Servanthood Or Soft Patriarchy? A Christian Feminist Looks At The Promise Keepers Movement -- By: Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 11:2 (Spring 1997)
Article: Servanthood Or Soft Patriarchy? A Christian Feminist Looks At The Promise Keepers Movement
Author: Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen


Servanthood Or Soft Patriarchy?
A Christian Feminist Looks At The Promise Keepers Movement

Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen

Dr Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen is a social and cross-cultural psychologist whose research interests include philosophy of social science, human sexuality, and the interaction of gender with theology and church history. She is a member of the faculty of Eastern College. Her books are available from the CBE Book Service.

The material in this article was first published in The Journal of Men’s Studies. Vol. 5, No. 3, February 1997 (EO. Box 32, Harriman, IN 37748-0032) and is reprinted by permission.

In 1992, well before the Christian men’s movement known as Promise Keepers became front-cover news for American journalists, Gloria Steinem—the founding editor of Ms. magazine—wrote the following:

Make no mistake about it: Women want a men’s movement. We are literally dying for it. If you doubt that, just listen to women’s desperate testimonies of hope that the men in our lives will become more nurturing towards children, more able to talk about emotions, less hooked on a spectrum of control that extends from not listening through to violence, and [that they will become] less repressive of their own human qualities that are called “feminine.” ... Perhaps the psychic leap of twenty years ago [when feminists announced that] women can do what men can do, must now be followed by [the announcement that] men can do what women can do.1

In the years following Steinem’s exhortation, religiously-slanted men’s gatherings, such as Promise Keepers and the 1995 Million Man March, have caught the public’s eye. These are two recent additions to a North American men’s movement which now has almost as many faces as are found within feminism. It includes conservative voices who still regard the 1950’s middle-class version of family life as normative, or who feel that feminism has resulted in reverse discrimination against men in everything from job opportunities to child custody decisions. It includes men who wish to explore the more “feminine” emotions Gloria Steinem referred to, or who want to grieve the actual or psychological absence of father figures in their lives. And it includes self-consciously feminist men who campaign against pornography and male violence, and even run no-nonsense rehabilitation programs for men who abuse their partners.2

Where does the evangelically-oriented Promise Keepers movement fit into this picture? Why has it emerged at this time in North American history? What reactions has it received from cultural analysts, both secular and Christ...

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