During an appearance on Tuesday at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Georgia, Vice President JD Vance was asked by a student to name someone who helped shape his conservative views while growing up.
“Okay, so that’s, that’s very interesting,” replied the vice president. “When I was a kid, and I was kind of developing my politics, there was actually a radio host, a guy who founded this organization called ‘Focus on the Family’ – James Dobson, who was really influential to me.”
At the mention of Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family, the crowd erupted in a cheer.
“He was a good Christian guy,” said Vice President Vance. “He talked about the family. He talked about things I cared a lot about, and I came from a broken home.”
Vice President Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, was addicted to drugs – first painkillers and then heroin. During one drug-fueled rage, Vance’s mother threatened him. “She could go from zero to homicidal in a heartbeat,” he once reflected. “I was terrified of my mom. There were moments when I wasn’t sure I was safe in my own home.”
Vance’s father, Donald Bowman, was largely absent from the family. As a result, JD was largely raised primarily by his grandparents and was forced to navigate a series of boyfriends and stepfathers given his mother’s emotional and physical unevenness.
Speaking at the University of Georgia, the vice president suggested that it was because of the chaotic background that he found himself resonating with Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family’s message.
“When he talked about the ways in which a broken home had a negative effect on kids, it made sense to me because I was seeing it in my own life,” he shared. “Here was a guy who was actually talking about it.”
Vice President Vance was born in 1984, so his childhood recollections of Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family encompass the 1990s and early 2000s. It was during those years that Focus on the Family’s daily radio program and outreach were being heard by more than 7 million listeners here in the United States and more than 200 million around the world.
During that time of Dr. Dobson and Focus’ ascent, critics often accused the man and the ministry of being dogmatic and harsh – simply because both were willing to unapologetically share God’s truth. The claims of mean spiritedness were bogus, but the media nevertheless ran with it. Sometimes, when a journalist or an activist would mock and malign Focus’ founder and the wider ministry, Dr. Dobson would challenge them to present evidence of hateful rhetoric. It was never produced.
Keep that in mind when you see how Vice President Vance concluded his reflections on his childhood mentor:
“What I liked about him [Dr. Dobson] is that he didn’t talk about it in this judgmental way, right? He wasn’t attacking a kid like me who didn’t have everything handed to him. He was just explaining in a very real world, with a fundamentally Christian underpinning, here’s what happens when things are broken.”
Since the ministry’s founding in 1977, Focus on the Family has strived to help couples with their marriages, assist parents with their children, defend the defenseless, and encourage and empower believers to boldly and lovingly engage the culture.
It’s notable that Vice President Vance singled out Dr. Dobson, not simply as a Christian leader or child psychologist, but as someone who influenced him as he developed his politics. There are some who grow uncomfortable when faith and politics are discussed in the same conversation, but there’s no question that one (faith) informs the other.
When Dr. Dobson spoke in Washington, D.C., at a conference on families during the Carter administration, he was approached by Jim Guy Tucker, who would go on to serve as governor of Arkansas. “I never knew anyone like you existed,” he told him.
What Tucker was saying was that people of faith didn’t have influence in our nation’s capital. Determined to change that reality, Dr. Dobson helped that very night to launch the Family Research Council.
Focus on the Family, now led by Jim Daly, continues to engage and influence countless listeners and friends of the ministry, as well as shape and champion public policies that impact the family. The ministry has never been partisan but rather committed to advancing policies that help families thrive. Might one of the young individuals listening and reading Focus material today grow up one day to be president or vice president? In the Lord’s timing and inimitable way, anything is possible.
