“The Jesus You Know” series (post #6)

Ed Dobson was about as conservative as conservative gets. In 1979, when Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority (a Religious Right conservative movement that helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency in a landslide), Dobson was one of Falwell’s top lieutenants. In the years prior to and after 1979, Dobson served in a wide variety of roles for Falwell. He was a teacher and administrator at Falwell’s Liberty University, an associate pastor at Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church, a founding member of the board of Moral Majority, the editor of Falwell’s Fundamentalist Journal, and one of the ghost-writers of Falwell’s book, The Fundamentalist Phenomenon. 

By the mid-1980s, however, Dobson had begun to grow disillusioned with the Religious Right’s brand of Christian conservatism, particularly the basic assumption that cultural problems could be fixed by means of politics. In 1987, he left politics altogether and became the senior pastor of the non-denominational Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There he led the church to reach out in Christian love to the area’s homosexual community and provide care for Aids patients. He still believed the Bible’s teaching that homosexuality was a sin, but he was burdened to offer homosexuals an experience with Christians that was based upon love and dialogue rather than hate and name-calling. Ironically, years later in 2013, his own son Daniel would come out as gay.

In 1999, Dobson coauthored a book, Blinded by Might, with Cal Thomas, another prominent former member of the Moral Majority. Even though the book was quite critical of Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, Dobson eased up a bit after Falwell’s death in 2007, saying in an interview for Christianity Today magazine, “I was an outspoken critic of Jerry Falwell and others. Recently, I’ve changed my mind. I think he was doing what he felt God was leading him to do, and I was doing what I felt God was leading me to do. The ultimate judgment is up to God, not me or Jerry.”

In 2000, at age of 50, Dobson was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and told he had 2-5 years to live. Following the diagnosis, he sat down and made a list of everyone he had ever offended. Then he began working through the list and asking forgiveness from each person. He resigned as the pastor of Calvary Church in 2005 but continued to defy expectations for how long he had to live. In 2008, he accepted the unpaid, voluntary role of Vice-President for Spiritual Formation at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

It was along about that same time that he devoted himself to a full year of trying to eat what Jesus ate, pray as Jesus prayed, observe the Jewish Sabbath and other Jewish holy days, and basically just live as Jesus lived. From that experience came a book, The Year of Living Like Jesus. But Dobson’s time at Cornerstone wasn’t without controversy. In late December of 2008 and early January of 2009, he came under fire for admitting in multiple media outlets, including a television interview on Good Morning America, that he had voted for Barack Obama in the recent presidential election and had drunk alcohol during his year of living like Jesus. Those two admissions were downright shocking to conservative Christians.

In a written response to his critics, Dobson explained that his vote for Barack Obama was based upon his pro-life belief, not in spite of it. He wrote: “I am pro-life before birth and pro-life after birth…For me, being pro-life includes not only the protection of the unborn but also how we treat people who are already born.” But he also wrote, “…I have little faith in politicians of either party. The real work of reducing abortions and extending love and compassion to the poor and oppressed should be done by those who are devoted followers of Jesus.”

As for Dobson’s defense of his consumption of alcohol, he said, “Jesus himself was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. Obviously, he was neither! But he did eat food, and he did drink wine. He did frequent parties with tax collectors and sinners. So part of my journey was to try and emulate Jesus in this way.”

Ed Dobson died on December 26, 2015, just a few days shy of his 66th birthday. But the right-wing brand of Christian conservatism that he led and left in the 1980s is still very much alive and well. The problem is that now it’s so in bed with American nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, and the Republican party that it’s oftentimes hard to draw lines of distinction at all.

Lest you think that I am a liberal infidel for making such a statement, you might want to read my blog posts on the social issues of our day. By doing this you’ll find that I’m pro-life, anti-abortion, and anti-homosexuality. Furthermore, I am a registered Republican who usually votes Republican.

At my core, though, I’m a devout, discerning Christian, and that fact compels me to say that the Jesus that many conservatives are now presenting is a distorted savior. He’s disturbingly American, disturbingly white, disturbingly enamored with wealth, disturbingly unconcerned with the plight of the poor and the sick, disturbingly at ease with win-at-all-costs politics, disturbingly hypocritical when it comes to sexual sin, disturbingly paranoid about losing His place at the head of the table, disturbingly obsessed with guns and military might, and disturbingly unconcerned with the evangelization of the entire world.

This brings me back to Ed Dobson. He’s in heaven now, but I’d love to pick his brain on where things stand these days in regards to conservative Christianity’s relationship to American politics. Frankly, I think he saw the handwriting on the wall in the 1980s as to where it was all headed. And unlike Jerry Falwell and others, he just couldn’t make that direction mesh with the Jesus he read about in the Bible. So, he broke rank and charted a new course for himself, one that he felt would allow him to not only draw closer to his Savior but better serve Him.

Falwell is heaven now too, I figure, and I smile at the thought of him and Dobson enjoying eternity together. For that matter, the rest of us Christians will be there too one day. I guess that’s when we will all at last get this “Jesus thing” down pat. Until then, though, I hope you will join me, Christian, in admitting that trying to live for Jesus in this fallen world can get tricky sometimes. You see, if you can at least admit that, there’s hope for you when it comes to walking the fine line between serving Jesus and settling for the American, politicized, whitened, Republican, conservative version of Him.