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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Renewal, Through Change Of Heart

Don Eberly Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service

This Saturday, close to one million American “Promise Keepers” will fill the mall in Washington for what is being called a “stand in the gap” rally. In stark contrast to almost any gathering in the capital city, there will be no political speeches or angry demands. The crowded mall may actually get very quiet as the masses of men kneel in repentance, acknowledge their faults and pray for renewal.

Try to imagine it: One million Americans, acknowledging their responsibility for something wrong!

The press may have a hard time ignoring what will likely be one of the largest Washington gatherings in American history, but they’ll also have a hard time accurately explaining its cultural significance. What exactly does it mean?

First, there was Louis Farrakhan’s march, which in many cities has led to community-based renewal centering on the reconnection of men to their children. Now, there’s the Promise Keepers, who have already filled 57 stadiums with nearly 3 million guys in just six years, and now have 40 nations from across the globe begging for their help.

As the press searches for theories, here is one to consider. First, Promise Keepers is the most powerful manifestation to date of a quiet movement among men that has been building for the past decade. It’s a response to the growing realization among men as well as women that every social revolution in America has bypassed men - as husbands, fathers and friends.

We now see the results. The social wreckage resulting from the collapse of fatherhood, for example, litters the American landscape: 40 percent of America’s children growing up in a household in which their father does not live; a third born to father-absent households; unprecedented child poverty in the midst of a booming economy; more prison beds than any nation on Earth, filled predominantly by males whose fathers are absent.

The story of American children is increasingly one of disappointment, pain and broken dreams resulting in drugs, educational failure, and teen pregnancies, all correlating with father absence. Men themselves are asking how in the world the “Y” chromosome could mess up so badly.

A second explanation is that we are in the midst of, if not a religious revival, certainly a renewed interest in things spiritual and transcendent. The Promise Keepers movement must be understood primarily as an old fashioned religious revival movement. If the 1980s were about me (the entrepreneur), and the ‘90s about we (the village), the next decade, if not the next century, may focus on Thee (the search for wholeness through spiritual grooming).

The hunger for things transcendent is palpable. Some are predicting that a 500-year-old experiment in secularism is over. One senses a deep ferment in many fields, even the physical sciences. Spiritual themes in popular music and entertainment reflect a growing hunger for moral wholeness. Bob Carlisle’s moving tribute to a father’s love for his daughter, “Butterfly Kisses,” has sold almost three million copies and is creating a stir around the world. Why has this tune taken off? Says Carlisle, “Because people are hungering for songs about love, commitment and gratitude for lasting relationships.” Successful and satisfying lives will be built on the foundation of love and fidelity.

Thirdly, Promise Keepers is part of a deeply ingrained American phenomenon called a social movement. Just as Americans witnessed an explosion of moral reform movements and voluntary aid societies at the turn of the 19th century, today’s communities are coming to life again with projects to renew neighborhoods, strengthen marriages, recover manners and character, and revive the spirit.

The decades-long fixation with politics in Washington is over, thanks to disappointing results and one ethical lapse after another. Civic energies are now being directed to the renewal of civil society, our homes, neighborhoods and voluntary associations.

There’s a reason Promise Keepers founder, former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, has insisted that reconciliation - gender, racial and denominational - be included in his 10-point agenda to recover integrity. The most pressing social problems of our time have to do with a fraying of human bonds that can only be confronted through changes in the heart.

This reflects the broader society’s wish to reverse the growing inhumanity and distrust around us. Only 35 percent of the American people say they can trust most of the people most of the time.

Why is this so? Simply because too few are trustworthy, and too many don’t keep their promises.

McCartney founded Promise Keepers on the conviction that “we need people in our country who will be promise keepers - in our families, our businesses, and in our public life - in everything.” Strangely, this movement promoting trustworthiness and integrity is being received with distrust in some quarters, evidence that the job will not be easy.

The fear among Promise Keepers’ opponents is that the movement represents male backlash and social reaction. However, the evidence to suggest that Promise Keepers is a reaction to the success of the women’s movement is thin to nonexistent. In many ways it reflects the broader synthesis going on in society at large but missed by those at the outer ideological edges of our social debate: America is moving into a new era, one that is both post-feminist and post-traditionalist. People have had enough of ruptured relationships; they want family to work.

If Promise Keepers and others in the fatherhood movement are reacting to anything, it is to the romantic idea advanced by many social reformers that kids are fine without dads in the home; that men generally are superfluous. On this one point, a growing number of men are rightly determined to resist. There is no known society in history that has succeeded by discharging men of their duties to help raise the children, in effect disenfranchising them from the most satisfying and consequential role in life.

Of course, this movement must be careful that in urging men to “stand up,” as speakers frequently admonish, they are not inadvertently encouraging men to “step on” people.

But with rare exceptions, Promise Keepers is promoting what the social scientists call companionate marriage, one premised on equal regard and mutual honor. The job of the husband and father, in other words, is to honor and respect his wife and to discipline his children with tenderheartedness.

Those who dismiss Promise Keepers as insurgent neotraditionalism or male backlash can relax. Rolling the clock back on women would be impossible, even if it were thought desirable. Their advances are now deeply embedded throughout the culture and are part of the air we breathe, as any traditional guy who has discussed the matter lately with his wife or daughter will tell you.

But while we can’t go back in time, we certainly can go back to basics: men and women trying harder to honor their sacred pledges to each other and parents prioritizing their children. In reality, the Promise Keepers movement may signal the end of the radical rights-based, me-first mentality that has been bankrupting our social order.

MEMO: Don Eberly, founder and chairman of the National Fatherhood Initiative, has written extensively on issues of culture and society.

Don Eberly, founder and chairman of the National Fatherhood Initiative, has written extensively on issues of culture and society.