As we speak, the conservative men’s religious/political organization, the Promise Keepers, are right smack in the middle of their 2002 National Conference Season, and on September 6 and 7, they’ll be rallying at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. “In 12 years, we have held 140 stadiums and arena events, reaching 4.8 million men. And yet our focus has never changed,” says PK founder Bill “Coach” McCartney, a former University of Colorado football coach. “We’re still keeping promises, one man at a time.”
Which isn’t as heady as one million men at a time. A mere five years ago, on October 4, 1997, between 600,000 and one million men descended on Washington D.C. for the PK gathering “Stand in the Gap: A Sacred Assembly of Men.” It was the largest religious get-together in U.S. history. After that last stand, PK attendance bottomed out and the organization suffered massive cutbacks. That nose-dive, however, was mostly the result of dropping the entrance fee. Promise Keepers thought if events were free, they’d raise attendance and get by on passing the hat. Instead stadiums sat empty, and, adding insult to injury, the average donation at events was a measly $4. Since the ticket price was reinstated ($69 for the St. Paul event), attendance has been on the climb for two years running, and financially speaking the PKs are “doing fine.”
The St. Paul event has a capacity of 10,000 men and boys. According to Fred Ramirez, event organizer and director of U.S. Ministries at the PK headquarters in Denver, more than 4,000 seats are already booked. Ramirez says the “Storm the Gates” theme for this year’s conference is a metaphor for storming the gates of Hell, and has nothing to do with storming anyone else per se. “It’s a battle that men must fight against our own worst nature,” he explains.
This sets my teeth on edge. But why? Who am I to judge a bunch of guys hanging out and staging mock crucifixions to praise God, expressing their feelings, and committing to keep their promises to their wives and children? After all, do I want my son to be a Promise Breaker? Maybe I do, if the alternative is for him to embrace the misogynistic, homophobic, racist underpinnings revealed in the rhetoric of some prominent Promise Keepers (despite the organization’s fervent denial of all that leftist whining).
As McCartney puts it, all you men out there need to “Sit down with your wife and say something like this: ‘Honey, I’ve made a terrible mistake… I gave up leading this family, and I forced you to take my place. Now I must reclaim that role…’ I’m not suggesting you ask for your role back, I’m urging you to take it back… There can be no compromise here.” This is the brand of infamous and widely reproduced quote that gives the Promise Keepers a bad name with arm-chair feminists like me. That, and the fact that although women do most of the grunt work to pull off these glitzy events, tickets are for men only. “But women can buy tickets and go to any event,” protests Ramirez. “Women are never barred from attending. Women are just discouraged from being at the events because they are really geared toward men. Men are the guys who don’t understand in terms of emotions and all that. Women are far ahead of us, so we have to work harder with the men, because they don’t get it.”
This, according to Ramirez, explains why up to two-thirds of the 300 to 600 volunteers scrambling behind the PK scenes are female. “The reason we get such a large number of women volunteers in because they want to free their men up to attend the event. The women support us 100 percent.”
If my instincts are right, the time is ripe for a PK resurgence. The outrageous popularity of the fire-and-brimstone Left Behind novels reveals a mass-culture inclination toward just the sort of highly moralistic message that PKs deliver with unparalleled panache. Noteworthy, as well, is the position of one of the most fiery and controversial PK leaders, Tony Evans, as one of George W. Bush’s closest spiritual advisors. During the presidential election Evans told the New York Times that Bush “believes that God has a place in government, that religion has a place in society, and it is not to be marginalized and put on the periphery as though it is some sort of extra. There is no America without a theistic world view.” And that, I predict, is a promise the PKs will surely cash in on.
Jeannine Ouellette is associate editor of The Rake.
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