"I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."
(Robert Frost)
Nearly a million men gathered in our nation's capitol earlier this month. They came, so
they said, not for purposes of political reform, but for religious revival. They came to
pray and sing, to confess their sins, most of them sexual sins, and to make promises to
God and Jesus to be better husbands and fathers, Christians and churchmen, and to seek
racial reconciliation in their towns and cities and churches. The Promise Keepers, founded
by former football coach, Bill McCartney, have obviously taped into some deep felt needs
among men in our society. Dr. William Pollack, from the Center for Men of the McLean
Hospital in Belmont, says that "men are very confused, angry, and frustrated as they
try to figure out what it means today to be a man in today's world." All the old
assumptions and guidelines have been called into question or totally abandoned and men
wonder who they are and how they are supposed to behave in relation to women and to other
men.
Harvard theologian Harvey Cox notes that there are few opportunities for male bonding in a
spiritual and religious setting. The Promise Keepers have provided that opportunity for
thousands of men and have done so not by bringing them together in churches and temples,
but primarily in football stadiums, a very masculine setting, one of the venues of male
culture, a place where men can feel comfortable, and then be given permission to be
supportive and affectionate with one another and to demonstrate their bonding with other
men. The poet Robert Bly has done this on a much smaller scale in natural settings,
calling forth "the wild man" within, singing, chanting, dancing, beating drums,
affirming their masculine natures. But Bill McCartney has done it on a truly grand scale
and within a clearly evangelical Christian framework. McCartney says there's a tremendous
hunger for God in men today and that Promise Keepers is helping men fulfill that hunger by
getting them in touch with the God of the Bible. One thing is for sure. This is a very
masculine image of God. It is God the Father without the least hint of a feminine image of
the divine. If God is conceived in solely masculine terms then that implies a conception
of the feminine that is less worthy of human respect than the masculine.
The men at a Promise Keepers rally often chant together a very masculine affirming
mantra--"Thank God I'm a man!" If this makes men feel positive and affirmative
about their masculine sexual identity as a gift from God, with equal respect for women's
sexual identity, all well and good. But if it is in any way a throw-back to the ancient
orthodox Jewish prayer which men used to utter in the temple, "I thank you, God, you
did not create me as a woman", then it would be better to be forgotten. The other
side to, "Thank God I'm a man!" is, "Thank God I'm not a woman!", and
that underlying attitude is cause for much grief between the sexes.
McCartney insists that neither he nor the Promise Keepers organization have any political
agenda. There are those who doubt his sincerity on that question, especially when asked
whether he would run for President if God said it was necessary to do so to fulfill his
mission. His answer was an unequivocal, "Absolutely, I'd be a fool not to." And
then when he says that his next goal is to have thousands of men in every state standing
together on the steps of every capitol in the nation on January 1 in the year 2,000--I
don't know about you, but that sure sounds political to me. Even if they don't preach a
political agenda, it's there by implication. There's also the fact that McCartney himself
has been very outspoken in his condemnation of both abortion and homosexuality as sins
that should be outlawed. He's been a supporter of Operation Rescue, a radical pro-life
group, and one that is certainly political in its aims, and just recently in a fund
raising letter for the D.C. Revival, he lumped "liberal feminists groups" with
atheists and Satanists."
The Promise Keepers are a highly organized movement. They certainly have tremendous
political potential. Jerry Falwel, Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition are some of
their biggest cheer leaders, and there can be no question that they have political
agendas. "When push comes to shove," as one commentator puts it, "the
Promise Keepers followers are likely to pull voting booth levers to abolish abortion or
curtail gay rights. Ultimately these men are a voting bloc--an evangelical Christian
voting bloc." We would be naive to think anything less. Moreover, McCartney testifies
that God wants the Promise Keepers to go global, and so he is enlisting foreign nationals
to help the PKers proselytize the world. I certainly have no objection to Evangelical
Christians preaching the Gospel and trying to save the world, but I confess that it makes
me not a little nervous when one man seems to have God's ear to such an extent. Methinks
that the Holy Spirit may have gone to his head more than to his heart. But who am I to
judge? God has not told me what She has in mind for a global men's movement.
