Dobson held near-invisible political power enforced by fear within evangelical institutions

Evidence

Dobson wielded enormous political power, yet it was nearly invisible outside evangelical circles. “The average person in the establishment is not aware of what Dobson is saying to five or ten million people every week,” remarked Richard Viguerie, the GOP’s direct-mail mastermind. “That has served us beautifully.” Dobson’s power was all too apparent to evangelicals themselves, for better and for worse. When asked about their greatest fear, Christian college presidents agreed: the possibility that James Dobson would turn against their school. The lesson was clear: “Don’t mess with Dobson or, by extension, with any of the moguls of the Religious Right.” — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 470

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘invisible but enormous’ power structure — audience reach unseen by the establishment while acutely feared by insiders — is a key piece of how consumer-culture authority operates as soft coercive control, relevant to the reader’s method-assessment of Du Mez’s argument.