Last week Josh Howerton preached in a sermon that he was being persecuted.
He talked about how he frequently is “cancelled” as a pastor, when internet mobs come after him, and the first time that happened his wife Jana prepared a feast and told him that he was blessed for being persecuted.
I addressed it in an Instagram reel:
I know of three big times that internet mobs have held Josh to account.
1. When I caught him plagiarizing four different times in an 8 minute sermon.
I explain it all in this short clip from episode 158 of Bare Marriage.
2. When he did that horrendous wedding night “joke”
Remember that? I shared it on X and it hit the national news. But he told women to “stand where he tells you to stand, do what he tells you to do, wear what he tells you to wear” on HIS wedding night.
Jay Stringer and I talked about this on episode 230 of the Bare Marriage podcast.
3. Then he called little girls more dangerous than the literal devil.
In a sermon discussing sexual sin, he said “shady little girls in miniskirts” in church parking lots pose more harm to adult men in the congregation than the devil. But what is the harm exactly? That he may rape her? Then isn’t he the danger to her?
These are the three different times, that I know of, that the internet really reacted against Josh. There have been others, like when he repeatedly told his congregation to vote for a certain political candidate, or when his church falsified traffic studies to get a dedicated stoplight from the city. But these, as far as I know, are the big ones.
None of these things is persecution.
All of these things are instances of being held accountable when you didn’t look anything like Jesus, and when you besmirched the name of Jesus.
Calling this persecution, and claiming that you were being called out for speaking for Jesus, is part of using the Lord’s name in vain. You are claiming the Lord’s name while you are doing something horrendous, and that isn’t okay.
Yet Christians do this awfully strange logic that looks like this:
Jesus said the world would hate us. So when the world hates us, it must be on account of Jesus! It’s proof that I’m doing something right!
Or it’s just proof that you’re a jerk.
You don’t get to be a jerk and then claim persecution, yet this is what so many of these guys do.
And that’s what we saw last week in the convo surrounding James Dobson’s death.
I talked about this with Rebecca in last Friday’s round-up video, and in my Substack article. But I have seen an outpouring of support for Dobson and kind words after his death, and many of those people are calling out those who are saying that Dobson caused great harm.
Quite frankly, I have NEVER seen anything like what we saw last week when Dobson died. As I said on Substack:
An interesting thing happened yesterday on social media after it was announced that James Dobson had died.
Strangers, who thought their suffering at the hands of their parents was an isolated incident, found comfort from so, so many others who were similarly harmed.
I have never seen such an outpouring of contempt towards someone who has just died.
It was startling, I know, for many who held him in high regard (and the extent of it was startling even for those who didn’t!). But it showed the depth of the anger and the trauma and the hurt that is felt by millions upon millions of strong-willed children whose parents, instead of attuning to their emotional needs, tried to break their spirit and control them.
It showed the depth of anger from the women who had been told by Focus on the Family counselors to return to abusive husbands; from adult children now estranged from their Dobson-loving parents, because their parents got sucked into authoritarian right wing politics and have become unrecognizable; from brothers and sisters meeting at the grave of their lost LGBTQ sibling, who unalived themselves because they were rejected by parents and had no hope.
It’s important to speak truth of the dead when it means comforting the afflicted.
When that many people say, “my childhood was horrible because of this man”, that’s worth paying attention to.
To have people dismiss millions of people’s trauma because “he was a good Bible teacher” and “he’s just being persecuted for standing up for Truth” is disgusting.
Even if he helped you, likely someone else could have helped you too, without doing damage to so many. But people think, “because he’s in my camp, then any accountability is automatically persecution.” Because we’re too busy defending our camp than we are looking at the truth on the ground.
Jesus said that a bad tree can’t bear good fruit, and a good tree can’t bear bad fruit. James Dobson bore a lot of bad fruit. That does need to be reckoned with.
Josh Howerton frequently besmirches the name of Jesus. That does need to be reckoned with.
Sometimes people hate Christians because we don’t take accountability.
How might Dobson’s legacy been different if ten years ago he had apologized? If he had admitted that his advice that centered on parents controlling their kids was misguided at best?
How might Howerton’s ministry be much more effective for Jesus if he admitted when he did wrong and humbled himself to accept true correction?
We all do things wrong. I certainly did! I even took some books out of print I was so upset at what I had written. It is not a bad thing to apologize and make things right.
There needs to be room for redemption for people who try to make it right when they have hurt people in the past. But when people refuse to even admit that hurt? They are showing that they are not on the side of Jesus.
And all their cries of persecution just make it worse.
Great post.
My very loaded question for those who think that Howerton or Dobson “did good work” and therefore should be immune from criticism:
Do you believe that Satan will try to tempt and mislead those who try to advance the kingdom of God?
Because, if so, we need to acknowledge that desire to serve God, far from making
someone immune from temptation, can cause more temptation. That doesn’t always look like having an affair; it can be something more seemingly trivial and basic. CS Lewis teaches us this in Screwtape.
“You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
Put another way, do we need apostasy or adultery when “girls in miniskirts are worse than demons” will do the trick?
So scary and so well put!
“And a wild voice cried “Hasten and be done!
IS THERE NO STEEPNESS IN THE STAIRS OF HELL?”
