How To Lose A Civilization
John Haskins is the former associate director of Massachusetts-based Parents’ Rights Coalition and former proprietor of Underground Journal. The following is a commentary he sent out in an email on May 6, 2010.
We’ve been fatally wrong about Dr. James Dobson, his allies and the so-called “social conservative movement.”
James Dobson has been a prime beneficiary (or rather, from the eternal perspective of the Spirit, a prime victim) of our contemporary church culture’s reflexive avoidance of confrontation. For years I greatly admired and respected Dobson and Focus On the Family, and saw them as huge blessings from God to America in our modern age. I’m sure that’s how James Dobson himself persists in seeing his own legacy.
Sadly, I now know better. Dobson, Focus and their allied groups like FRC, CWA, ADF, and the respective allied “leaders” and “legal experts” have played a devastating trick on Christians in this country, leading us into a horrible historical ambush, with seemingly no way out. Most of these “leaders” and lawyers imagine themselves to be men and women of vision and principle. But over and over again they took the low road… and the payoff along the way. They built their entire “movement” on Madison Avenue marketing and P.R. methods. They built cults of celebrity. They endlessly undercut and betrayed more principled leaders — of whom they were always embarrassed before the media and their powerful contacts in the Republican Party.
They were totally unable to play hardball with the liars, demagogues and charlatans in politics, media and the legal profession. Why? Because they themselves had become, in the final analysis, more liars, demagogues and charlatans than reflections of the personality and character of Jesus Christ. Where Jesus chose dis-respect, public confrontation and sharp accusation of evil demagogues, Dobson, Focus, FRC, ADF, CWA, NRTL, AFA, TVC, ACLJ, Salem Radio/Townhall.com, CBN, Liberty Council, Pacific Justice Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, and virtually all the Catholic fellow-traveler groups chose “respectful disagreement” and polite discussion behind closed doors. They stigmatized the approach that characterized the life of Jesus, his apostles and prophets.
James Dobson built a major corporation. In the final analysis Focus On the Family is not a ministry, nor was it ever, at least in its impact on public life, law, religious freedom and politics. It is a religious conglomerate.
What Dobson lamented in his retirement speech about the tragic outcome of all the battles in the “culture war” is just as true about much of his life’s work: in politics, defense of life, liberty, rule of law and the family, Dr. James Dobson has been a catastrophic failure. He drowned his vision in the drunken counsel of business managers and ambitious lawyers who were themselves blindly conformed to the system that had cranked them out. Jesus chose his team from a different talent pool, and took a radically different path.
Focus, FRC, ADF, CWA, NRTL, AFA, TVC, ACLJ, Salem Radio/Townhall.com, CBN, Liberty Council, Pacific Justice Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, and virtually all the Catholic fellow-traveler groups — virtually the entire social conservative “movement” — was based on personal ambition and love of money above all else. I use the past tense because these groups are functionally dead, little more than e-mail databases and direct mail operations trying to cover salaries and overhead and earn some free media whenever possible. They reached the point some years ago where even their compulsive and eager capitulataions to amoral Republican demagogues were based on a falsehood: Even their claim of “influence” on their purposted “grassroots base” that they sell to the Republican Party — and that is the sole basis of their access to the media — is mostly fraudulent.
These groups and Dr. James Dobson’s legacy will always be examples of how to lose a civilization by modeling your public persona, your operations and your entire strategy on the bizarre goal of accommodating a Holy God to an unholy world, rather than the reverse. When this lethal poison is spewed from a pulpit it’s called the “prosperity gospel.” In “social conservative” activism and legal advocacy it won’t need a name. It’s finished. The fat lady sang a long time ago, she’s lying in her grave and rigor mortis has set in.
We need to stop flattering people — be they self-styled “pro-family” or “pro-life” leaders, lawyers, pundits, radio hosts, or pastors, priests, bishops and cardinals. We need to grasp that the accountability standard goes up, not down, as a person gains more influence. We need to be capable of utter revulsion at every new spectacle of flattery, so that the iconoclastic, confrontational lives of Jesus, the Apostles and Prophets are the model for our lives, our Christianity, our activism and our leadership. We need to learn to be honest.
Honestly, I, for one, would like to see James Dobson repent, honestly recounting personal errors publicly with sorrow and humility. Not because I dislike James Dobson, but because I care for him. And because that honest example would probably be the most honest and dynamically positive Christian act of his entire public life. It would put so many dishonest false leaders on the spot, and perhaps send some into early retirement.
Maybe, maybe then God would raise up some real leaders for his church and his people.
John Haskins
Opinions expressed by contributing writers are expressly their own and may or may not represent the opinions of Salt and Light Blog.
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Abortion, Christian Activism, Christianity, Conservatism, Constitution, Corruption, Culture, Faith, Forgiveness, History, Morality, Politics, Prayer, RINOs, Republicans, Revival, Sin, Wisdom
