The Promise Keepers on the Mall
Ribuffo, Leo P.
MANY READERS of Dissent may associate mass demonstrations in Washington with liberal or radical gatherings such as the 1963 civil rights march or later protests against U.S. intervention in...
...The PK commemorative New Testament distributed on the Mall reprints the seven signs of a spiritual awakening discerned by Charles Finney, an obscure lawyer turned famous preacher during that Awakening...
...Not since scandal brought down Jim Bakker and the PTL (Praise the Lord) Club a decade ago has a conservative religious group received as much concentrated media coverage as Promise Keepers in the week before the assembly...
...Indeed, PK's occasional lapses into contemporary psychobabble should not obscure the fact that they are not only dealing with old evangelical problems, but also using old evangelical techniques...
...James Robison, a founder of the new Christian right in the late 1970s, who could not resist a swipe at rock and roll...
...Moreover, members are expected to meet each week with "shepherds," who may want to press them into political action...
...DISSENT / Winter 1998 13...
...Raised a Roman Catholic, he became a Protestant charismatic (as many Pentecostals now prefer to call themselves) in the early 1970s, yet continued to neglect his family in favor of his career as football coach at the University of Colorado...
...Equal Partners in Faith, a group of theological and political liberals including Peter Laarman, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Arthur Waskow, noted that PK endorses racial "reconciliation" without advocating the social programs necessary to eradicate institutional racism...
...At roughly the same time, fundamentalist evangelist Billy Sunday, a former baseball player, shadowboxed the devil at his revivals, welcomed college students with their football fight songs, and appealed for "coachers" to bring faltering souls from second base to salvation at home plate...
...Pundits prone to sarcasm were sarcastic (Maureen Dowd, Christopher Hitchens, and Katha Pollitt...
...Even the occasional premonitions of theocracy were well within the range of American political hyperbole...
...Politically conservative motifs were neither dominant nor absent...
...Indeed, 90 percent of those polled described themselves as born-again, evangeli12 n DISSENT / Winter 1998 cal, or charismatic Christians, and two-thirds had attended one of the sixty-one previous PK assemblies...
...60 percent described themselves as politically conservative or very conservative, 26 percent identified with the religious right, and only 15 percent had voted for Bill Clinton...
...In The Man Nobody Knows (1925), the theologically liberal ad man Bruce Barton presented Jesus as a sturdy and sociable business statesman...
...The assembly itself provided information for refining these questions but no definitive answers...
...Intellectually shabby references to incipient fascism and the "paranoid style," which were commonplace in the early 1980s, have virtually disappeared...
...The meeting on the Mall was neither a political rally nor an immense therapy group for male bonding, but rather a religious service —a service considerably more emotional than the formulaic revivals led by Billy Graham...
...Ted Koppel's questions on Nightline were so soft that unsuspecting viewers might have mistaken McCartney for Henry Kissinger.Perhaps the brightest spot in the controversy over the assembly on the Mall was the left's response...
...Nor should any man act like a "predator," "tyrant," or "loner...
...No interviewer pressed McCartney on the potential use of shepherds as partisan recruiters or his wish to convert gays to heterosexuality as well as to Christ...
...Instead of even sweet unilateralism, he preferred "give-and-take" between marital "teammates...
...The call for contributions was made by Rev...
...The second question, whether or not Promise Keepers reinforces patriarchy, is also problematic...
...It remains to be seen, however, whether or not the organization will expand the ranks of conservative voters or campaign workers...
...According to Alfred Ross and Lee Cokorinos of the Center for Democracy Studies, PK represented the "most sophisticated political movement the right has conjured up...
...And so the media analysis was the usual low par for the course...
...Just as an Anti-Saloon League meeting was a good place to find committed Republicans in the 1910s and a CIO local was a good place to find staunch Democrats in the 1930s, PK assemblies attract many supporters of the Christian right...
...As evidence of this breakdown, he cites crime, pornography, drug abuse, violence against women, and racial prejudice...
...Although PK leaders unquestionably endorse a male-headed family, the version of manhood promoted looks less than patriarchal...
