In reading multiple obituaries upon the passing of Dr. James Dobson, I was interested to read about where he lived and where his ministry operated. In my book Sanctifying Suburbia, I examine how evangelicals embraced the suburbs, and I discussed in Chapter 6 two of the evangelical centers where Dobson spent much of his adult life: the suburbs east of Los Angeles and Colorado Springs, Colorado. But his suburban experiences also predated the professional career for which he became know. Here is what the New York Times reported:
James Clayton Dobson Jr. was born in Shreveport, La., on April 21, 1936, the only child of James and Myrtle (Dillingham) Dobson.
He was the son, grandson and great-grandson of Church of the Nazarene ministers. The family avoided dancing and movies. His father, who never attended college, was a traveling evangelist, primarily in the Southwest, and young James lived mostly with his mother in Bethany, Okla., and graduated from San Benito High School, in San Benito, Texas, in 1954.
He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1958 from Pasadena College (now Point Loma Nazarene University) and a master’s degree in 1962 from the University of Southern California.
In 1960, he married his college sweetheart, Shirley Deere. She survives him, as do his son; a daughter, Danae Dobson; and two grandchildren.
After four years as a teacher and counselor at high schools in Hacienda Heights and Covina, Calif., he earned a doctorate in child development in 1967 from U.S.C. He was then on the faculty of the Keck School of Medicine for 14 years and simultaneously on the staff of Children’s Hospital.
Looking more closely at these early locations shows some connections to suburbs. Shreveport is a small big city with over 76,000 residents in 1930. Bethany is a suburb west of Oklahoma City created by Nazarene founders that grew from 485 residents in 1920 to 22,694 residents in 1970. San Benito is a small community within the Browsnville-Harlingen-Raymondville combined statistical area today that is not far from the Mexico border. It had between roughly between 13,000 and 16,000 residents in the 1950s while Brownsville at that point had between 35,000 and 48,000 residents.
Dobson went to college at Pasadena College. This college started as Pacific Bible College in Los Angeles. In 1909 it moved to purchased land in Pasadena, a suburb east of Los Angeles. When Dobson was in college, the suburb was finishing a growth spurt: it had grown from 9,117 residents in 1900 to 116,407 residents in 1960. In the early 1980s, a proposed move of Pasadena College to Santa Ana, another suburb southeast of Los Angeles in Orange County, failed and the college occupied a former college campus in San Diego (and became known as Point Loma).
His first jobs involved teaching in two suburbs east of Los Angeles. Hacienda Heights is an unincorporated community that had 35,969 residents in 1970. Covina is also in the San Gabriel Valley and its population exploded in the postwar era, expanding from 3,956 residents in 1950 to 30,395 in 1970.
Without closer study, it is hard to know exactly how these suburban experiences shaped Dobson’s views and work. But going to school and starting work in a hotbed of growing evangelicalism in the post war era – suburban Los Angeles – plus his own experiences in small communities outside bigger cities echo broader evangelical patterns. Emphasizing nuclear family life and conservative political values also aligns with reasons evangelicals could embrace suburban life.
Legally Sociable 