GOD OF OUR FATHERS

By RON STODGHILL II/LAWTON

In the spit-and-shine military town of Lawton, Okla., real men ain't supposed to cry. This is the home of Fort Sill, a U.S. Army post, where soldiers learn to kill with gun, mortar and missile, where the big boys belly up to the bar at Gertlestone's pub and down stiff shots of Jaegermeister, where the measure of a man lies partly in his ability to tuck his pain away in a place where nobody--nobody--can see it. No tears allowed in plain sight.

Yet a few miles away, in the dimly lighted sanctuary of the First Assembly of God church on a humid Thursday night, dozens of men are weeping openly in the pews, men who have come from the base, men who ain't supposed to cry unless their team has won the Super Bowl, if at all. But here they are, a more than slightly disconcerting sight, middle-age guys sobbing and hugging and professing love for one another. They admit to having broken promises, they beg forgiveness--for insensitivity, for infidelity, for abandoning their children, for racial hatred, for sins as petty as reading pornography to transgressions as heinous as abusing their wives--and they swear to be Promise Keepers--with the help of the Big Guy. As one of their hymns goes, "Oh victory in Jesus, my Savior forever."

The scene is repeated in similar small, regularly held fellowship groups around the U.S. (about 20,000 at last count) and has been displayed in spectacular proportions in stadiums across the country, last year congregating an average of 50,000 men at each of 22 sites for a total of 1.1 million souls. Male souls always, for the Promise Keepers are intent on carving God's masculine face back onto the spiritual tableau where they believe the model of divine fatherhood has eroded. The seven-year-old organization boasts annual revenues of $87 million, a two-story brick headquarters in Denver and 360 paid staff members, and it is out to retake male responsibility--and re-establish male leadership--in a country that it sees as badly detoured from a godly and natural course, falling into the snares of poverty, illegitimacy, drug abuse, juvenile delinquency and disease because American men have forsaken Christian values.

Such patriarchal fervor has already set off political alarms. Thus, as proof of their arrival on the national political scene, the Promise Keepers have attracted a dedicated group of watchdogs wary of any threat to civil liberty posed by these men who have found a very male god. There will be a lot to watch. This Saturday, Promise Keepers will bring their tears-and-revival extravaganza to Washington, in a six-hour program of worship, repentance and prayer, titled "Stand in the Gap," at the National Mall. It could rival in numbers the more than 870,000 who attended the Million Man March organized by Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. Says Promise Keepers leader and founder Bill McCartney: "Guys are gonna leave with a new resolve, saying, 'I'm gonna take responsibility, and it's gonna show up in the church, in families, in the community, in the workplace.'"

Is such a metamorphosis as dangerous as critics claim, a movement toward Christian-male domination? In a society locked in debate over the widespread belief that--in polite terms--"men are pigs," the commitments called for in the official guidebook, Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper, augur a refreshing, selfless transformation. Promise No. 7 commits members to obey the great commandment in the Gospel of Mark: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength...and Love your neighbor as yourself." It is a sentiment both innocuous and bracing.

But there is another piece of Scripture, also embedded in Promise No. 7, that provides fuel to feminists and other critics of the Promise Keepers. It is from the Gospel of Matthew: "Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." On that evening in Oklahoma, amid the lilting melody of a seven-piece band, that commandment at first brims with a kind of inclusiveness as whites, African Americans, Asians, Hispanics as well as one Croatian immigrant clap their hands, rocking with the zealotry of the converted as they all sing Lord, Purify My Heart. On the small scale of Lawton's First Assembly of God church, the inspiration is palpable, touching, poignant. But in the grander scheme, the Bible verse raises other questions: Who on earth will command? And who must obey?

In Promise Keepers: The Third Wave of the American Religious Right, co-authors Alfred Ross and Lee Cokorinos of the Center for Democracy Studies write: "In its conception and execution, Promise Keepers is one of the most sophisticated political movements the right wing has yet conjured up." For the past year, the center and its new PK Watch newsletter have been accusing Promise Keepers of using seemingly benign teachings on prayer and social responsibility to create a grass-roots network designed to buttress the religious right. In May, 59 religious liberals, including Joseph Hough, the dean of Vanderbilt University, and William Howard, the president of New York Theological Seminary, warned the nation's churches of the potential dangers of Promise Keepers. The National Organization for Women has passed a resolution declaring Promise Keepers "the greatest danger to women's rights." NOW plans a counter-demonstration this week.

Promise Keepers declares it has no political agenda. Nevertheless, it makes no attempt to hide its allies on the religious right. As early as 1992, when the group was without a constituency or a mailing list, it received $10,000 in critical assistance from James Dobson, a psychologist and Christian activist who produces the most widely heard Christian daily radio program and is closely allied with the influential religious right Family Research Council lobby in Washington. Since then, Dobson has given Promise Keepers strategic publicity on his radio show, has spoken at a 1993 Promise Keepers rally in Boulder, Colo., and has written a chapter in the group's guidebook. Dobson's organization has published Promise Keepers' books and materials. Similarly Pat Robertson, the former presidential candidate and Christian Coalition head, has long been a Promise Keepers supporter, spreading the word about "Stand in the Gap" on his TV show. Promise Keepers' president Randy Phillips says, "Neither Dobson nor Robertson has any impact on Promise Keepers' planning, strategy or message development."