...The answer is to bring men together, to bring them to Jesus Christ, and to bring them back to their families...
...McCartney himself occasionally mentions that America's sins may provoke God's judgment, but he has revealed little sustained interest in premillennial Bible prophecy...
...Pundits proud of their studied moderation were studiously moderate (Ellis Cose and E.J...
...McCartney also received contributions, publicity, or moral support from farright leaders Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and Gary Bauer...
...the Coach (as he was introduced) gives pep talks much as lawyer Finney cross-examined congregations into conversion...
...The calls for racial reconciliation were frequent and heartfelt, and the same theme characterized many of the weekly lessons in the commemorative New Testament...
...And because Washington represents the "geographic soul of America," Bill McCartney, founder and CEO of Promise Keepers (PK), chose the Mall as the site for "Stand in the Gap: A Sacred Assembly of Men" on October 4, 1997...
...Did they think that Protestant and Catholic theological liberals, Mormons, and Moslems were denied salvation...
...Although some eyes DISSENT / Winter 19 98 11 glazed over during the six-hour service, the crowd as a whole was extremely attentive...
...But political and cultural conservatives have an equally established tradition of rallying in the capital...
...Then the men will become "bulwarks against people's ill-informed and destructive choices like offensive linemen protecting the quarterback...
...McCartney and his colleagues periodically issue sweeping condemnations of liberal, feminist, and "Satanist" opponents...
...No one in the elite media paid much attention to the religious beliefs of the men on the Mall, even those beliefs with social ramifications...
...In particular, did they share the evident belief of PK leaders, who featured several "Messianic Jews" on the program, that Jews should be converted to Christ...
...Society is suffering a "cultural breakdown," McCartney concluded, because millions of other men are similarly inattentive or worse...
...Both Political Research Associates and Equal Partners in Faith specifically warned against criticizing the religious aspects of Promise Keepers or stigmatizing the men assembled on the Mall...
...Dionne...
...Speakers asked the assembled to pray for the armed forces, described abortion as the worst abuse of women, and denounced pornography on the internet...
...McCartney himself has less in common with Falwell or Robertson, adept political survivors, than with Anita Bryant, a celebrity who achieved brief notoriety in 1977 with her attack on gay rights and then faded from view...
...Self-conscious heirs to the American revivalist tradition, PK leaders look back especially to the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s, in which converted laymen began to supersede educated clergy...
...All of these critics complained that the mainstream news media scarcely mentioned PK's political side...
...The congregation on the Mall consisted overwhelmingly of committed theological conservatives, most of whom were also political conservatives...
...LEO P. RIBUFFO teaches history at George Washington University and is the author of The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War...
...And McCartney sympathized with "ladies" who were suspicious of Promise Keepers because men, especially men in groups, often behaved irresponsibly...
...By and large, however, PK leaders shrewdly decided to be on their best behavior...
...The so-called old-time religion has thrived in the United States partly because it has adapted to the broader culture—even while denying those adaptations...
...Only in the abstract world of the tax code and campaign finance regulations is there a clear distinction between political and nonpolitical activity...
...Another organization that monitors far-right activities, Political Research Associates, warned that PK's ultimate goal is "theocracy...
...Although this tactic undoubtedly enlarged Gary Bauer's mailing list, the mood of the day was not conducive to blatant political solicitation...
...Ninety percent said that husbands and wives should share equal responsibility for housework, child care, and "big decisions...
...PK leaders left the Mall with great expectations...
...Certainly McCartney is politically very conservative...
...McCartney's talk contained the usual sports analogies, but these seemed less an intrinsic part of the PK message than a legacy from his former line of work...
...A few academics tried to provide historical or theological context between the sound bites (Randall Balmer on the PBS News hour...
...Apparently no television producer saw fit to invite representatives from Political Research Associates or comparable groups that closely follow Promise Keepers...
...Yet Promise Keepers seems to be a sign that they are edging away from inflexible male dominance, much as a previous generation of theological conservatives edged away from anti-Semitism in the 1950s...
...The question of PK patriarchy should be viewed in this light...
