James Dobson says Barack Obama doesn't understand the Bible. He's wrong and you can match Dobson's statements against those of Obama at jamesdobsondoesn'tspeakforme.com, a web site started by a group of theologians including the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Methodist minister from Texas and longtime supporter of President Bush who has endorsed Obama.

What angers me most about Dobson is the same thing that angers me about every self-righteously pious jerk whose real agenda is supporting the Republican Party: He claims to know God's will better than the rest of us. And that, of course, means the rest of us should shut up, sit down and let him run our world.

Dobson's misunderstanding of the Bible strikes at the very core of Christianity and identifies him as distinctly un-Christian. His reckoning of the faith bears little resemblance to the one founded by the humble Nazarean who washed the feet of the tax collector, found worth in the wayward woman about to be stoned and breathed forgiveness at His last to a thief. The Gospel According to Dobson is a testament to a vindictive, swaggering Christianity that constructs a cross of lies upon which to crucify its enemies.

If he could, Dobson would strip Americans of the Divine Spark itself: free will. In its place, he would install a Republican theocracy. And in so doing, he would negate the very purpose of the Creator in giving human beings the gift that makes us each unique. That casts each of us in the image of God. Makes each of us little creators in our own right. Each of us able to see reality and fashion some small bit of it ourselves.

In Dobson's view, there is but one God. And He speaks in a voice that sounds eerily similar to James Dobson's.