more Tripod links for moms and dads:
Hip Mama: A review of the quarterly magazine for progressive families
Big Daddy: Learning to trust your husband's parenting instinct
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Nothing gets the blood pumping like the promise of a confrontation where you can wallow in self-satisfactory bliss because your suspicions were thoroughly correct. Such was the case for me over Memorial Day weekend: The Promise Keepers, the patriarchal, right-wing, Christian male movement that had attracted so much ire from feminist and democracy watchdog groups, had a two day rally scheduled at the LA Memorial Coliseum, and I was going.
| "I assumed that numerical reinforcement — in the form of a pow-wow with a pack of fist-pumping maniacs — gave them a reason to mouth off and dominate the wife at home." |
For those living under a rock for the past couple of years, the Promise Keepers began in 1991 as a grassroots attempt to increase responsibility for family and church among Christian men, via "seven basic promises to God" and group bonding sessions. In 1994, the message went national when founder Bill McCartney, a former football coach (known as "Coach" to PK'ers), booked a number of stadium rallies from his headquarters in Denver, Colorado.
Nearly three million men have attended Promise Keepers events since the beginning — enough to make the group one of the fastest growing revival movements in American history.
Strength in numbers seemed to be the firm foundation of these so-called "Men of Integrity". I assumed that numerical reinforcement — in the form of a pow-wow with a pack of fist-pumping maniacs — gave them a reason to mouth off and dominate the wife at home.
The National Organization of Women (NOW) had really been the catalyst for my attendance. It was NOW who had informed me of the group's insidious agenda. It was also NOW who had me frothing at the mouth, awaiting sexist diatribes from chest-thumping Neanderthals. It was NOW who made me alternately angry and excited at the prospect of attending a male supremacy rally masquerading as a religious function.
| "So I tramped on down to the stadium at lunch break, horrified by the sea of denim-shorted religiosity gulping down prepackaged lunches on the lawn outside." |
So I tramped on down to the stadium at lunch break, horrified by the sea of denim-shorted religiosity gulping down prepackaged lunches on the lawn outside. Being an all-male event, few women had ventured into the PK lair. I wanted to meet these people on their own turf and verify my feelings about them.
This, the fifth national PK stadium tour which began in Detroit and will wrap up in October in Sacramento, is free to all. (All men, that is.) Previous events had cost up to $60 a head. ("They blew their wad in Washington," one writer told me, referring to last year's massive PK march to the capitol.) The current tour is "placing special emphasis on reaching the unsaved and the lukewarm" in the words of Coach. (In other words: Drag your dirty, heathen co-worker along.)
Like most other fire-breathing feminists, I had the Promise Keepers pegged long ago as a big, ugly threat to equality. Just get an earful of the ire they've inspired in NOW president Patricia Ireland: "The Promise Keepers are the hottest religious right marketing tool since televangelism. Their message of the submission of women is extremely political and anti-woman. They have created a false veneer of men taking responsibility, when they really mean men taking charge."
These thoughts ran through my head as I wandered amongst the merchandise booths and discovered that most of the volunteers were beaming women. (Thirty-nine percent of the national staff and more than 50% of the volunteer staff are female.) "I'm happy to do this," one woman told me. "My husband became a new man because of the Promise Keepers."
Trudging through the literature, I discovered no inflammatory texts; I was offered no "how-to" abortion clinic bombing manuals, no wife-taming tips. There was a lot of how-to/self help material — how to become a better father, how to strengthen your walk with God, how to be moral and upright in general. How middle-brow, how milquetoast, I thought. They must focus the venom in the lectures.
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