Customer Reviews

The Promise Keepers: Servants, Soldiers, and Godly Men

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The author tries to ask and answer what were the Promise Keepers about and why have they basically disappeared after the 1990s. He does a good job in trying to find synthesis. The PKs may have no problem calling themselves "patriarchs," but they weren't raving misogynists either.

The author says something to the effect of, "There are many studies on how oppressed groups find their power. I wanted to examine here how a group of privilege loses its oomph." This was a very important inquiry. However, the jaded side of me wonders if he was halfway into his project when PK declined and just didn't want to throw it away. Maybe he is a victim of the college-based "publish or perish" rule. Further, this book could have benefited from an intersectional analysis. As lesbians or working-class women are doubly oppressed, PK members as Christians and men could be described as doubly-privileged. The author explores maleness in that light, but not Christianity. Like whites and heterosexuals, Christians are a majority group. When 95% of Americans identify with that religion, then we are far from Roman times when this group was persecuted. This book rendered that privilege natural in some ways that I found disturbing.

In his exploration of PK's falls, there are some items he left out of his analysis. On VH-1, a talking head opined that grunge was just a mix of blues, punk, and rock; it faded quickly because it added nothing new. Here, the author details how PK was part old-school patriarchy and part-mythopoetic movement. Maybe it too faded because it added nothing new. In the 1990s, men's wilderness retreats and the Million Man March were big, but they have basically vanished too. Maybe there is something about men's groups that doesn't keep the attention of men for long.

This book was a little bit personal observation, a little bit group interviews, and a little bit textual analysis. This may rub some readers the wrong way as being hodgepodge. The author explores PK men's attitudes towards their wives and feminists. However, according to Michael Messner, there is a women's auxiliary group called the Promise Reapers. Nothing is said about them in this book.

Early on, the author goes out of his way to say he supports women's rights. While he points to PK's homophobia, he never says he supports gay rights. I wonder if this book would have had a different flavor if it were written by an author that supported gay rights fully. The author focuses on how PK brought men of different denominations together and quotes a half-Jewish man who said he wished PK would approach men not of the Christian faith. Still, I thought little was said on Catholic men. Did PK want all types of Christian men to unite or just the ones influenced by Luther?

The author implies that studying the Promise Keepers may be a passé activity. As a person who knew nothing about the group during the 1990s, I found this informative, rather than "yesterday's news." I do wonder if the academic style would turn off actual, former PK members. Still, if I could wade through the Biblical passages, I am hoping they would attempt the college-level theory.