I am cognizant of the fact, of course, that the Promise Keepers have done an awful lot of
good for a lot of men and also women. If they are helping thousands of men to take
personal responsibility for their lives and behavior as husbands and fathers and workers,
to own up to their sins and failures and shortcomings, as they clearly have done, then I
say bravo, keep up the good work. If thousands of wives and children are now safer and
less likely to be physically or emotionally abused by their husbands and fathers and
lovers because of their change of heart, then I say praise God and praise the Promise
Keepers who have made this change possible. Men behaving badly is no laughing matter in
any religious framework. If white men are sincerely making an effort to reach out and be
reconciled to their black and native American brothers, and vice-versa, then I say,
hallelujah, the call for racial reconciliation is still a cultural and religious
imperative that needs to be heard and acted upon both within the church and without. If
the men of Promise Keepers are promising to "practice spiritual, moral, ethical, and
sexual purity", and to "build strong marriages and families through love,
protection, and biblical values", then I wish them well in this earnest endeavor, but
I have some questions to raise with them about which biblical values they are seeking to
uphold.
To begin with I find it interesting to note that the Scriptural text used for the theme
for the Washington, D.C. revival meeting was from the Old Testament prophet, Ezekiel
22:30, "And I sought for a man among them who should stand in the gap before me for
the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none." What is interesting about
this text is that what precedes it has virtually nothing to say about men behaving badly
as men, a failure of gender responsibility. Rather, the emphasis of the text in its full
context is nearly wholly political in its judgment and implications. First, it is a
broadside against political aggression and avarice, of princes and rulers behaving
badly--taking treasure and precious things that do not really belong to them,
"destroying human lives to get dishonest gain" and making many widows in the
process. Next, it is an attack upon the religious establishment, of priests who have done
violence to holy laws and profaned the Sabbath, and led the people astray. Finally, it is
a broadside against "the people of the land" who "have practiced extortion
and committed robbery,...oppressed the poor and needy, and extorted the sojourner without
redress."
If Ezekiel 22:30 is the rationale for a men's spiritual revival meeting then why are not
the Promise Keepers preaching a Gospel of Social Justice for the poor and needy and
seeking to enact legislation that would feed hungry and disadvantaged children or widows
and divorcees or struggling single working mothers, or provide legal services to those who
have been cheated and robbed by the wealthy and advantaged and cannot afford to seek
redress? Because that would get them into politics and presumably they are an apolitical
organization. They would do better to find a different text to support their efforts.
Secondly, I disagree strongly with the Promise Keepers Biblical rationale for men
reclaiming their lost authority in the domestic sphere. You all know the text from
Ephesians 5: "Wives be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is
the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church his body....As the church is
subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands." I
don't need to tell you that much mischief and abuse have been done to women over the
centuries in the name of that Pauline text and others like it. Women have been beaten,
demeaned, punished, raped and abused by presumably well-meaning husbands and fathers who
thought that their wives and daughters were not much better than property or chattel to be
used as they thought best, and they could back up their actions with verses of scripture
to salve their consciences. That they distorted the meaning of those verses is beside the
point. Women have been denied the right to vote, to speak, to be educated, to run for
office, to inherit property, to be represented in a court of law, to receive equal pay for
equal work, all because their husbands, and by inference the male of the species, believed
that women were less than fully human and that men by nature and by divine fiat had
authority over the female of the species.
Women have had to struggle to gain their rights in the home and the workplace and in the
political arena. In much of the globe they have still not achieved the rights that we in
the west perhaps take for granted. I can understand why groups like the National
Organization for Women (NOW) are quite put off by a rationale that wants to return to the
thinking of a former bygone era to justify masculine privilege and authority. We have only
to look to the nation of Iran for an example of a society that reclaimed a religious basis
for male authority and leadership. This is not to say that the Promise Keepers would
follow suit if they could, but I can nonetheless appreciate why feminist critics are less
than willing to offer their trust, especially when they hear Promise Keeper leaders
advising men not to ask for their authority to be restored, but to take it and reclaim it
since it is their God-given right and responsibility.
