I preface this article by pointing out that reality is sometimes exquisitely painful. We don’t want to feel the pain, so we keep on doing the same thing as before. And in the world of politics, and even church politics, the fear of experiencing pain often results in an Abilene paradox with tremendous ongoing costs.

The purpose of this article is to help conservatives get past the pain so we can see what we did wrong – so we can set wiser spiritual and secular goals for the entire conservative Marriage Movement to follow – one that realistically predicts tangible improvements in marriage rates and longevity. We must do this. After nine years of the marriage movement, marriage and divorce statistics have not budged. This proves we have missed the mark.

A crucial historical point in the failure of the marriage movement was the mysterious collapse of Promise Keepers, which still remains unexplained to this day. Without understanding, we cannot learn, build a better foundation, and set out on a successful path. This article explains in detail why Promise Keepers collapsed, and what spiritual leaders and conservatives should pursue if they truly wish to restore the value of marriage.

The historical background: In 1990, Bill McCartney, the football coach at the University of Colorado had a dream. His vision was to fill a football stadium with thousands of men willing to commit themselves to God, to their families, and to "Christlike masculinity." The first meeting of 70 men grew to 4200 men in 1991, and had attracted about 1.2 million men to 22 stadium events around America by 1996.

In 1997, Promise Keepers organized Stand in the Gap. Eight hundred thousand men gathered on the National Mall in Washington on October 4 th, 1997 to recommit to marriage and family. Promise Keepers collapsed immediately after the rally. Within a few months, it had all but closed its main offices. I cannot recall any religious movement that has ever collapsed so definitively and mysteriously.

The collapse began with the widely-publicized article in the September-October 1997 issue of Policy Review, titled “Promise Makers”, which hit the newsstands just a few days before Stand in the Gap. This article received tremendous national attention.

Many conservatives were quietly expecting this watershed article would signal the beginnings of a real marriage movement. Instead, it was perhaps the most spectacular public display of self-deprecation witnessed in modern history.

The first few paragraphs of Bill McCartney’s National Review article were a shocking adoption of knuckle-dragging neanderthal feminist theory. It blamed men for all of society’s problems. In fact, it was so feminist I thought it could have been written by the National Organization of Women.

We will begin by analyzing the first few paragraphs of “Promise Makers”.

McCartney on America’s biggest problem: “America is suffering from a severe shortage of integrity, and men are behind some of its worst manifestations. Men are more likely than women to break their marriage vows through adultery, violence, or abandonment. Men are impregnating young women in record numbers and leaving them to deal with the consequences--a stint on welfare, an education cut short, or a trip to an abortion clinic. Men are also more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol and then engage in a wide range of criminal behavior. Indeed, it is men, overwhelmingly, who commit most of the nation's violent crimes and dominate its prison system: At least 94 percent of all inmates are male.”

Men are not more likely to break their marriages. Studies show that women emotionally terminate and also file for divorces in approximately 75% of cases. There is ample evidence in lower income groups that low-income women prefer to marry the welfare/child support system, which guarantees them income and lets them be spinsters of the modern age according to modern feminist liturgical idealogy.

Men are only slightly more likely to have extramarital affairs. The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior (1993) found that, "More than one-third of men and one-quarter of women admit having had at least one extramarital sexual experience." This relatively small statistical differential is hardly cause to place the onus for all family problems on men.

McCartney is wrong about domestic violence. A compendium of studies prove that more than half of all serious spousal altercations are initiated by the wife. Government agencies are known to misreport domestic violence statistics because they primarily collect their information from women’s agencies. There are no government programs for collecting similar information reporting female-on-male violence. In fact, Murray Strauss, who was a key player in framing early domestic violence federal policy, now speaks against it. ( http://www.dadsnow.org/studies/strauss.pdf ).

McCartney on the cause of social problems: “Social problems are moral problems, which ultimately have a spiritual cause. For those of us involved in Christian outreach programs, the connection is inescapable: The failure of large numbers of men to live up to their family and social obligations represents a failure of faith.”

