php
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment! James 2:12-13
tr
Tony Rose | Nov 13, 2006 | Reply
Hey Tony. Thanks for chiming in. Yeah, I disagreed with Dobson back in January 2005 as well. So at this rate I guess I’m due to post about him again September 2008.
And maybe you’re right that Dobson is counseling Haggard for hours and days privately. Maybe when he said, “Emotionally and spiritually, I wanted to be of help - but the reality is I don’t have the time to devote to such a critical responsibility” he really meant “I’m helping him privately but not as part of the group.” But if that’s the case why didn’t he say that instead of saying he didn’t have time to counsel him? He didn’t have time to counsel him becasue he was too busy counseling him? That doesn’t make any sense.
Words mean things, and I’m reacting to Dobson based on his own words. That’s fair, isn’t it?
brian | Nov 13, 2006 | Reply
I think the issue is, neither you nor I know, so why make such a firm judgment on the matter as if we do?
We don’t have the right to behave as if we are the private spiritual accountants for public figures, and we know we can’t trust the media to give us the straight scoop.
You could be right. He could be all the things you claim emphatically of him. But you don’t know, and I think that reasonable doubt begs for the benefit of the doubt. One thing you do know is that you have incomplete information at best. I’m not saying don’t be critical or question based on the information you do have. But don’t lynch the man from your lofty position of ignorance.
If you were helping a friend privately and the media was twisting it to defame you, would not at least hope the Christian public would give you the benefit of the doubt?
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Tony Rose | Nov 13, 2006 | Reply
Moreover Brian, you said,
Words do mean things Brian, but first and foremost, they mean what the person using them meant, not what you choose to assign as your own meaning.
When Dobson says that he doesn’t have the time, instead of taking his words at face value and giving him the benefit of the doubt that he is telling the truth, instead, you assign your own priorities to the things going on in his life, and then criticize him for not prioritizing them the way you think he should. That’s arrogant and unbecoming of a Christian.
You judge that Dobson is putting politics above relationships, but you have no idea what kind of relationships he has. Dobson could currently be counseling 10 cases far worse than Haggard’s, and he may simply not have time, just as he stated. He may know that Haggard can get other competent counsel, but then people he is working with, that you don’t know about, perhaps can’t. You have no right to judge the priorities in his life, especially when you don’t even know what commitments he is prioritizing in the first place.
You see the difference Brian, I am not defending Dobson, I am simply giving him the benefit of the doubt since I don’t know all the facts. You are assigning priorities to all the commitments in his life that you are completely ignorant of, and then standing as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner over him.
Your point is that it is inconsistent when Christians put politics over relationships, and they are hypocrites when they do. I don’t disagree with that statement in general, but I don’t think you have enough evidence to proclaim this as an example. Therefore you should show some grace based on your obvious ignorance.
Equally concerning, is the inconsistency of Christians who fail to forgive and fail to give one another the benefit of the doubt. That’s equally hypocritical.
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Tony Rose | Nov 14, 2006 | Reply
Hey Tony. Thanks. You’ve given me a lot to chew on here, and I appreciate it.
But your advice (good as it is) sure seems to contradict how you’ve responded here and here and here and here and here.
When you say, “first and foremost, (words) mean what the person using them meant,” that seems to be a complete reversal from your usual position of absolute truth and clarity. How can we know anything at all if the primary meaning is what the speaker or writer meant to say rather than what he actually said or wrote? There’s obviously a level of interpretation involved, but isn’t the primary meaning the objective fact of the words themselves?
brian | Nov 14, 2006 | Reply
Brian,
With all due respect, you’re being defensive and silly now. If you can’t understand the distinctions you’ve blurred in your last comment, I am not sure they are explainable to you. I’ll try anyway.
Dealing with your last point first,
It is not a complete reversal, it is completely consistent! But I can understand why your postmodern mindset misses it. The way you write that sentence, it is as if you think what someone means, and what they write, are always at odds, and it is the reader’s job to always determine the difference. Reality is, when someone writes something, it is the reader’s job to discern what the writer’s intent was, and to add nothing else to his or her words. In short, to arrive their intended meaning. The “level of interpretation” should be only to figure out what he meant, not to figure out what I wanted him to mean. That is not what you have done with Dobson’s words in your original post.
Instead, you took two comments, in two completely different contexts, and put them together, and then you added your own priorities to them and concluded that he valued one over the other. That is not trying to figure out what he meant in either context. You’ve judged him unfairly and ignorantly because you’ve applied your own meaning to his words (specifically, your value of his job at FotF and its politics, vs. your value of him helping Haggard). I simply ask, “Where you there?” and “Do you know?”
Dealing with your first point, regarding my words contradicting myself, again, you’ve missed the point. My first response is to point out that the way you are responding to me pointing this out, to go hunt for a “you did it too” handful of mud to sling, that’s silly and immature, and avoiding the issue I am raising.
Secondly, you didn’t find what you think you did because the posts you linked to above are comparing applies to oranges.
When I have called public teachers out on my blog, it is in response to things they have said publicly, and things that they teach publicly, and the expose is truth in contrast to error. This is perfectly consistent with the NT example of Paul when he confronted publicly taught error. That is very different than judging motives of an individual based on information that I do not have, regarding their personal life, and concluding that they “value politics over relationships,” or any other motive assigning conclusion based on absent facts.
When someone teaches error in the name of Christ, Christians are obligated to compare the error to the truth (1 Thess 5:21) and speak out (Jude 3). We are not to assign our priorities to other’s personal affairs and judge them “wrong” based on what we think they should be doing, with our incomplete knowledge of what is going on in their life.
It saddens me that you can’t see difference. It irony of all this is that the very false teachings of the people have I exposed on my blog, are the same ones that have influenced your postmodern thinking, and preventing you from seeing these distinctions you are blurring.
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Tony Rose | Nov 14, 2006 | Reply
here, here!!!! It’s gang up on Brian day. It looks like ole Brian has got himself a brew, hah, hah on his hands.
I’ve gotta go with Tony on this one. Dobson has quite the track record in my opinion.
Why go after him? Is there some other reason out there other than to cast some sort of doubt on his credibility?
Vince Powell | Nov 15, 2006 | Reply
Relentless Grace? Where is the grace in this spill? Grace doesn’t blow it’s cool. Sorry, you missed the boat on this one.
John | Apr 14, 2007 | Reply