2001--In his Nationally syndicated Column Date Janurary 7, 2001  [pmi-note that:

1. Dr. Dobson never quotes God's Word on the subject of tough love through confrontation.

2. Secondly, he promotes a secular process/organization.

3. Thirdly, the tough love confrontation that is Biblical-though not identified as Godly, and the nature of the problem-denial, that Dr. Dobson does mention are the same Biblical steps that he has so stubbornly rejected towards himself, for many years.

4. Fourth he suggests children can go for help without their parents knowing--isn't this the same principle he opposes about teens getting abortions without their parents knowlege?

5. Dr. Dobson send people needing help to this secular organization and not to God's body where they can get everlasting help and life.

God says leave this man alone and stop supporting him until he falls and repents...just like Dr. Dobson says should be done to alcoholics. Everyone who supports Dr. Dobson and Focus On The Family with money, gifts, verbal and non-verbal support contribute to his willfull sinning and the destruction of those who do not know better...May God have mercy on their souls...

ALCOHOLIC MUST BE CONFRONTED IN SPIRIT OF TOUGH LOVE, Dr. Dobson writes:

"Q. My husband drinks excessively.  Aside from getting help for my family, what should I do specifically for him?  How on earth am I going to get him to go to Alcoholics Anonymous or some similar treatment program?  He is deep in denial, and I'm not even sure he's thinking right now.  He couldn't make a rational decision to save his life.  How am I going to get him to cooperate?"

A: You’re right about the difficulties you face. Begging won't accomplish anything, r husband could be dead before he admits he has a problem. Indeed, thousands die each year while denying that alcoholics.

That’s why Al?Anon teaches family members to confront with love. They learn how to remove the support systems that prop up the disease and permit it to thrive.  They are shown how and when to impose ultimatums that force the alcoholic to admit his or her need for help. And sometimes they recommend separation until the victim is so miserable that his or her denial will no longer hold up. In essence, Al?Anon teaches its own version of the love?must be?tough philosophy to family members who must implement it.

I asked Bob, a recovered alcoholic, if he was forced to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, the program that put him on the road to recovery. He said:

    "Let me put it this way. No one goes to AA  just because nothing better to do that evening. Everyone there has been forced to attend initially.  You just don’t say “On Monday night we watched a football game and on Tuesday we went to the movies. So what will we do on Wednesday? How about going over to an AA meeting?' It doesn't work that way. Yes, I was forced ? forced by my own misery. Pauline allowed me to be miserable for my own good. It was loving duress that moved me to attend."

Though it may sound easy to achieve, the loving confrontation that brought Bob to his senses was a delicate maneuver. I must re?emphasize that families should not attempt to implement it on their own initiative. Without the training and assistance of professional support groups, the encounter could degenerate into a hateful, vindictive, name-calling battle that would serve only to solidify the drinker's position.

Al-Anon Family Groups and Alcoholics Anonymous are both listed in local phone books.  Also to be found there is a number of the Council on Alcoholism, which can provide further guidance. For teen?agers of an alcoholic parent there is Alateen. Teens can go there and share without their parents' permission or knowledge, and its free.

AS of August 1, 2000 (Chuck who sought the information from FOTF executives) is saying that "Dr. Dobson IS a member of a local Nazarene church but is not allowed to give out the name"--which functionally means there is still no biblical recourse to address using Matthew 18 and Luke 17. Dr. Dobson's shameful behavior continues and now includes his so called church since they do not hold Dr. Dobson accountable for his actions.

August 1, 2000: 11:18am CDT, upon calling many Nazarene Churches in Colorado Springs I found Rev. Zell Woodworth is Dr. Dobson's pastor at the Nazarene Church Eastborough 4123 E Pikes Peak Ave COLORADO - SPRINGS, CO 80909 719-596-1929 I will attempt to bring these issues to Eastborough ruling Elders for the continuing of Matthew 18-Third Step of "Telling it to the Church". http://www.eastborough.org and Pastor Zell's email is PastorZell@eastborough.org

August 1, 2000:2:28pm CDT Rev. Zell Woodworth wrote back saying,

"Dear Sir, Eastborough, nor it's Church Board, are interested in hearing about your dispute with Dr. Dobson.

His, Pastor Woodworth" Enough said to now treat them as a non-church...Lord, Lord Lord...

"There are only two choices. It really is that clear. 
It's either God's way, or it is the way of social disintegration."
--James Dobson, U.S. News & World Reports (M.J. Gerson. 5/4/98)

See also James Dobson's War on America by Joel Swadesh

The story of James Dobson's high-handed treatment of Gil and Carolyn Alexander-Moegerle following his termination of their employment is an important one for our generation. The termination was apparently over Dobson's perceptions of how the media might perceive events in the personal lives of the Alexander-Moegerles.

Allegations in the civil suit filed by the Alexander-Moegerles included wrongful termination, invasion of privacy, interference with business dealings, and infliction of intentional emotional distress. The legal system failed to discipline Dobson, because he hid within the protections afforded religion. The religious community, fearful of Dobson's considerable power, defaulted on its obligation to discipline Dobson. The sole attempt to bring Dobson to account came from a little-known evangelical counseling organization called PeaceMakers.net.

PeaceMakers attempted to mediate the dispute between Dobson and the Alexander-Moegerles. Failing in that attempt, Peacemakers applied to Dobson scriptural directives on the discipline of self-proclaimed Christians by the larger church. Peacemakers concluded that Dobson's behavior is so far from what is required by scripture that he must be treated as a non-believer; they invited him to join the faith. In Peacemakers' attempts to resolve the issues raised by the dismissal of Gil and Carolyn Alexander-Moegerle, it exposed just how far out of control are parachurches such as Dobson's Focus on the Family (FotF).