Bill McCartney missed this punt by a couple of stadiums. The divorce epidemic is not a only a problem of personal morals (which particularly involve women who ascribe to convenient anti-family feminist precepts). It is predominantly a secular problem – particularly where law enforces irresponsible divorce choices by women. The marriage contract was aborted by feminists – the same feminists who regularly abort babies using the same courts and government agencies to do their bidding. The vast cultural changes have now come full-circle to undermine the church. Neither churches, conservatives, nor men asked for the divorce revolution. They were dragged into it.

We have always had moral problems. How the secular world handles them changed drastically since 1960. Before 1960, a combination of secular and religious pressure encouraged spouses to get married and to work through the common processes and problems of marriage. And we had a correspondingly-low divorce rate. Today, no-fault divorce is used to excuse feminist personal irresponsibility in marriage. Correspondingly, about three-quarters of divorces are sought by women, who receive primary custody of children and marital resources in approximately 90% of divorces and cases of illegitimacy.

McCartney on liturgical irresponsibility: “More to the point, the growing irresponsibility of men points, in large part, to a failure in our Christian churches. Men are much less likely than women to set foot in a church, less likely to say they are absolutely committed to Jesus Christ, less likely to read the Bible during the week or strongly affirm the role of religious faith in their lives. Many--perhaps most--men see church mainly as a place for women and children. A similar separation of men from religious life is to be found in non-Christian communities as well. Uninspired by any religious vision for their lives, more and more men are becoming disconnected from any moral vision.”

Theories abound about why men are dropping out of church. However, this is not an isolated issue. Men are also dropping out of education, work, and society as a whole. According to the Church of England, 61% of confirmations in the year 2000 were women. This is similar to declines in men’s participation in college – approximately 60% of incoming college freshmen in Massachusetts are women.

The root problem is the feminization of American culture. Men are not wanted in families. About half of all husbands (about 95% of them being good husbands) are thrown out of their families for no good reason whatsoever. The religions have done nothing about this.

When a man cannot be part of family, he no longer has a place in society. And when a man has no place in society, he is less likely to invest himself in work. Where churches have not strongly opposed the destruction of family, men sense there is a fundamental spiritual failing of the church. There are many very spiritual men who feel utterly abandoned by the religions. I have witnessed this myself working with thousands of good husbands discarded from society over the past eighteen years.

Churches have opposed abortion of babies with all their might. But instead of opposing abortion of families, most churches have meekly incorporated feminist culture into their practices. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 calls us to avoid the covetous and the effeminate. But have churches yet realized the full realm of spiritual guidance this passage speaks of?

It is astonishing that churches have not strongly objected to feminist usurpation of moral authority over marriage and made it a primary concern for teaching and secular work. It is perhaps as important as the issue of abortion. In fact, we would not be on the precipice of enacting same-sex marriage laws if churches had been protecting the value of heterosexual marriage all along. Scholar Bryce Christensen points out that gay marriage would probably not be an issue were it not for the weakening of marriage through no-fault divorce laws. And Peter Sprigg, of Family Research Council, points out in his new book “Outrage”, that the causes of divorce and illegitimacy must be confronted sooner or later.

McCartney on the costs of divorce: “ All of this is taking a tremendous toll on our culture. The absence of responsible men from the home is now widely regarded as the most important cause of America's social decline. If America is truly in the throes of cultural breakdown, then the shallow faith of so many men, and the kind of behavior that follows from it, has contributed to this breakdown.”

Certainly, men have contributed to the problem of husband-absence – particularly those who are either irresponsible or bought into gender-feminism themselves. This is largely are problem of feminism, not men. McCartney is entirely wrong blaming men for the havoc that radical feminists wrought on the family. In fact, this thought is tantamount to blaming blacks for their own slavery in the deep-south.

Even the most prayerful men do not stand a chance in divorce courts or situations of paternity entrapment. In fact, my experience working with men over the past 18 years shows that prayerful men who mention religious values in divorce courts are often treated quite cruelly compared with their non-religious counterparts. They are often tagged as religious zealots who shouldn’t be near a child in the secular world (I am sure I will get many emails agreeing with me about this).

The responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of the National Organization of Women, and nowhere else.

McCartney on feminism: “But here is where many feminists and others who scorn traditional virtue have it wrong: If men are a principal cause of family meltdown, crime, and racial strife, then men also are central to the solutions to those problems. What America desperately needs today is men who take responsibility for their actions, who are faithful to their families, who keep their word, even when it's difficult or costly.”

This is a very curious statement. “If” men are responsible? McCartney just said that men “are” responsible. He knows that feminists scorn traditional values, but ignores 45 years of feminist howling, misinformation, and litigation which effected anti-family laws and policies. And where feminism is unquestionably themajor problem, it makes no sense to suggest that men stripped of social standing and their incomes are in a position to do much of anything about it. It’s like sending a skinny kid into a pack of professional football players and telling him to lay them all down flat.

Abraham Lincoln did not end slavery by telling blacks to beg for freedom. He declared war on the South to ensure that blacks could pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

2 Timothy 3:6-7 teaches: “For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

Does this passage not warn us about a coming radical feminist social revolution? It seems to predict the vast amounts of misinformation propounded by a sea of feminists to fool society into blaming men for everything. The words “among them” seems to speak of both feminist men (who maintain status in feminist society by pretending that all men are somehow bad), and feminist women (who misuse sex to get what they want, as extolled in the “Vagina Monologues” and the annual “V-Day” feminist celebration). If we truly understood the meaning of this passage, would we still buy into the feminist (media) counterculture and essentially help lead women out of the family by acquiescence? If we had arrived at knowledge of the truth, would we be in this situation?.

Surprisingly, this Timothy verse is not even listed in the Promise Keepers verse index.

To the extent churches and conservatives have not regarded feminism as the primary instigator of divorce and illegitimacy, and realized the full breadth of its damage to society, we cannot know the policy issues on which we should pray for guidance on. David Limbaugh reminds us that “Democrats will never be able to gain the moral high ground if they fail to take positions congruent with the 'weightier matters of the law' (Matt. 23:23) ... To them it's more about appearances and the packaging of values than about the core beliefs supporting them ... According to Romans 13:4, governments are instituted by God to punish wrongdoers -- to protect their citizens from evil.”.

How did Bill McCartney come to believe that our cultural devolution was caused by anybody other than the National Organization of Women?

David Blankenhorn, a smooth-talking feminist policy wonk misdirected the legitimate marriage movement via an array of nice-sounding organizations. He fooled much of America into adopting feminist beliefs and liberal policy solutions. Blankenhorn was the first to definitively blame father-absence on men, as claimed in his widely-acclaimed 1995 book “Fatherless America”. It is now apparent that David Blankenhorn knew that he lied. Nine years later, and after many direct requests, he still refuses to provide a citation for this dangerous, ideological precept. When confronted, both he and his cohorts simply change the subject or attack anyone who brings the issue up.

A deeper analysis of Blankenhorn’s pivotal role in stealing the marriage movement and sending the conservative movement down a slippery liberal slope is in my previous Men’s News Daily article “Who’s Who in the Counterfeit Marriage Movement”.

It appears that Bill McCartney fell into believing the “Blankenhorn fallacy” – which had become conventional wisdom by 1996. The public nature of McCartney’s blame, and the close proximity of Promise Keepers to the burgeoning conservative “family values” movement, became a self-fulfilling prophesy that even led the Heritage Foundation and Focus on the Family to adopt radical feminist ideology and policy ideas. Everyone was (and still is) blaming men for father-absence, and most of our social problems, with not one citation of authorities to back it up.

Why Promise Keepers Collapsed:

Promise Keepers initially appeared to be a brilliant religious plan to recover the moral and lawful place of husbands in family and society. Men gravitated to join this movement in astonishing numbers. For a while I thought that a Bill McCartney was a political and spiritual genius – a potential equivalent of Dr. Martin Luther King in the marriage movement. We were all in for a big surprise.

Promise Keepers exploded into public view shortly after David Blankenhorn’s book was published in 1995. Bill McCartney’s National Review article came out only a few days before the “Stand in the Gap” rally held on October 4 th, 1997. Promise Keepers collapsed immediately after the rally was held. These points along the time-line were no accident.