Constance Buchanan, Director of Women's Studies at HDS, offers this sharp critique of the
reclamation of masculine authority: No matter how they try to soften it, when you drag
back in the notion of masculine authority, you also drag back in the notion of women being
subordinated. It's a complete contradiction for them to revive male privilege and at the
same time promise to be good. It's the privilege that rotted out the promise. "I'll
be good!" Yes, but just to be safe we need to be reminded, as Lord Action taught,
that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." He was speaking
of political power. The same applies to power in the domestic sphere. Maybe there's
something wrong with having only one gender rule the roost. Could there be another way to
conceive family authority?
I like what John Spaulding says in the THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY: Why must a secure sense of
manhood depend on men being in control? Isn't it possible that the notion that "men
must run things" is in part to blame for the breakdown of marriages, families and the
notion of what it means to be a man?
Maybe it's time to question the veracity of such a notion and to declare it obsolete and
nonviable. What we need is to articulate a new basis for male and female authority, one
that is grounded in a notion of equal partners in faith and shared responsibility.
If you look at the rest of the text that follows this section in Ephesians you find the
Pauline author saying in Eph. 6:5ff, "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your
earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart as to Christ;...rendering
service with a good will as to the Lord and not to men." The apostle Paul, or whoever
wrote the text, had no concern about the justice or injustice of the institution of
slavery, because he earnestly believed that the world would end in his lifetime and Christ
would return on the clouds of heaven to judge the quick and dead. But we are concerned
about the injustice of slavery and fought a Civil War over the matter. If the Bible has
inerrant authority then we would have a rationale here for a return to the institution of
slavery, and the reimposition of white supremacy. But if slavery turned out to be morally
mistaken, then perhaps there is something not quite right with the notion of God-given
masculine authority. Once you question the authority of the Bible in one place, you have
to question its authority in other places, and you are forced to use your reason and
conscience and common sense as sources of revelation and truth. God can't be less than
truth, justice and love, and that is something you can't keep locked up in the pages of a
book, even a holy book.
Needless to say I am much more comfortable with an organization like the UU Men's Network
which was formed at the UUA General Assembly a number of years ago. In its statement of
purpose it says: "Our purpose is to work together to build a positive liberal
religious masculinity: male-positive, pro-feminist/womanist, gay-affirming, culturally and
racially inclusive, and diverse." UUMeN seeks to "foster, promote and defend
male-positive and male-valuing attitudes among ourselves, and within the UUA and the
larger culture", and challenges "men to confront gender injustice, homophobia,
racism, loneliness and distrust between men, and violence by men against women, children,
other men, themselves, and the earth." UUMeN actively recruits men of different
theological and political views, races, backgrounds, sexual orientations, ages, and
lifestyles." UUMeN has some 300 members across the continent including some from our
own First Parish UU Men's Network. That's not exactly a counterbalance to a million
Promise Keepers descending on Washington, D.C., or 50,000 in a football stadium, but then
I'm not much for crowds myself, and, frankly I'd rather be uncertain that I'm right with a
few, than certain I'm right with a million. I'd much rather question authority than claim
authority I have not earned and cannot buy.
I pray the Promise Keepers will keep most of their promises, and I hope they will question
the rationale for some of their promises, and most of all, challenge their leaders to live
up to their promises to remain apolitical. And finally, I pray that the Mystery of Being,
who is beyond human thought and gender, who is both Father and Mother, Sister and Brother,
Friend and Lover, will forgive our human presumption to know thy will and proclaim it as
our own. Make us equal partners in a faith that seeks truth and practices love and justice
in all our relations. In the words of your poet, we have promises to keep, and miles to go
before we sleep. Amen.