Dobson spiritual empire wields political clout

[RedEarth]

COLORADO SPRINGS -- The bullet hole just inside the headquarters of Focus on the Family is carefully preserved, a reminder of that 1996 day when a gunman held four employees hostage at the nerve center of James C. Dobson's evangelical empire. According to a sign near the bullet hole, the power of prayer helped end that standoff.

In those days, Dobson was known primarily as a folksy child psychologist, an avuncular figure with a popular radio show who used a heavy helping of Christian morality to flavor his advice on child-rearing.

Today, prayer is only part of what Dobson is dispersing through radio, books, and a panoply of other media as he takes his fight for family values from the shadow of Pikes Peak to the halls of Congress and the steps of the Supreme Court. To Dobson, the stakes could not be higher.

''Two starkly contrasting worldviews predominate today's moral and cultural debate," Dobson said in an e-mail response to questions from The Boston Globe. ''One side defends the traditional values that have made this nation great for more than 225 years; the other works to chisel away at that foundation."

Dobson stands in the vanguard of a crusade by evangelical Christians to place their agenda at the forefront of public debate over presidential and congressional elections, judicial appointments, gay marriage, and the ''life issues" of abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem-cell research. Dobson, 69, is arguably the dominant ideologist of the movement.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/10/09/dobson_spiritual_empire_wields_political_clout?mode=PF

[niyad]

1. he and ted haggard (new life mega-church) exert far too much influence

here in colorado springs, unfortunately.