RE: Point Man - Week #10 "Telling your kids what you don't want to tell them"
San Antonio Express-News, 7-13-07:
Promise Keepers rally aims to inspire
Web Posted: 07/12/2007 11:07 PM CDT
J. Michael Parker
Express-News Religion Writer
James Caraway can't wait for tonight's Promise Keepers rally, his seventh in as many years.
It has turned him on to his faith, made him more committed to serving his wife and encouraged him to become more involved in activities at his church.
"I've become aware of my responsibility as a Christian man, a businessman, a husband and a father," he said.
His wife, Sunny Caraway, said she was glad she suggested it.
"When he came home from Promise Keepers, I could tell he had been spending quality time with God," she said.
The nondenominational Protestant organization will kick off its two-day conference today.
It seeks to encourage men to become more committed to their Christian faith, more accountable to their wives and more active leaders in their families and churches.
On Thursday, organizers had sold 5,000 tickets but expect to sell many more today.
"We hope that men who attend will leave this conference with a new spirit of love through Jesus Christ and will take that love into their homes and workplaces to impact the entire community," said event director Patrick McKinney.
Mike Sobotker has never attended a Promise Keepers event and doesn't know what to expect.
"I didn't really know it existed," he said. "My wife went to a Women of Faith conference, which is like the women's equivalent of Promise Keepers, and she just couldn't stop talking about it. She said it was exhilarating, eye-opening and very moving."
Then Rodney Lewis, whose wife works with Sobotker's wife, invited him to tonight's rally, and he's eager to see what happens.
"It's good to have men of difference cultures coming together," Sobotker said.
Ten years ago, Promise Keepers was a phenomenon in evangelical Protestantism, uniting more than half a million men on Washington's National Mall.
The organization, founded by former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, boasted a $70 million budget in 1997. Then it dropped its $60 stadium admission charge in order to attract more men. It also laid off virtually its entire paid staff of nearly 350. It reinstated the stadium fee in 2000.
The organization drew criticism from church leaders, feminists and others for everything from undermining the men's involvement in church life to teaching men to subjugate their wives to being a political organization under the guise of a religious movement.
But Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life in Hartford, Conn., believes the concerns were overstated.
"The idea that this was an effort to establish total male dominance over women was an exaggerated concern among feminists," Silk said.
Linda Pritchard, history professor at Eastern Michigan University, said Promise Keepers comes out of the traditional evangelical concern about the health and primacy of the nuclear family.
"To the extent that Promise Keepers has informed men's responsibility for that, I think we all believe it's a healthy influence on society."
Pritchard said one very important way Promise Keepers could impact marriage and family life is to promote work against family violence.
"No group has really addressed this issue," she said. "Promise Keepers would be a good place to work on countering domestic violence."
Silk said the concern that the organization was a religious front for political activism stemmed from the support it received from such political activists as the Rev. Pat Robertson and James Dobson of Focus on the Family.
"But Promise Keepers has never been that political. It seems to fit more into the evangelical culture of small-group Bible study. Having gatherings in stadiums was a way to take it on the road and encourage male bonding and