Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 11:2 (Spring 1997)
Article: Women Keep Promises, Too! Or, The Christian Life Is For Both Men And Women
Author: Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

PP 11:2 (Spring 1997) p. 1

Women Keep Promises, Too!
Or, The Christian Life Is For Both Men And Women

Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

Douglas Groothuis

Rebecca Merrill Groothuis is the author of Good News for Women: A Biblical Picture of Gender Equality (Baker, 1997). Douglas Groothuis is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at Denver Seminary, and the author of seven books. This article is an expanded and updated version of an article published originally in Perspectives. August/September 1995.

People both within and without the church have been expressing amazement over the rapid growth of Promise Keepers, the Christian men’s movement that was founded by former college football coach Bill McCartney in 1990, and which drew a little over one million participants in 22 cities in 1996. Men involved in this movement are finding the inspiration to live righteously as honest and loving husbands, fathers, and friends. They are learning to take responsibility for their families, to be faithful to their wives, to care for their children, to avoid pornography, to be involved and responsible members of their churches and communities, and to regard people of other races as their equals. In all of this, Promise Keepers offers a bracing antidote to the poison of male irresponsibility that evidently has become pandemic in American society. What can one say in response but what everyone seems to have said already, namely, that PK is doing a vitally good work in the lives of many people in the church today?

Perhaps, however, we ought to express amazement not only at the size and success of Promise Keepers, but also that the idea of someone keeping his promises should be considered so revolutionary as to start a movement! Perhaps we should pause to ponder what kind of church we have become, now that many Christian men seem to require their own books, videos, magazines, Bible study guides, conferences, seminars, support groups, even their own praise and worship music in order to find the motivation to lead lives of godliness and moral virtue. Is not the problem as startling as the size and success of its purported solution?

Nevertheless, if Promise Keepers is, in fact, providing a necessary corrective to a deplorable moral lassitude among men today, then the cheers and hallelujahs we have been hearing from PK enthusiasts everywhere are quite justified. The concern that many PK leaders exhibit with respect to the need for racial reconciliation in churches and communities is especially admirable. Promise Keepers is backing up its words with some of its financial wherewithal in its cooperative effort with other charitable organizations to help rebuild African American churches in the South that have been destroyed by arson.You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
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