HOUSTON — Critics who say the Promise Keepers movement was about social and family dominance by white males are missing the point, according to Larry Iannaccone, professor of economics at Santa Clara University in California. The movement was not about gender but about revival, he said.
Iannaccone presented his research during a presentation at the annual meeting of the Religious Research Association in Houston. His presentation was titled, “Bringing White Guys to their Knees: How Promise Keepers Faked Right, Ran Left and Scored Big.”
“Promise Keepers was a contemporary evangelical movement patterned after revivals,” he explained. “It was all about revivalism, not about gender.” For example, Iannaccone challenged criticisms that Promise Keepers focused on a “mostly white” crowd. At the huge “Stand in the Gap” rally on the Washington Mall, the crowd was about 80 percent white, Iannaccone reported, and about 60 percent of the speakers at the rally were white. That compares favorably to the overall American population, which is 83 percent white, and the rolls of mainline Protestant churches, which are 88 percent white.
Iannaccone notes that Promise Keepers demonstrated far more racial diversity than its primary critic, the National Organization for Women. While NOW doesn’t report its racial makeup, Iannaccone’s research demonstrates the group is “overwhelmingly white.”
Iannaccone also rejected charges that Promise Keepers promoted “anti-women and patriarchal” attitudes.
Far from emphasizing male dominance, Promise Keepers urged men to new accountability and sensitivity to wives and children. “Take everything women might want their husbands to do better, and in front of it put the phrase ‘Real men, …’ and that’s what Promise Keepers advocated,” Iannaccone said.
As a result, Promise Keepers actually represented a social shift to the left in American evangelical society, Iannaccone concluded.
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