— G.k.chesterton, “Nightmare” (poem), 1909
Thank you, Sheila, for speaking the truth. There have been a few Christian leaders whose teachings have harmed those who sincerely wanted to follow the Lord and do their best. Jay Adams, John MacDonald, and James Dobson taught things that kept women subjugated,and caused harm to so many children.
Classic DARVO tactics. The people persecuting the women and minorities they don’t like try to turn the blame back to the people who are actually being persecuted by going “oh poor me, these women and various other groups I am constantly going after and bullying are fighting back and criticizing me and demanding I stop hurting them. They are the real bullies, not me.”
Its odd. I didn’t grow up with this guy. He was before my time. I have no history with his teachings. If anything I relate to him much the same way as I do with Chick Tracts something that just strikes me as just so jarring wrong it almost wraps around to being funny. Thing is though its also real and as a result people were harmed.
American Christians do not know what real persecution is unless they’ve been to other countries that are not receptive to Christianity. The apostle Paul knew persecution because he preached the message of Christ that many did not receive well and did not agree with.
Josh Howerton and James Dobson did not preach about Jesus. They just used their own teachings or their interpretations of the Bible and slapped the Christian name on them. Obviously these two amongst many other megachurch pastors and “Christian” teachers like Dobson and Gothard have not experienced real persecution.
Even Christians around me claim they’re being persecuted when they are called out for bad behavior and the way they push their political views claiming they are standing up for God.
Where “PERSECUTION!!!!!!!” means hearing “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry CHRISTmas.”
Check out Weird Al Yanokvic’s “First World Problems” sometime.
Thing is, when your life and society (at least at your income level) has aced the Survival Game until all that’s left are First World Problems, the survival instinct is still hardwired in and your hindbrain reacts to those First World Problem inconveniences as Life-or-Death Survival threats.
Yes, it was really the 35-50 year olds who grew up with Dobson. But the thing is his work normalized spanking at a time when the rest of the world was moving away from it, and when child development experts were moving away from it. Without Dobson, even spanking in the U.S. likely would have diminished greatly in the 70s and 80s as it did elsewhere. And so he influenced a whole culture ,and even if his books weren’t as popular in the 2000s, those who came after him still taught what he did.
Those who came after Dobson were even worse: the Pearls and Ted Trip with his horrid To Shepherd a Child’s Heart. They make Dobson look almost nice. And as far as marriage advice goes…our infamous E.E. with his Love and Respect is worse than Dobson.
But indeed, Dobson made spanking mainstream. Perhaps it was because his books were never ONLY about spanking. There was always good and nice stuff too, such as quality time,learning chores and responsibilities through rewards instead of punishment and so on. All undeniably good things. A good package. And spanking belonged to that package. It had to be good to, because all the otber stuff was good.
And that’s why many parents bought Dobson. Many whohad not bought the Pearls or Ted Tripp or others more on the fringe.
That first clip had me laughing at his reaction to having his precious, tender little sensitivities stepped on by a woman . . .
At least, he credited Jesus for his remarks.
The young girls in the parking lot would be puerile but for the sleazy factor going off the scale. It’s a wonder he didn’t get his backside kicked up between his shoulder blades.
As for Dobson, I lost whatever respect I might have had for him when one of his pieces defended poverty wages as preferable to unemployment because a small business owner couldn’t pay more.
Clearly, Amos’ ‘selling the needy for a pair of shoes’ was understood to be subject to a few, unstated provisos.
I realize this forum isn’t intended as a critique of James’ capitalist system of political economy.
But whether on that score or the damage done beyond economic relations, the man none-the-less built an empire on a
Christ-less
Use of the
Language of
Theology.
Totally agree!
“Calling this persecution, and claiming that you were being called out for speaking for Jesus, is part of using the Lord’s name in vain.”
Yes! This!
Thank you for writing about Dobson. I also wrote a post about him- “Because of James Dobson, Christians Believe that Christianity Means Judging and Excluding Queer People” https://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2025/08/because-of-james-dobson-christians.html
I watched Josh’s whole godly women sermon where he tags the persecution bit on the end. He claimed that it was all scriptural. So where does he get the part about “women need emotional connection to want sex, but men need sex to get emotional connection”.? I’ve heard this from other speakers recently. If that were true, then men wouldn’t have emotional connection before marriage (the I love you’s wouldn’t mean much), and how do they emotionally connect with their children, parents, etc.?
It is indeed really stupid.
It would also be all over the place in the Bible. Do you think God would be subtle about such a big, important thing, if it were how He designed us?
“Calling this persecution, and claiming that you were being called out for speaking for Jesus, is part of using the Lord’s name in vain. You are claiming the Lord’s name while you are doing something horrendous, and that isn’t okay.”
What God is saying in that commandment is “You do your own dirty work! Don’t drag Me into it! Not even by mentioning My Name!”
Convenient how it has been redefined to mean cussing and only cussing, Eh, My Dear Wormwood?
“Jesus said the world would hate us. So when the world hates us, it must be on account of Jesus! It’s proof that I’m doing something right!’
Or maybe it’s on account of you’re just being an asshole.
Christians seem to have this talent for approaching things ass-backwards.