Religion Politicized by Media
The Media and the Promise Keepers
Originally published in the January 1999 issue of CLASnotes.
David Hackett , associate
professor of religion, is currently working in the area of gender and American
religion. His book, Fraternal Orders and the Re-Imagining of American
Religious History is forthcoming.
When religion is in the
news, the religious content of the story is often ignored in favor of some
political, economic or other non-religious factor that drives the report.
As a result, religious world views and motivations are discounted as irrelevant
to what is "really" going on, leaving the reader with a constricted understanding.
Take, for example, the recent spate of stories about the evangelical Promise Keepers crusade. Nearly all of these reports were cast in a "culture wars" political context that paid scant attention to the religious convictions of these Christian men. In the earliest stories, dating back to 1991, local reporters pointed excitedly to the "spirited success" of this new "Christian men's movement," focusing on the novelty and strangeness of 50,000 middle-aged men gathering in a Boulder, Colorado, football stadium to find their way back to God and to their responsibilities as husbands and fathers.
As the Promise Keepers' membership swelled (from 4,200 in 1991 to 230,000 in 1994), they gained a wider audience. National publications and broadcasts took up the story and a chorus of criticism centered on the right-wing domination of the movement all but drowned out the positive note struck by local reports. A Nation cover story, for example, pronounced the movement a "third wave" of politically active religious conservatism "following the demise of the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and the compromises of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition with secular Republicanism." At the same time, National Organization of Women (NOW) president Patricia Ireland spent one television show after another linking the movement's founder, Bill McCartney, with the "same old pantheon of political extremists."
Significantly, this "here come the lunatics" coverage moderated and became increasingly sympathetic as time and proximity to Promise Keepers members and their rallies progressed. As men poured into Washington for the October 4-5, 1997 rally, they conducted themselves so well, said one CNN correspondent, "You can't help but be moved." Interviews of career-oriented and supportive Promise Keepers' wives suggested that their relationships were far more egalitarian in practice than the movement's rhetoric of men "taking charge" implied. The characteristic absence of politics in the rally speeches reinforced the shift in attitude, as did the emphasis on racial reconciliation—palpably present in scenes of black and white men hugging each other.
Such positive appraisals were followed by a backlash against the earlier liberal perspective, but this only reinforced the media-generated theme of culture war. Liberals were now accused of a double standard that kept them from recognizing the positive aspects of the movement. "By any normal expectation," wrote U.S. News and World Report, "NOW would express at least some guarded praise" for programs that urged men to be emotionally vulnerable, honest and respectful of their wives and families. (NOW didn't budge.) Similarly, Jim Sleeper on "All Things Considered" argued that white liberals were unwilling to face the possibility that "the civil rights movement's beloved community of black and white together has found a new, more conservative home."
Not all the media attention to the Washington rally was so overly politicized. The Washington Post performed a signal service by surveying 882 randomly selected participants. Most turned out to be white middle-class Baptists who didn't like Bill Clinton or feminism, but were neither politically active nor interested in having Promise Keepers form a political action committee and contribute money to candidates who support Christian values.
But by and large, a failure to understand Promise Keepers within the long tradition of American revivalism led the news media to miss the movement's real significance and prospects. Appearing on the "MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour," movement leader Paul Edwards asserted that theirs was a "revival movement," part of "the history of a tradition of going after the heart...rather than a reform movement." This statement squares with historians' judgments that America's great revival leaders, from George Whitefield in the 1740s First Great Awakening to Charles Finney in the early 1800s Second Great Awakening to Billy Graham today, have all been devoted to personal, spiritual transformation rather than political change.
Not that revivals have lacked for unintended political consequences. Evangelicals involved in nineteenth-century abolitionism had, rather than political motivation, a religious commitment to saving souls. The modern "born again" movement to address concerns regarding family, gender, and sexuality is similarly more concerned with religion than politics. The overt movement of religion into politics has always been controversial, and evangelical leaders have, like Billy Graham, for the most part steered clear of organized politics. Certainly, Promise Keepers has political implications. But that is not the same as saying that its efforts are generated by a political agenda.
Efforts to lure men back into churches by emphasizing the masculinity of Christianity have been going on with indifferent success ever since the early nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution. Like the "Muscular Christian" movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Promise Keepers relies on Saint Paul's masculine rhetoric, but softens it with a dose of latter-day emotional sensitivity. This suggests the conscious search for images and relationships that portray strength as a nonviolent, noncompetitive value. Possible long-term consequences of the movement could be dissemination of these messages through small groups and church curriculums.
Analyzing Promise Keepers primarily through a politicized culture wars lens has, in short, given the news media a constricted and inaccurate view of the men's movement in today's evangelical churches. Within the Pauline tradition of male leadership, which is embedded in the basic vocabulary and mental framework of evangelical churches, conservative Protestant women are not men's obedient servants. They are complementary partners with men in a common effort to follow Christ. As for the Promise Keepers' commitment to racial reconciliation, it has not been shown to be a political ploy. On the contrary, all indications are that it is a sincere effort to create a world where there is neither black nor white in Christianity. To date, Promise Keepers remains a largely non-political effort of evangelical churchmen to change their ways and keep their promises to their wives and families. It may become a political organization, but anyone who seeks to make it such—and there are those who would love to do so—stands to undermine the deepest commitments that bring these men together.
What continues to be most striking to me, as a religion professor who reads with everyone else the media's presentation of religion, is the relative absence of attention to religious motivations. As this example suggests, reduction of religion to politics, economics or what have you narrows our understanding of the larger meaning and significance of religious goings on in our contemporary world.