Most men – even feminist men – know that something is wrong out there. The majority of egalitarian-feminist women out there know it too – they just don’t understand that the corrosive gender-feminist policies injected by the National Organization of Women into law and social policy are WMD’s compared to the innocent image of feminism that is packaged and sold by feminist activists controlling the false oracle of the media.

Most of us are probably aware that men are not wanted in the family or have at best a precarious position in it. Very few men ascribe to the idea that husbands should be domineering patriarchs (the cat-call feminists traditionally use to destroy church and marriage). Most men simply want the same right to be in the family as we have granted to women in the workplace. Most men just want to be good fathers and good husbands and live a meaningful moral and spiritual life.

But most men know this is an unlikely outcome no matter what they do. In fact, a surprising number of younger men have given up on the idea of marriage entirely. They settle for some combination of video-games, homosexuality, bisexuality, drugs, workaholism, the street hustle, or social status as a boy-toy.

Here is the reality: When a boy knows that he probably cannot grow up expecting to be a father and a husband – a stakeholder in society – he is all too likely to do something else.

This is not a liberal excuse for laziness. Most slaves did not try to escape the plantation. They did whatever they could do to survive, landless and without status in society, until Abraham Lincoln aroused a moral nation to emancipate them.

Blacks are still trying to catch up today. In fact, the one single factor preventing progress of black society today is not discrimination against blacks, it is discrimination against the black male(even within the black community). When the large majority of blacks live in broken families, and where boys are pushed out of their homes at an early age to make room for the babies their sisters have out of wedlock, blacks lack the foundation of economic and social advantages which make racial progress possible in the first place. And I have many good black men from all economic strata I have worked with over the past eighteen years who agree very strongly with me on this point.

Our problem is no longer one of organized slavery. It is one of anti-family exclusion of husbands from the institution of marriage and society. No doubt I will get many emails agreeing strongly with this point too.

This problem is widespread today. The welfare state became attractive to women of all races between 1960-1994, and our illegitimacy rates exploded. Middle and upper-class women used the divorce revolution to cash their husbands in for a check in record numbers which still stand at near record levels. But we cannot blame all our social problems on women, either. If it were legal to rob banks, could we blame bank robbers because there wasn’t any money in the bank? We must blame this problem on collective ignorance, slothful inertia, and fear of pointing out what feminism did to America.

McCartney’s article proved to be perhaps the most destructive feminist screed ever issued. 800,000 men were fooled into making a false mass confession of utter male culpability -– in the most visible political hotspot on earth. They accepted the blame for all of America’s social problems –- in-effect crucifying the other 128-million American men who were not at the National Mall that day. What they came for was to participate in a spiritual movement seeking gender reconciliation.

Professor Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen said this another way: “Promise Keepers equivocates about the nature of gender reconciliation in a way not paralleled by its consistent message on racial reconciliation. PK has made racial reconciliation a non-negotiable promise. There is no such clear and strong message when it comes to the relation between men and women.”

But the men of Promise Keepers were not stupid. An uproar of discussion began immediately, and a few generally realized what had happened. They basically realized they had been sacrificed on the altar of radical feminism (although the men I knew at the time had not quite found the words to say this so exquisitely). They wisely and quietly took their lives elsewhere en-masse beginning on October 5 th, 1997.

Dr. Ralph G. Colas’ analysis about the failure of Promise Keepers was typical of ecclesiastical inability to see the real reason why Promise Keepers failed. Dr. Colas missed the true value of an important quote Bill McCartney, “The church of Jesus Christ has been divided and a house divided cannot stand. The reason that we see a downward spiral in morality in the nation is because the men of God have not stood together.” What they all missed is that men did not stand together at “Stand In the Gap”. They hung themselves together instead.

It is not surprising that nearly all conservatives bought into the “Blankenhorn fallacy”. The problem of father-absence became a mantra for conservative politicians and churches by the end of 1993. In the heat of the national uproar fanned by “Fatherless America” and by other popular articles such as Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s eye-popping article “Dan Quayle Was Right”, nobody noticed that liberals slipped us a Mickey when they fooled us into blamed it all on men.

