It's Friday, August 22, 2025. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

One of the most influential figures in American evangelicalism died yesterday. Dr. James Dobson died at his home in Colorado Springs, Colorado,

at age 89. He was one of the most significant figures in the evangelical world, very much a figure

in what became known as the New Christian Right. He was a part of the activism that helped to propel

evangelicals forward even politically. He made a difference in politics. He was an advisor

to no less than five United States presidents. There's always a story behind the story. And when it

comes to James Dobson, he was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1936, two very active Nazarene parents.

Both his mother and his father had been speakers for the church

preachers, itinerant evangelist was one designation, and at some point his mother decided to stay at

home with young Jim Dobson, and his father continued largely on the road as an itinerate evangelist

and preacher. That became a part of Jim Dobson's background. It was a part of what

propelled him, I think, forward in terms of his study, first at Pointe Loma College, and then he went to

the University of Southern California and did both a master's degree and a PhD in psychology,

and he focused particularly on children. Now, after that, he ended up on the staff

of a children's hospital, but he also became associate clinical professor of pediatrics at the

University of Southern California's medical school. And that was a role he fulfilled for many years,

but there were huge things going on in the background that had Jen Dobson's attention, and the background moved to the foreground.

So one of the things that marked Jim Dobson is that even as so much of the therapeutic world

was moving in a markedly secular direction and in a very liberal direction, he was not.

One key moment came in 1973 when the American

Psychological Association changed its position on homosexuality, and that created something of a

crisis at the time. Jim Dobson eventually would leave the School of Medicine there, where he was

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