James Dobson has much to celebrate. Roe v. Wade is history. President Donald Trump is reversing transgender gains, targeting elite universities and defunding Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting. Dobson’s disciples lead the Senate and House, and conservatives have a majority on the Supreme Court.
But broadcasts from the James Dobson Family Institute, the ministry Dobson founded after leaving Focus on the Family in 2010, offer listeners doom and gloom.
“When Culture Hates You,” a two-part program that aired July 15 and 16, claims there’s an intensifying cultural hostility toward Christians who advocate for righteousness through politics.
The program’s introduction described this cultural hostility: “Since we don’t like what you’re doing as Christians, therefore, you’re haters, so we hate you. And our hate is somehow justified.”
The shows on hate followed a July 10-11 rebroadcast of a two-part program titled “The New Black Robed Regiment,” which also found Dobson in a foul mood. (Now 89 and semi-retired, Dobson is unable to record new radio shows.)
“The country, pardon my language, is going to hell,” said Dobson in a show that first aired in 2022. “We’re in worse shape now than we have ever been, at least in my lifetime.” The American republic, he said, is “collapsing.”
The grim outlook isn’t new but has been core to Dobson’s worldview for decades. In 2002, Focus celebrated its 25th anniversary with an event titled “Looking Back with Thanksgiving, Looking Forward with Hope.” But at the time, Dobson told me the U.S. was undergoing “a moral freefall.”
“’Wherever you choose to stick the thermometer, you can see that we are a nation in a great deal of trouble,” he said then.
On his Black Robed Regiment shows, Dobson criticized Christian pastors who don’t preach boldly and regularly against abortion and other culture-war issues because they’re afraid of losing members and money.
“They’re really afraid that their parishioners will leave,” Dobson said, “or won’t give, or will not help them build the next building or whatever. It’s really an entrepreneurial thing.”
Dobson’s guest was Dan Fisher, a pastor and former Republican state legislator who tours the country portraying Peter Muhlenberg, a Lutheran pastor who fought in the Revolutionary Army.
Dobson and Fisher repeatedly insist that during the Revolutionary War, “many” pastors preached in support of revolution against Britain, recruited church members to join the Revolutionary Army and served as “their commanders.”
“These clergy led the men of their congregation into battle,” the Black Robed Regiment shows repeatedly claim, with Muhlenberg presented as just one of many musket-toting preachers.
But this warring preacher probably was the exception, not the rule. Dobson and Fisher suggest New World pastors were united in their commitment to revolution and war against Britain, but that’s not what the historical record shows.
Colonial pastors and their flocks were deeply divided:
- Virginia’s Anglican churches were loyal to Britain and preached against revolt citing Titus 3:1: “Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient.”
- The colonies also were home to many “peace” churches that preached pacifism, including Brethren, Friends (Quakers), Mennonites, Amish and other anabaptist believers who had fled Europe to escape war and bloodshed.
- Colonial Catholics were divided, but America’s alliance with Catholic France led to greater support for the war.
- Some patriot pastors served the Revolutionary Army as chaplains, not as commanders.
Mormon media celebrity Glenn Beck was among the first to talk about the black-robed preachers in 2010 as the conservative Tea Party movement was gaining steam.
Others since have joined the movement, including David Barton of Wallbuilders, who uses black robe rhetoric to generate support for the GOP and Donald Trump.
“Today’s church leaders have all but lost that concept of leading their congregations in a godly manner in all aspects of their worldly existence and are afraid to speak out against the progressive agenda that has dominated our political system for the past century,” says the Wallbuilders on “The Black Robe Regiment” page.
Some black robe groups participated in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which inspired historians to set the record straight.
In a 2021 Christianity Today article titled, “What the Black Robe Regiment Misses About Revolutionary Pastors,” historian Jonathan Den Hartog wrote: “Although many American ministers supported American liberty, the way they did so fell on a spectrum of responsibility and reflection. Further, we have to grapple with the fact that other ministers themselves felt deeply convicted to preach against American independence. These warnings remind us to be careful of how we think of our black-robed brigades today.”
Historians writing for the Washington Post were more blunt: “This ‘Black-Robed Regiment’ routine — dressing in the garb of the Revolutionary era and specifically evoking the image of American ministers waging that war — is not passive historical cosplay. It is advocacy for insurrection. By referencing the history of the ‘Black-Robed Regiment,’ which they intentionally misinterpret, these ‘Patriot’ pastors seem to be deliberately manipulating ideas about patriotism and the past to promote religious violence.”
Such criticism didn’t worry Dobson, who called guest Dan Fisher “an authority on the history of our country,” adding, “He doesn’t call himself that, but I think he is.”
Fisher is the kind of historian Dobson and other Christian nationalists prefer. As the Post reported, during his two terms in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, he “attempted to ban Advanced Placement history classes in Oklahoma public schools for ‘not being patriotic enough.’”
In one dialogue, Dobson and Fisher said today’s black-robe preachers should preach culture war in their churches.
Dobson: Are you willing to talk about abortion?
Dan Fisher: Oh, yes. I did the Sunday before last.
Dobson: With boldness?
Fisher: Oh, yes, sir. I call it murder from the pulpit.
Dobson: Does your congregation get up and walk out?
Fisher: No, they do not. In fact, they applaud.
Dobson: See, that’s what I believe people are waiting for. … And they go to the churches where the pastor will do that. I mean, if you preach the gospel, they will come, to quote a movie from a long time ago. (The comment seemed to be a reference to 1989’s Field of Dreams.)
Today, Fisher leads LifePoint Bible Church, which meets in Constitution Hall on the campus of the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. He sees the congregation as a “prototype church where you can preach on all of these issues, not fear the government, not fear criticism. So our hope is to do that. Of course, to preach the gospel and to reach people.”
Recent sermons include a series on the Declaration of Independence.
This article was originally published in Baptist News Global.
