Promise Keepers Revival? The Ms. Q&A With Jackson Katz on the Trump-Era Resurgence of the Largest Organized Men's Move
(ughhhhh, just like cockroaches, they keep coming back!!! absolutely frightening!!!)
Promise Keepers Revival? The Ms. Q&A With Jackson Katz on the Trump-Era Resurgence of the Largest Organized Men’s Movement
PUBLISHED 8/29/2024 by Carrie N. Baker
In the ’90s, an all-male religious group attempted to roll back progress made on women’s and LGBTQ+ equality. Three decades later, they’re back.
Guests attend The Awakening, a gathering of 25,000 Promise Keepers, on June 10, 2006, in Razorback Stadium in Fayettville, Ark. (Charles Ommanney / Getty Images)
A recent New York Times headline blared, “The All-Male Christian Group Seeking a Resurrection in the Trump Era.” In the 1990s, Promise Keepers were an evangelical group of Christian men who pledged to keep their promises to their wives and children in exchange for female submission and service. Relatively apolitical at the time, Promise Keepers even pledged to work toward “racial reconciliation.” Filling football stadiums, evangelical men and boys felt safe to********* cry******** (oh, look, males CRYING and hug, while reaffirming each other’s masculinity and entitlement to male dominance. By the end of the 1990s, Promise Keepers had faded from the headlines, but now 30 years later, they are staging a revival.
Ms. sat down with Jackson Katz to get his take on the Promise Keepers revival. Katz is an internationally renowned thought leader in the growing global movement of men working to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Carrie Baker: For those who weren’t around or don’t remember, what were the Promise Keepers in the 1990s?
Jackson Katz: Promise Keepers is an evangelical-based “parachurch” men’s movement that burst onto the scene in 1990. It was founded by then-University of Colorado Boulder football coach Bill McCartney. They held a series of public events at stadiums throughout the 1990s, and a big march on Washington in October 1997, where more than a half-million men showed up on the National Mall. Something like 3.5 million men attended Promise Keeper events throughout the ‘90s, which some have argued made it the largest organized men’s movement ever.
They were early adopters of the now-popular idea on the right that one of the main problems in American society is that men have lost their way, and need to reconnect with “what it means to be a man” in brotherhood with other men—within a deeply patriarchal, conservative Christian evangelical framework, of course.
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https://msmagazine.com/2024/08/29/promise-keepers-white-men-trump-masculinity/