There Isn’t Anything Wrong With Keeping a Promise

Maybe because I know several men who have gone to Promise Keeper rallies--and also know their wives quite well--I’ve never bought into the fears that the organization poses a threat to women.

To the contrary, every guy I’ve talked to who has attended a Promise Keeper event (the last one in Orange County was in 1994 and the most recent was Saturday in Washington) has vowed to become a better husband and pay more attention to his wife’s needs.

Does a man who considers himself anointed by God as superior to his woman really need to spend a weekend crying in a stadium with other superior beings over his failings with her?

I think not. If he’s the kind of guy who relegates his wife to inferior status, he’ll simply stay home and get on with the relegating.

The concern of PK critics is that the evangelical impetus behind the movement will reinforce the patriarchal social structure that the women’s movement worked so hard to dismantle. As with any group that includes hundreds of thousands of participants, some men in Promise Keepers may want to go back to the good old days. No doubt, a fair number of male chauvinist pigs (remember them?) exists among members.

But, again, my observation of the PK men I know is that rank chauvinism doesn’t describe them. Rather, these are men who respect their wives, defer to them in a number of ways and genuinely want to be better husbands and fathers.

Here’s how it works in the real world: If a man is drawn to Promise Keepers, chances are his wife or girlfriend is similarly inclined, religiously. The PK wives I know accept in the abstract that their husbands have some sort of primacy as “head of the household,” but to depict these women as docile sycophants is to severely miss the point. None that I know are pushovers. Nor are their husbands under illusions about the equality of the decision-making procedure at home.

So what’s the big deal with Promise Keepers?

For starters, religion has always bred skeptics. So when thousands of men assemble behind closed stadium doors, they must have a hidden agenda, right?

No doubt, the Promise Keepers movement also has been hurt by the politicizing that other religious movements have practiced. It’s one thing to tell the public you’re a religious organization; it’s quite another to become a political one. Witness the Christian Coalition, whose conservative political agenda is more and more an open secret.

Stephen Mather is pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Anaheim and is someone who understands local politics. As a member of an interdenominational coalition in Orange County, he’s worked with elected officials on funding for various community projects.

Mather’s awareness of Promise Keepers is secondhand, both from talking to men who attended rallies and reading about it in various publications.

“My initial guarded feelings about it were turned around in the last year or so,” he says. The organization has reached out to a wider racial and ethnic spectrum of participants, Mather says, and the men who attended rallies brought back “glowing reports” about its impact on them.

“My take is it seems to be a good thing for me who are struggling to find their identity,” Mather says. “I’d be concerned if when they came back from a rally, they’d have to somehow assert their masculinity at the expense of [women]. The couples I’ve known--they’re not guys who are throwing their weight around saying, ‘My way or the highway.’ ”

Mather sees PK as tapping into men who, in general, “are buffeted about in terms of their values, who they are and what they’re about.” In contrast to the expanded public dialogue that sorted out women’s roles in a changing society, men have not had one.

As for worries that PK is a front for religious-right politicking, Mather says his first impression is that the organization “should do what it does best, which is bringing men together and upholding values that derive from Scripture, which I think is fine. The danger is that if it starts using that to justify male supremacy or a patriarchy at the expense of women, then I think certain Christian elements would be critical of that.”

That said, and given his background, Mather is not opposed to church-based movements involving themselves in politics. He bemoans only those religious groups that branch off into politics but then “don’t want to play by the same rules as everybody else” when it comes to being criticized or evaluated over what they do.

Whether Promise Keepers is a fad, a historical blip, remains to be seen. I haven’t heard its evangelical call, but I applaud its stated goals. I take the organization at its word that its mission is to improve on the male of the species, irrespective of politics and without taking women as prisoners.

So far, Promise Keepers is nothing a real man--or woman--needs to be afraid of.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.