...Diverse clergy and lay people have frequently tried to bring in men by highlight10 DISSENT / Winter 1998 ing a masculine Christianity...
...intervention in Indochina and Central America...
...Similarly, in 1992 he endorsed a proposed Colorado constitutional amendment restricting local bans on discrimination against gays...
...The PK leadership contains many lesser known but equally conservative clergy...
...CONTROVERSY ABOUT the assembly on the Mall centered on two issues...
...Even if it had been, there seemed to be little need for recruitment...
...The Post provided the best coverage of a non-"mainline" religious movement that I have ever seen in a major newspaper...
...McCartney's focus is on moral regeneration in the meantime...
...No official memorabilia were sold (though, as usual on the Mall, freelance vendors took up the slack...
...If husbands and wives cannot reach agreement, then the man must make the final decision, but he should do so "gently and in a sweet spirit," McCartney wrote recently in the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review...
...Whatever happens to Promise Keepers, theologically conservative Protestants are not going to disappear from the United States...
...others contained Bible citations or such admonitions as "Real men pray every day" Although these acquaintances volunteered no information about the range of giveandtake in their marriages, the Washington Post poll suggests that rank-and-file Promise Keepers are less unilateral than their leaders...
...Evangelicals, fundamentalists, and charismatics are not likely to forsake Sunday services and Scripture for NOW meetings and the collected works of Catharine MacKinnon...
...Rival spokespersons with a flair for sound bites talked past each other (Patricia Ireland of the National Organization for Women and Steve Chavis of PK on The Charlie Rose Show...
...In 1979, for instance, Jerry Falwell's "I Love America" rally at the Capitol served as a prelude to the founding of the Moral Majority...
...He not only opposes abortion, but has spoken on behalf of Operation Rescue, probably the most inflammatory antiabortion group...
...Unfortunately, there is little competition for that commendation...
...He never repudiated that position as controversy grew yet seemed increasingly uncomfortable asserting it...
...0 N THE side streets, the Family Research Council offered a free photograph of the assembly to anyone who filled out a coupon...
...Rather, they emphasized one side of the story, the search for moral improvement by the rank and file on the Mall, at the expense of the other, the farright politics of PK leaders...
...Instead, they asked good questions about PK leadership and convinced some of the mainstream print media to consider them...
...Women have been numerically dominant in Protestant congregations for at least two centuries...
...They are likely to change, however, and with luck the changes may be for the better...
...If so, how did this attitude affect their interpersonal relations...
...First, is Promise Keepers essentially a conservative political project...
...According to a Washington Post poll, 14 percent of the attendees were black and 2 percent Asian-American...
...Most of the other speakers warned of divine judgment and called for repentance...
...PK could dwindle as the fad of male sacred assemblies passes, or it might establish itself as a strong parachurch organization on the cultural right (akin to the Campus Crusade for Christ, which has been active since the 1950s...
...The title of the assembly comes from Chapter 22 of the Book of Ezekiel, in which divine wrath descends because no moral men appear to "stand in the gap" before God...
...Did they expect Jesus to return in their lifetimes...
...Thus PK's emergence provides an opportunity to evaluate current trends among theologically conservative Protestants, the latest tactical turns by the Christian political right, the quality of reporting and punditry about these matters, and the left's response...
...Messages on their shirts often signaled membership in both PK and their local churches...
...As McCartney readily confesses, he was moved to found Promise Keepers in 1991 by his own sense of failure as a husband and father...
...As anyone with access to cable television can discover daily, most fundamentalists and many evangelicals try to infer from Scripture whether judgment is imminent, whether Christians will endure much "tribulation," and whether Jews will convert en masse before Jesus' return...
...Plausible estimates of attendance ranged from 480,000 to 700,000...
...As I walked around the Mall and sat on a bench eating my inexpensive PK box lunch, rank-and-file Promise Keepers blessed me as their brother and enthusiastically struck up conversations...
...Hundreds of thousands of men prostrated themselves on the ground and asked forgiveness for abusing women, committing sexual sins, and practicing racial prejudice...
Vol. 45 • January 1998 • No. 1
