The Promise Keepers: Male Bonding for God, Family : Movements: Fast-growing evangelical effort draws 72,000 to Coliseum rally. Some outsiders criticize exclusion of women.

“Awesome.” “Radical.” “Totally stoked.”

You’d expect as much from the locals describing surf conditions. But these men were landlocked in the stands of Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and they were talking about “Promise Keepers,” a booming revival movement built around mass rallies of Christian men.

To Los Angeles maintenance man Joe Fernandez, it was a celebration of his Christian manhood. “It’s like a fiesta, like a party for God,” Fernandez said.

“It’s not something you see everyday,” enthused Rob Evans, a 25-year-old lifeguard from the Central California town of Atascadero. “It’s radical.”

An estimated 72,000 men paid from $55 to $65 to attend the Promise Keepers event here last weekend. And organizers predict that Promise Keeper events around the country during the next five months could draw a total of 600,000 men.

The movement is growing by leaps and bounds, but it is not without controversy, even among some evangelical Christians, who question the wisdom of excluding women.

“If it makes them better team players when they get home, that’s fine. If . . . they swagger around acting superior, acting like they’re going to call the shots, that’s a different story,” said Catherine Clark Kroeger, who teaches at the evangelical Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and heads Christians for Biblical Equality, which promotes the belief that the Bible teaches equality of men and women of all racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds.

The male bonding that took place at the Coliseum last weekend was spiritual rather than sports-related.

As speakers exhorted the assembly, vendors offered stylishly faded Promise Keeper polo shirts, caps and T-shirts. There was the usual stadium fare--hot dogs and soft drinks--and during breaks between speakers, young men stripped to the waist, smeared themselves with sunscreen and swatted beach balls.

But the exuberance of those interludes contrasted sharply with the moments of silence when speakers called on the men to pray for God’s healing. Then, the stadium became so silent that the only sound was flags snapping in the wind.

Promise Keepers asks the men who join their ranks to make seven commitments--including honoring the teachings of Jesus, remaining faithful to family and pursuing friendships with other men because a man “needs brothers to help him keep his promises.”

Mark Baker, a clinical psychologist and active member of a men’s ministry at the mainline Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, said men have been meeting together for years, but not to reflect on their masculinity.

“What’s happening with these Promise Keepers is they’re capitalizing on this thirst that men have now to . . . catch up to a gender consciousness that women have had for years” with the women’s movement, Baker said.

Male and female supporters of Promise Keepers deny that the organization aims to make men into dictators at home. Instead, they celebrate men who have become “spiritual leaders,” encouraging their families to pray, read the Bible and attend church.

“We feel like anything that can be done to help men be better husbands and better fathers and committed and faithful to the family will be a giant step forward for families,” said Beverly LaHaye, president of Concerned Women for America. “I’ve encouraged women to really clear the calendars so their husbands can go.”

Ideas of love, not domination, are what men say they take away from the Promise Keepers meetings.

“I haven’t heard any speeches or sermons supporting that idea--that women should be restricted to the home or suppressed in the workplace,” said Doug Zeck, a pastor from Northern California attending the Los Angeles rally. Promise Keepers “isn’t about that at all.”

Promise Keepers’ rhetoric is rooted in the emotional sensitivity of the secular men’s movement. The weekend speakers--including several nationally prominent evangelicals--talked often of the need for men to be more vulnerable, more communicative, more “honest about your own pain and suffering.”

Promise Keepers’ ideas have inspired other similar Christian ventures--including St. Joseph’s Covenant Keepers, a Catholic men’s network, and an Episcopal men’s retreat that is scheduled to take place this fall in Colorado.

And the secular men’s movement has produced other religious adaptations, from Jewish men’s retreats to “Men Only” meetings, led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan urging black men to fight black-on-black crime.

Promise Keepers’ has grown so popular, its organizers were planning to gather 1 million men in Washington, D.C., next year. But that gathering has been postponed for at least a year because of concerns that a 1996 rally would be tied to the politics of the presidential campaign and might look like a response to a similar event planned for this year by Farrakhan called a “Million Man March.”

Spencer Perkins, the black editor-in-chief of Urban Family magazine, applauded the decision.

“If you’re going to make reconciliation happen, you don’t want to get so political,” Perkins said. “You don’t want Promise Keepers to be seen as a male, white Republican organization.”

A low turnout of black men at the Coliseum last weekend clearly made organizers uncomfortable, especially given their expressed enthusiasm for racial reconciliation. When asked about the few blacks in attendance, Promise Keepers state organizer Cory Trenda acknowledged that he’d like to see minority participation rise.

The problem, said Trenda, is actually a function of the movement’s popularity among its first audiences--white male evangelicals--who spread the word about the group primarily among other white men.

“The No. 1 thing we can do is give a vision to every man in the stands,” Trenda said. “We can model (racial harmony) and we can preach it.”

Marc Ramsey, a black 32-year-old radio station manager attending the Coliseum rally, said Promise Keepers has “worked hard to get African Americans to attend.” The blame, he said, rests with local black churches.

“What are those pastors doing?” he asked, looking around the Coliseum. “This is perfect for the black man in this nasty community.”

Although Promise Keepers has succeeded in drawing huge crowds to its rallies, the group now faces the challenge of nurturing men’s enthusiasm between events--especially among those who are committing to Christianity for the first time.

“The hard work,” said Trenda, “is to get these guys plugged into a church, and in that church, to get them plugged into a small men’s group.”