The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War

by Dan Gilgoff

Led by the immense behind-the-scenes influence of Dr. James Dobson, Focus on the Family has grown from its roots as a California radio show dispensing parenting advice to an unrivaled media ministry broadcasting on more than two thousand stations in the United States alone. Dobson has supplanted Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed as the political spokesman for tens of millions of American evangelical Christians--even though he is not a minister, but a family therapist with a doctorate in child development.

Dobson maintains that American political and social values are firmly rooted in Christian tradition--one that has come under siege beginning in the 1960s, as court rulings undermined the importance of religion in public policy. With the support of evangelical followers, Dobson has built a powerful political machine at both state and national levels to wage a crusade against abortion, gay rights, the teaching of evolution, stem cell research, and judicial activism.

Through painstaking research and interviews with leading evangelicals, including Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, and James Dobson himself, along with rare access to Focus on the Family and its affiliated organizations, Dan Gilgoff reveals the scope of Dobson's empire and its implications for the future of America.

This paperback edition includes a new afterword covering the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates--Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Huckabee, McCain, Giuliani, Romney, and Thompson--as they court Dobson and the evangelical vote in 2008.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion, Politics

352 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 2007

Reviews

[Liz]

Reading The Jesus Machine in a post-Trump, post-Roe era is a bit eerie considering the roots of many of the Republican Party's extremism show themselves in the Moral Majority/Focus on the Family era.

[Denise]

An expose on how James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and all their subordinate political groups are pushing American politics to the side of evangelical Christianity. Convincing church pastors to become "patriot pastors" and preaching moral "issues" dictated by these same political groups...using the Arlington Group (a secret society of the religious right's top power brokers--Dobson, Jerry Falwell, James Kennedy, etc) to formulate how to CONTROL their evangelical church-goers to vote their AGENDA. Propaganda, power and control...in order to re-shape America to THEIR specifications rather than to follow the teachings of a loving Jesus. I am shocked and frightened by just how far this religious-political group can progress and what it would mean for my children and grandchildren.

[Ethan]

This book was a great in-depth look at the origins and evolution of the Christian right more broadly and Focus on the Family in particular. Despite the title it was pretty even-handed, treating his subjects with relative objectivity. As someone used to just thinking of the religious right as big bad guys, it was fascinating to seea more nuanced look at the different branches of the movement, the different ideologies, and how they relate to the larger evangelical community. The prose is very engaging, and it's definitely a page-turner for politcal junkies, particularly folks who closely followed the 2004 election and the state and federal campaigns for anti-gay marriage amendments.

Oddly enough, the most interesting chapter was towards the end, looking at how the Democrats post-04 were trying to close the gap with Republicans among religious voters. The book was published last summer, I believe, but it pretty much describes Obama's whole approach to talking about religion. It's almost prophetic.

[Jeffrey]

This book was not what I expected it to be. Rather than a straight-up progressive attack on James Dobson and his place in the evangelical right, this is more of a dispassionate history of Focus on the Family and James Dobson. The latter parts of the book definitely focus more on the political impacts that the movement has had and I thought that the last few chapters lost some focus (the chapter on "life after Dobson" didn't paint as full a picture of the future scenarios as would have been warranted by the depth of the earlier parts). Overall, I felt like I picked up quite a bit of new info and perspective from reading this and really gave a lot of shading to my mental picture of "the christian right". Recommended

[Liz]

A very well researched and interesting look at the development and evolution of the Christian Right's involvement in national politics. The content didn't quite reflect the title, though, and while well researched, the writing tended to ramble along as if the author were trying to fit his hundreds of pages of notes into a single book, without necessarily following a clear outline.

[Jessica Fitzgerald]

As a research book for a class this book makes all the stops. However, it fails in its attempt to remain unbiased, it emphasizes the monster that is Dobson, and never really puts in another perspective. But I guess that could be me assuming there's a soft side to everyone...Dobson just may be the exception.

[Brittany]

I had to return this to the library...the first part wasn't worth my time so I figured the second part wouldn't be either. It was also outdated because it kept talking about "recent attempts to amend THE CONSTITUTION to prohibit marriage equality." Yeah, apparently people wanted to do that while I was still living under a political rock.

[Jim]

expecting to find an invective-filled anti-dobson tirade, i was surprised to find a fair seeming assessment of dobson, the history of his organization and a great deal of insight into his cognitive framework.

[Darlene Hammond]

Interesting in light of the current focus on the "evangelical" influence on this year's election. Noted that the term has taken on an extreme right wing intolerant meaning which many evangelicals would not identify with.

[Derek]

I just picked this up today,it look really intersting