But we should not blame the church or conservatives either for our collective failing. Men quietly disappear from marriages in divorce courts, one at a time, and nobody sees what happened in there. It is easy to assume that men must be at fault, particularly with radical feminism powering our thinking.

How did feminists inject their Marxist agenda into mainstream conservatism? Feminists erect a straw man fabricated from the ugliest traits imaginable, enraging our natural instinct to do anything to protect the (not-weak-anymore) sex. This is the identical methodology once used by early feminists in the Ku Klux Klan to generate abject hate towards black men so we could openly discriminate against blacks while blaming them. This propaganda strategy worked then, and it still works now – the only difference is that the target has been men since 1960. We must do everything we can to walk away from proponents of the gender war so we can avoid this truly hateful and destructive way of thinking in the future. We know better than this now.

So we have it: Conservatives fell for classic gender-feminist symbolism over substance. What can we do now to get on the right track?

What Churches, Promise Keepers, and Conservatives should pursue if they wish to restore the value of marriage:

If Promise Keepers had done only four things differently it would have continued growing by leaps and bounds, and conservatives would now have a strong political advantage on social issues.

First, Promise Keepers should not have falsely blamed all of society’s problems on good men and demanded false public confessions from them. This was very destructive. Combined with the inability of Newt Gingrich to get it right, it set the Conservative social movement to enact “welfare reforms” that were little more than a bill recasting “welfare” as an “advance on child support”. Because of this misunderstanding, conservatives were completely unable to intelligently address the core factual issues and show us a positive way out of the failed American experiment. Instead, conservatives ended up in a emotional brouhaha over “values”, and suggesting a number of strange policy changes such as building more orphanages, where they were quickly annihilated on liberal territory. This turned core social issues into roadside bombs that many conservative politicians still avoid to this very day.

Secondly, we must realize the full meaning to of Promise Keepers Promise #7, which is a call to action: “A Promise Keeper is committed to influencing his world, being obedient to the Great Commandment (see Mark 12:30-31) and the Great Commission (see Matthew 28:19-20 ).” Does this not suggest we should help reclaim the church’s moral authority over marriage? Do we not have a duty to challenge government where it is wrong, and to set things right?

Third, where feminism has so clearly damaged women’s attitudes towards men and marriage, Promise Keepers would have been wise to include women as equal participants. Women are in far greater need of ongoing marriage ministering than men because they have to unwind forty-five years of deeply-ingrained radical feminist precepts from their minds.

Fourth, Promise Keepers and churches should have taken a more active role in affecting law and policy in their respective realms of work. Joel Thollander came close to hitting the target in 1997 when summed up the gravity of situation: “When the Promise Keepers deny that their moral perspective has political consequences, they are in danger of losing an important game by forfeit.” This point of wisdom came less than 30 years after Robin Morgan and the feminist movement declared war on marriage and religion: “We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.” Of course, Robin was referring to the destruction of both marriage law and religious institutions.

Here is the good news. As Promise Keepers demonstrated in 1997, there are many good men (and good women) who will not waste time embracing an ecumenical movement offering real marriage values and protection of good men from social abuse by radical feminism. When a strong and brilliant religious leader, or coalition of leaders, comes forth with a strong healing message, expecting change from secular society we will see an overwhelming response from those who are still waiting for a vessel of divine truth to come forth.

If we fail to reclaim moral authority over marriage, particularly in speaking against radical feminist culture and clearing its poisonous brambles from the minds of congregations, we will find gay marriage running rampant in the pews and streets whether we like it or not. Men will continue to avoid church. Women will be poorer for it. And our religious institutions will become weaker and weaker.

Churches must take up this call to action. It is perhaps the most important issue in the ecumenical world today. When marriage is important, abortion is not necessary. When marriage is important, gay marriage is a non-issue. When marriage is important, poverty, child abuse and a wide array of other tragic and costly social problems will naturally be healed. When marriage is important, parents share child-rearing responsibilities naturally, and their children fare much better than their counterparts in unmarried households.

