In Defense of Dr. Dobson (Kind of)

Deal, I quite agree that Dr. Dobson’s remark about former Sen. Fred Thompson was a bit too much to take. It is odd that he would single Sen. Thompson out for scrutiny when the prospective field of presidential candidates includes people like Newt Gingrich, whom Dr. Dobson has praised, and who I am sure is a committed Christian but who nevertheless rarely peppers his public speeches with personal testimony.

However, we may be dealing with a classic case of a mainstream secular journalist printing Dr. Dobson’s remarks out of context. I do not here accuse Dan Gilgoff, the reporter, of malice but, perhaps, ignorance. Consider the follow up remarks of Gary Schneeberger from Focus on the Family, which have been widely viewed as “back peddling”:

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Thompson, took issue with Dobson's characterization of the former Tennessee senator. "Thompson is indeed a Christian," he said. "He was baptized into the Church of Christ."

In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson's claim. He said that, while Dobson didn't believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless "has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith."

"We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians," Schneeberger added. "Dr. Dobson wasn't expressing a personal opinion about his reaction to a Thompson candidacy; he was trying to 'read the tea leaves' about such a possibility."

It seems to me that Mr. Corallo and Dr. Dobson/Mr. Schneeberger are suffering a communications breakdown of sorts and the conduit is Mr. Gilgoff. I don’t believe that Dr. Dobson meant to suggest that Sen. Thompson is a Muslim or an atheist, but clearly that is the putative charge against which Mr. Corallo pushed back.

But I think Dr. Dobson is saying that Sen. Thompson has never shown any interest in the role the evangelical Christian community plays in public life. In doing so, he may have conflated the word “Christian” with the idea of politically active evangelicals, which is a conflation he can make when speaking to his audience, but not one he can make when speaking to the mainstream secular media if he wants to be understood.

Under this interpretation of the dustup, it is possible that someone can have been baptized in the Church of Christ (and even affirm the Nicene Creed, for that matter) and still not be a Christian in Dr. Dobson’s usage of the word in this particular instance. I am willing to allow that Dr. Dobson was—inartfully—trying to say something like this: Sen. Thompson is well-known to be a conservative. But in my experience, he has no history of being active in our causes, which will pose an obstacle to him in the primary should he decide to run.

I have offered a charitable interpretation here. This is because I have a great deal of respect for Dr. James Dobson and I find Sen. Fred Thompson to be an intriguing guy (of course, I work for Sen. John McCain) and I am eager to throw cold water on this controversy. But I also think I have a high degree of understanding of how evangelicals speak to one another. So, while charitable, I feel my interpretation is also probable.

In his U.S. News piece, Mr. Gilgoff drops in this one-sentence paragraph:

Dobson's comments yesterday about the 2008 presidential race appear to be his first to a secular news organization in months.

Frankly, I don’t blame Dr. Dobson for distancing himself from the secular media.