Promise Keepers founder McCartney, 57, is without doubt deeply conservative. As head football coach for the University of Colorado, McCartney had mandatory pre-game prayer, for which he was attacked by the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1989 he caused an uproar at the university when he addressed a pro-life rally. The college was infuriated again in 1992 when McCartney announced support for Amendment 2, which barred certain gay-rights laws in Colorado. He has also said, "The only way God can be worshipped is through Jesus Christ. There is no other way."

His group does not take an official position on abortion, but McCartney personally attacks the issue with fervor. "Abortion is a violation of the heart of God," he says. "That's a human life. It's precious to God, created in his image, and potentially that life will carry the very Spirit of God." The view has shown up in the official Promise Keeper News. Its July issue describes the current era as a time of "crisis" for the nation: "The legal undermining of the sanctity of human life, from the preborn to the old and infirm, represents a rejection of America's two-century-old tenet that mankind is made in God's image and is a repudiation of morality as a factor in court decisions."

At the helm of Promise Keepers, McCartney has toned down some of his rhetoric. But part of what concerns NOW and other opponents is not what Promise Keepers' leaders say but what they fail to say. The group's mission is vague and unsettling regarding its relationships with women. It calls for men to take "spiritual leadership" over their wives, for example, and suggests that women follow. Feminists say this is a throwback to the days of women's servitude and oppression. Says NOW president Patricia Ireland: "Two adults standing as equals and peers taking responsibility for their family is a much different image than the man being the head and master, and women being back in an old role that historically was very detrimental."

The Promise Keepers' philosophy holds that American men face a moral and spiritual crisis. And the group has a simple solution: shape up in the eyes of the Lord, or you're going straight to hell. And if you don't shape up, you'll be responsible for dragging this great land of ours right down with you. "A house divided cannot stand," says McCartney. "We're going to be a house united, a brotherhood of believers." That insistence on brotherhood has wedged the Promise Keepers into the gender wars of late 20th century American Christianity. As Catholics debate the ordination of women and as mainline Protestant groups are having to deal with invocation of the "Goddess" and gay marriage, the Promise Keepers strike up the stentorian strains of patriarchy.

Promise Keepers believe a man's spiritual makeup differs from a woman's. Men need something McCartney calls a "masculine context that allows them to come clean"; and the group describes itself as a "Christ-centered ministry dedicated to uniting men through vital relationships to become godly influences in their world." The organization seeks to lead men to Christ by creating a climate in which men are more likely to view themselves and their lives more honestly, forums for mea culpas to be performed without female assistance. Indeed, women are seen as an impediment to a man's immediate soul-searching and are not invited into Promise Keepers rallies, prayer groups or other religious activities.

The group makes a strong case for single-sex worship. While generic evangelical appeals open Promise Keepers rallies, the sermons can quickly get down to the nitty-gritty. At a recent gathering at the Pontiac Silverdome, in a Detroit suburb, the second speaker spent half an hour hitting hard at details of sexual sins, not just inner lust and the use of pornography but adultery and abuse as well. Why? Promise Keepers' surveys show that 62% of stadiumgoers struggle with sexual sin in their lives. No other issue comes close. At the end of his sermon, the speaker at the Silverdome asked men who had committed any sexual impurities to come to the front and confess them before God. At first nothing happened. Then a few guys trickled forward. Suddenly, thousands jammed the front, falling to their knees, weeping and accepting Christ as their Saviour. "When a man sees a stadium full of other men crying, he figures it's all right to cry too," says Donald Burwell, a Promise Keepers organizer in Detroit. "With women there, he might not get that honest."

To be sure, there is nothing new about men wanting to pray together. In the early 1900s Billy Sunday, a former major league baseball player, caused a stir organizing men-only tent revivals featuring swashbuckling sermons of "Muscular Christianity." More recently, author Robert Bly raised eyebrows with Iron John, a book that sparked a small but significant "Wild Man" movement in the early '90s, gathering men in the woods to howl like wolves to "get away from their telephones" and in touch with their true nature. In 1995 Farrakhan captured the world's attention by galvanizing a vast African-American throng in his historic Million Man March, an event shrouded in controversy for its exclusion of whites and women.

McCartney insists that a man's "leadership" at home actually translates into "servanthood" rather than domination. "You can talk around it, but the man has a responsibility before God," McCartney says. "He must stand before God and give an account. Did you take spiritual leadership in your home?... You know what a woman is told [in the Bible]? Respect your husband. O.K.? The way she would do that is that she would come alongside him and let him take the lead, and he in turn would lay down his life. He would serve her, affectionately and tenderly serve her."

In a section of Seven Promises titled "Reclaiming Your Manhood," Tony Evans, a senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, puts it this way: "Sit down with your wife and say something like this: 'Honey, I've made a terrible mistake. I've given you my role. 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 take it back...there can be no compromise here. If you're going to lead, you must lead."