As Martin Luther put it, “A lie is like a snowball. The longer it is rolled on the ground the larger it becomes.” The few of us who are truly aware of the root cause of America’s greatest problem have faith that religious institutions will have a spiritual awakening and join us in this tremendous work of divine love. We have arrived at the Truth. Let us accept it with all our hearts and move forward with courage and faith.

Some will fear this task. But the promise is clear. Politicians would not be staking their political careers on pro-life agenda without churches making it a major public issue. Abortion and gay marriage were decisive factors in the 2004 state and federal wins by conservatives. With this stimulation, politicians will unquestionably stake their futures on solid changes in social policy when religious institutions actively proposes and urges passage of legislation that expects marital responsibility and helps spouses work through the normal processes of marriage and aging, rewarding the spouse most responsible to the marriage if a divorce takes place.

My new concept of “trickle down social policy” promises substantial downstream budgetary savings by intervening positively at the source of the single problem that has cost more money than the national debt itself. A marriage of social and economic conservatives could predictably permit a balanced budget while we fight an aggressive war on terrorism. It will also partially abate the social security problem, and substantially end the problems of health care, and health insurance as well (please note the approximately 70% of Hillary Clinton’s National Health Care Reform plan was actually a welfare program for single mothers).

When we empower spouses to expect marital responsibility of each other, and when we intervene positively at the request of a spouse in troubled marriages, it will result in sweeping and long-overdue positive changes in how social services, psychologists, family-law attorneys, and even politicians work. They will be transformed from disaster-cleanup professions back to helping professions.

Will the new Promise Keepers make a comeback? Not unless something changes drastically. Promise Keepers is now a “jiggy” teen outreach movement hoping to attract teen men who do not quite yet understand the wiles of the world. It is still a missionary movement without any goal other than perhaps membership itself. Certainly, it makes no liturgical or academic sense to teach men to recommit to marriage and send them and their unhealed future wives into marriages, half of which will be led astray and be destroyed by courts. And its new president, Thomas S. Fortson, has no apparent understanding of the problem. When asked what the weakness of the first Promise Keepers movement was, he couldn’t think of anything. His strategy: go “global” (since we can’t make our numbers stateside, go overseas), and to “go deeper” (whatever that means).

Half measures availed us nothing. Let us recommit to marriage, do what we need to do, and do it right this time.

David R. Usher

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David R. Usher, “Who’s Who in the Counterfeit Marriage Movement”, Mens News Daily, November 6, 2004, FN 4,5,6; http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/u-v/usher/2004/usher110604.htm

John P. Bartkowski, “What ever happened to the Promise Keepers?”, Hartford Institute for Religious Research, Rutgers University Press, 2003; http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/research_religion_family_pksummary.html

http://www.dadsnow.org/studies/acfc-dv-handout.pdf

Church of England, Church Statistics 2000, ISBN 0 7151 8124-6

Peter Sprigg, “Outrage”, http://www.hebookservice.com/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6537&sour_cd=HEB002901

Promise Keepers, http://www.promisekeepers.org/verses.htm

David Limbaugh, http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=5740

http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/u-v/usher/2004/usher110604.htm

Professor Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, “The Promise of Promise Keepers”, Capital Commentary, The Center for Public Justice, October 13, 1997; http://www.cpjustice.org/stories/storyReader$205

Dr. Ralph G. Colas, “Promise Keepers (PK) Assembly -- Stand In the Gap", Fundamental News Service, 10/4/97 http://rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/pk/pkaccc.htm

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. “Dan Quayle Was Right.” The Atlantic Monthly (April, 1993): 47-84; http://www.audiowebman.org/love/articles/dan_quayle.htm

Kathleen M. Blee, “Women of the Klan”, University of California Press, 1991. 14-16, 21-22, 34.

Joel Thollander, The Political Character of the Promise Keepers, NeoPolitique, 1997.

Stan Guthrie, Life After ‘Mac’, Christianity Today, November 17. 2003 , http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/146/31.0.html