"We Are One Life," but Not of One Gender Ideology: Unity, Ambiguity, and the Promise Keepers

Abstract

The Promise Keepers has been described as a gender ideology movement. Although Promise Keepers demonstrates an ethical and religious ethos, this paper's investigation demonstrates that movement includes at least four different ideologies of gender. The Promise Keepers organization adeptly uses a number of cultural and organizational resources to maintain unity among its diverse following. Unity is created by corporate experiences, use of a common religious identity, symbolic actions, ethical calls to unity, and organizational strategies, but not by a clear gender role ideology. Although Promise Keepers (PK) received much news media coverage, scholarly work on this Christian men's movement has been slower to appear. One recent work has been Michael Messner's 1997 overview of Politics of masculinities: Men in movements. Messner places PK in center of the sphere of anti-feminist backlash. This perspective of PK has been supported by many in popular press. Yet other scholars question how solidly PK belongs in that camp noting ambiguity in their discussions of roles of men and women (Van Leuwen 1996, 1997; Lockhart 1996). Others in popular press also note these mixed messages (Abraham 1996; Minkowitz 1995). Is PK an expression of last gasp of or of first backlash of patriarchy? Are they really moving towards egalitarian relationships between men and women, but still clinging to a residual, traditional headship language, or are they seeking to undo gains that women have made and to restore patriarchy in home (Jackson 1997; Messner 1997)?