October 14, 1997

On Saturday hundreds of thousands of men descended on the Mall in Washington, D.C., for a Promise Keepers rally that was part religious revival, part male-bonding ritual, part social statement and part media spectacle.

Promise Keepers, if you're unfamiliar with it, is a religious organization that claims its goal is to help its members - men only - become better husbands, fathers and Christians by mixing psychology, such as the belief that men need to become comfortable with expressing their emotions, and self-help goals, such as learning to spend more time with their families, with fundamentalist theology.

Obviously, some men need to learn how to shed the macho stoicism that unhealthily keeps their feelings bottled up within them and become more expressive. And, yes, some men need to become more devoted to their families. Aren't there better ways, though, to realize these goals than by embracing fundamentalist Christianity, which is like trying to build a sturdy house of values on a foundation of ideological quicksand? Think about it: If a movement started that claimed it could create better dentists through belief in the Tooth Fairy we'd laugh at it. Yet we believe the Promise Keepers can do the same thing for husbandhood and fatherhood by strengthening men's belief in Jesus Christ, a historical figure, dead for 2,000 years or so, about whom very little concrete information is known.

Sure there are some worthwhile humanitarian aspects to Christianity, but not all of its values are positive. For instance, the Bible sanctions stoning people to death for adultery and homosexuality and corporal punishment as a means of disciplining children. Religion can also lead to passivity, complacency, insularity, sexphobia, ignorance and fear of the new and different. It's irrational to think that something good and rational can come out of embracing something so irrational, delusional and downright evil in some respects, and through spending hours melodramatically invoking its "founder's" name and supposedly divine power en masse. Instead of asking Jesus to do it for them, they should just do it.

Putting aside the theological considerations, we're left with other problems concerning the Promise Keepers. For instance, if helping its members become better family men is indeed its goal, how do ostentatious public displays of piety, such as we witnessed on Saturday, accomplish that? And why do the Promise Keepers feel the need to make a public spectacle of their religious beliefs?

Of course, it's likely the rank-and-file members of the Promise Keepers don't consider any of these issues. I think they just prefer to let go and let Jesus (as the saying goes) - or more accurately, let their leaders - do their thinking for them. The appeal of any fundamentalist belief system - theological, political or sociological - is that it provides clear cut, black-and-white answers to difficult questions, thus eliminating the agonizing decisions and moral and intellectual ambiguities that are a hallmark of human existence.

But just as starchy "comfort" foods can carry a cost for one's physique, the "comfort" provided by fundamentalism often carries with it a great cost to the character of its followers. It can make them intolerant of those who diverge from their moral principles - gays, lesbians, bisexuals; women who want to decide if they'll carry a pregnancy to term; people who enjoy erotica, gambling or other "vices," etc. It also can make them arrogant because they presume their spirituality gives them the right, even the moral obligation, to force their beliefs on others through the coercive power of the state.

And fundamentalism makes them self-righteous. They presume that because they've been "saved" from themselves or from "Satan" or from the need to think or all three, that they'll sit before the throne of God while those who believe differently (Jews, Muslims, etc.), or don't believe at all, are doomed to an eternity of damnation. This may in turn cause fundamentalists to dehumanize these groups - that is, see them as "sinners" and inferior beings to be conquered and "saved" through conversion rather than as autonomous individuals entitled to dignity, respect, tolerance and equality.

Is it a social good, as many pundits have contended, that fundamentalist Christianity is being used to strengthen fatherhood in America when it means that those men will be more likely to pass the negative traits outlined above onto their impressionable offspring? Isn't that a form of intellectual child abuse? The values/politics issue has gotten some examination in the media, but not the underlying belief in God (as defined by traditional Judeo-Christian theology). As skeptical and sometimes hostile as secular institutions can be to organized religion, theism is rarely questioned; indeed, they're eager to implicitly, if not explicitly, tout it as a positive when it underlies a purportedly non-sectarian and non-political movement like the Promise Keepers.

Is it a social good, too, that the Promise Keeper rituals, despite their intent, seem to move men further away from achieving the goals of the group rather than closer? Wouldn't the way for these men to start being better husbands and fathers have been for them to have spent Saturday with their families, instead of without them? How can men make a credible statement that it's important to spend more time with their wives and children if they bug out on them to attend what amounts to a giant male-bonding festival?

Clearly, the men who went to the Promise Keepers rally found it spiritually fulfilling and a boost to their self-esteem, but also just plain fun - perhaps more fun than spending another mundane weekend at home, doing laundry and housekeeping chores, helping the wife with the grocery shopping, playing with the kids, etc. But isn't part of being a good husband and father self-sacrifice (i.e., foregoing your fun) for the good or just the collective pleasure of the family rather than allowing yourself to fall into the selfish trap of self-indulgence?

And instead of a massive national display, wouldn't it have been better if these men had held smaller rallies in their own communities, with their families present? Wouldn't such events at the local level have set a better example of fundamentalist Christian "family values," such as the importance of the family and of being a good husband and father, not just for the society, but for their own children?

I wonder how any of the men who participated in the event on Saturday can honestly say they spend enough time with their families? Of course, this raises the question of just how much time is enough? How do you quantify that? And if you can't, is it rational to feel guilty about it? Furthermore, is it rational that guilt over something for which there is no clear-cut answer is one of the bases for founding a moral reformation movement?

Guilt is not entirely bad, though. It is rational to feel guilty if you have done something wrong, according to your moral code, and to use that to spur self-improvement. The problem is that guilt, such as the very real guilt that many men (whatever their ideological or theological persuasion) may feel about the quality of their relationship with their families, can, particularly in fundamentalist movements, be exploited by those who may have a hidden agenda.

Despite surface appearances, I think the event was less about improving family life and more about making Promise Keepers and the Religious Right agenda - anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-feminist, patriarchal - underlying its ideology and leadership, a greater force in American life. For instance, it's well known that Bill McCartney, the group's founder, has a history of anti-gay activism in his home state of Colorado and is outspoken in his opposition to abortion.

That hidden agenda is unfortunate, not just for America's non-fundamentalist majority, but for the men who attended Saturday's rally. It's easy to disagree with their philosophy, but hard not to see that their belief in it is probably sincere, as is their commitment to integrating the ostensible goals of the Promise Keepers into their lives in a meaningful fashion. Will they be able to do that, when disillusionment sets in after they find out their leaders aren't keeping their promise not to be building a politically oriented social-change movement? As the cliche goes, only time will tell.

--Ben Markeson

Ben Markeson I'm a first-generation Floridian, a second-generation American, a college drop-out and have a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate bent. I edited and published two local "alternative" newspapers - The Orlando Collegian and The Orlando Spectator (three if you count The Orlando Reporter, which had one paper issue before becoming an e-zine), and also free-lanced for The Orlando Weekly. But I don't call myself a journalist because that sounds pretentious. Other Articles I've Written