James Dobson, who has died aged 89, was for many years one of the leading members of the religious right in the US, mobilising the millions of followers of his daily television and radio broadcasts over more than 40 years, invariably to vote on supposedly moral grounds for Republican candidates, even Donald Trump.
In the early 2000s Dobson was described by the New York Times as the most influential evangelical leader in the country, able to affect the choice of candidates by judging their ideological soundness, and the series of organisations he founded – primarily Focus on the Family but also the Family Research Council and latterly the Family Policy Alliance – became powerful lobbying bodies at state and national levels. His daily broadcasts were available in a dozen languages on 60 US television stations and to a potential worldwide audience of 220 million people.