Many women, nevertheless, have come to the support of the Promise Keepers. Perhaps to Patricia Ireland's dismay, Hillary Clinton, while cautious about its leadership, has praised the Promise Keepers in her book It Takes a Village. And at a Sept. 16 press conference, a group of conservative women from mainline Protestant, Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches denounced NOW for its attack on the Promise Keepers and decried the negative impact of what they described as "radical feminism" on church and society. "We believe that the feminist fixation on power has sadly missed the point of the present cultural situation," said Mary Ellen Bork, the wife of the failed Supreme Court nominee and a lecturer on Catholic life. "In our view, power is not the goal in life." Added Pat Funderburk Ware, an African-American expert on preventing teenage pregnancy and HIV infection: "So many white women...are so co-opted by the feminist movement because they haven't suffered enough. They really don't know what it is not to have their men there...We've suffered enough."

Promise Keepers even receives some support from a woman who infiltrated its ranks. In 1995 journalist Donna Minkowitz went undercover on assignment for Ms. magazine to a Promise Keepers rally in St. Petersburg, Fla., disguised as a 16-year-old boy. She says that while the group is antigay and antiabortion, that is not the Promise Keepers' main thrust. "In some ways," she says, "I think they are changing men in a really good way that feminists would like. While some of their message is antifeminist and right wing, I think ignoring the good side doesn't do us a service at all."

The wives of Promise Keepers don't seem to be complaining much about their husbands. For 14 years, Cissy Wong says, she lived in a fairly miserable, uninspired marriage with her husband Larry. Then in 1994 things got out of hand for the Houston couple. During an argument, Larry, a martial-arts expert, started to beat Cissy. She called the police, who arrested Larry. After his release three days later, the family pastor took Larry to a Promise Keepers meeting. Today, Cissy says, Larry is so romantic and attentive that it is sometimes unnerving. "Once, he came home and apologized for treating me so badly over the years, and said he wanted to wash my feet," she says. "I let him, but I really thought he had lost it."

Women married to Promise Keepers have been inspired to start half a dozen Christian women's ministries, pray for the financial health of the group and "spiritually prepare" the home for the return of their husbands. One such group, Suitable Helpers in Wheat Ridge, Colo., got its start when Cheri Bright bought tickets to a Promise Keepers rally for her husband in 1993. In starting the group, Bright says she prayed that "women wouldn't be a discouragement, that women wouldn't become a hindrance to the work God wanted to do in their lives, but that women would step back and take their hands off the situation." Other, larger women's conferences--including Renewing the Heart, sponsored by Dobson's Focus on the Family organization and featuring such speakers as Billy Graham's daughter Anne Graham Lotz--are filling their own arenas.

Outside the home, Promise Keepers also preaches a rather amorphous message of "racial reconciliation," constantly pointing out that 11 a.m. Sunday is the beginning of the most segregated hour of the week. Phillips admits the organization is still paying a price for failing to reach out to minorities during its inception. "We started off with white leaders," so men of color were "the add-on, not the DNA. That was wrong, and we got hurt." The organization has made major progress since then: today minorities constitute 38% of its staff and a growing share of the attendance at its rallies. "Where I grew up in Philadelphia, I never associated with any other race. I was a bigot," confesses a 55-year-old white Promise Keeper. "Blacks--I wanted no part of them." Nevertheless, Promise Keepers' pronouncements on eradicating racism strike some as naive. The problem is that Promise Keepers almost purposely seems to avoid terms like integration and equality, instead advocating the fuzzier "reconciliation."

For now, Promise Keepers seems intent on framing the issues of gender and race in the most biblical of contexts. And while the sonorities of Scripture can work miracles in individual souls, they can also alienate non-Christians and create confusion and paranoia in an already heavily secularized America. Even so, liberal watchdogs are probably overstating their case when they argue that Promise Keepers is part of a Trojan-horse strategy of the religious right. The men involved at the grass roots see only their own souls at stake. Indeed, America can benefit to a degree from the Promise Keepers' brand of healing.

The year has been a time of turmoil and anxiety at the organization's Denver headquarters. Attendance at stadium events this year has fallen precipitously, and the dip in revenues has led to a paring down of the staff. Leaders are coming up with all sorts of new issues to tackle--for example, counseling men on ways to get out of debt, to broaden and deepen the promises that must be kept. The days leading up to the rally, however, have been exuberant. The distant future does not faze McCartney. His trust is in the same God who inspired him seven years ago to start the movement. Promise Keepers, he says, is "gonna impact this country every conceivable way, for the good." He sees a chain reaction of conversions and personal transformations sweeping the country--starting with the revival rally on Saturday. "When you start doing things out of a heart that pleases the Lord, watch out. He's gonna show up, big time."

--With reporting by Richard N. Ostling/Denver and Charlotte Faltermayer/New York

With reporting by RICHARD N. OSTLING/DENVER AND CHARLOTTE FALTERMAYER/NEW YORK