"I rarely do political endorsements, but I am making an exception to personally endorse the honorable Bob Dornan because I believe in this man. I wish we had a dozen like him in Congress."

-- James Dobson, Roll Call (Norah O'Donnell, 5/14/98)

PeaceMakers has now made documentation of the dispute available, and the documentation makes interesting reading. Our legal system creates exemptions to tort law to accommodate religious freedom. It is assumed that religious denominations will mediate disputes internally on issues such as employment and invasion of privacy. This may serve for individual churches. After all, an individual can leave her church or, in an extreme case of religious abuse, flee the community. When the exemptions are applied to empires as large as Focus on the Family, however, it takes little imagination to see how the corporate state can cloak itself in religious garb to live above the law.

This is the pattern that one sees, for example, with Pat Robertson's scofflaw evasion of taxes and misapplication of charitable funds to his campaigns (see, for example, TB Edsall, Washington Post, 3/21/98, in which it is reported that Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network paid a heavy fine and suffered retroactive loss of tax exemption for misapplication of tax-exempt funds to politics. See also Americans United for the transcript of a tape revealing the Christian Coalition's emulation of Tammany Hall).

The secular institutions intended to control such misbehavior, even the supposedly fearsome Internal Revenue Service, are toothless when faced with racketeers cloaked in pseudo-religious trappings. The peculiar incapacity of the IRS to enforce the law as it applies to Pat Robertson is due to something other than the mystic power of the cross, of course. The Federal government has never had any difficulty in setting the FBI against religious opponents of illegal wars in Central America, for example. That men of lawlessness, such as Robertson, operate so freely relates rather closely to who runs America.

"In November, November the 8th, 1997 Bill Clinton did an absolutely outrageous thing. I mean, it was outrageous! He went to speak and give the dignity of his office to a group defined by their sexual perverse behavior, a homosexual rights group."

--James Dobson, Spring 1998 address to the Council for National Policy

Should one's personal life -- or worse, misperceptions about one's personal life -- determine whether an elected official will talk to you? Should one's personal life or misperceptions about it determine whether an employer will hire or fire you? Focus on the Family dismissed Gil Moegerle and his fiancee Carolyn Alexander from their jobs apparently due to Dobson's perception of how the media might view actions in their personal lives. Gil's first wife divorced him. He later met and then announced remarriage to Carolyn. Dobson apparently feared that the media would assume that an affair had triggered the divorce and represent it as a failing of FotF.

In a nation in which employees serve at the whim of employers, a dismissal over a personal matter such as divorce and remarriage would be unusual, but hardly a matter for the courts. Employers routinely dismiss people over their personal lives, perceptions of their personal lives, misperceptions, or even imagined misperceptions of their personal lives. For churches, such cavalier behavior is routine.

The Alexander-Moegerles, however, further alleged that Dobson intruded into Gil's confidential relationship with a psychological counselor, unethically disclosed information from that relationship, and following the dismissal apparently used his considerable power to prevent the Alexander-Moegerles from obtaining employment. Denying people work without just cause, an un-American abuse of the prerogatives of wealth, is not legal, though hardly uncommon in this land where civil rights seem to adhere most tightly to those with the wealth to defend them. And indeed, Dobson's assumption that civil rights are to be selectively enjoyed is evident from his statements:

"...[B]lacks are genetically inferior to whites and we could document that if anybody would do that research. But you can't get that research done because it is politically incorrect."

James Dobson, as quoted by Gil Alexander-Moegerle, The Door Magazine, Nov/Dec 1997

This quote demonstrates that Dobson, in addition to being a ranking Republican and a dominant radio personality, is apparently also a member of the Confederacy-in-Exile. It is shocking that at the dawn of the 21st century, four generations after the conclusion of the Civil War, two generations after the defeat of Nazi Germany and its racial "theories," and a full generation after the repudiation of the racial preferences of Jim Crow, men in positions of power and influence still teach us to despise one another. Even more shocking is that men claiming to be inspired by the gospel of Jesus Christ teach such misguided theories.

"When the Hebrew [of the Third Commandment] is translated literally...the commandment yields the meaning: 'You shall not carry the name of the Lord your God in vain.'...People often 'carry' and cite God's name when they promote a cause...[I]f they 'carry' God's name in the promotion of a cause that is evil....then they violate the Third Commandment."

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Biblical Literacy, 1997, p. 426.

The most important contribution of the documentation supplied by PeaceMakers is the alternate vision of the ends toward which religion could be directed. As Fields makes clear in an interview with The Door (Nov/Dec 1997), the American system of religion breeds Pharisees, i.e., self-righteous religious leaders. By associating economic rewards with leadership, a perverse incentive has been established. Jesus told us that we could serve either God or Money. The church that Jesus founded was dedicated to revealing the truth, feeding the poor, healing the sick, and establishing truly merciful justice. The modern parachurch, devoted to the gathering and spending of money for temporal causes, has become the antithesis of the church of Jesus. The modern parachurch is close in spirit to the Roman Empire. As it crusades to take over the political system, it murders the church of Jesus and threatens to become a new Roman Empire. Will we, as a nation, dare to discipline this lawless, out-of-control child of telecommunications and advertising?

(c) 1999 by Joel Swadesh. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced without the author's permission. E-mail: JSwadesh@aol.com This article originally appeared in the Allodium on 1-5-99. Please contact The Allodium for permission requests.

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  steward@peacemakers.net