Promise Keepers, Losers Weepers
T. David Legg
October 1, 1997
To hear Patricia Ireland tell it, there is nothing more "scary"than the current popularity of Promise Keepers. I laughed out loud when I heard her use that word. It's hard to imagine anything less scary than a bunch of guys praying to be better husbands and fathers. But then I thought about it a bit. Maybe being scared depends on who you are. Maybe millions of pks are scary to people like Patricia Ireland because they represent something that threatens her worldview. First, pk involves public displays of religion: men praying, in large numbers, and in football stadiums for heaven's sake. I can imagine why that image scares secular lobbyists. It is religion that is not hidden under a bushel—a mass public display of a determined, persistent belief in a God who changes hearts and minds. A crowd of swaying praying men is unnerving if you've discarded the notion of God yourself and worked to have that notion purged from the public realm for everyone else. Just when it felt like religion was safely privatized, these people fill stadiums with proof that atheism is the enclave of a tiny minority of elites who can live in a world of their own making. Second, the honest passion and fervor behind the Promise Keepers movement throws the overall cultural impotence of the chattering classes into stark relief. Could now fill football stadiums across America every couple of weeks? They could try. Just say for a minute that they could, what would they do with a football stadium full of people? Sing? Repeat catchy policy slogans? Get upper-middle-class feminists to make promises to be better wives, mothers, community members? Promise Keepers works because it is about something critically important in the day-to-day lives and hearts of ...
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