Promise Keepers Today

By late 1997, Promise Keepers has become a gigantic religious force to be reckoned with on the American scene.

Here are several comments from three national journals-Time, Newsweek, and Christianity Today-on the status of Promise Keepers today. They will provide you with a glimpse of the immense size and scope that Promise Keepers has achieved in just seven years:

"By bus and train, by chartered jet and Harley, even by bicycle they came, by the hundreds of thousands, to bow down before God. And if their leader's vision is true, their journey is just beginning. It will end, believes Promise Keepers' founder Bill McCartney, in nothing less than the spiritual revival of America -perhaps of the world. Men, touched by the spirit of God, will re-create society in the image of their faith: 'You're going to see them move across the community unlike you've ever seen, and connect in ways in which they have not connected."-Newsweek, October, 13, 1997.

"Promise Keepers Stand in the Gap, the 'sacred assembly of men' in Washington, D.C., although no official tally was made, the October 4 event appeared to be the biggest D.C. gathering ever."-Christianity Today. November 17,1997. "As Musician Steve Green sang, 'Let the Walls Fall Down,' a 15-year-old messianic Jewish boy, his prayer shawl draped over his head, clasped hands with a pot-bellied baby boomer wearing an Oakland Raiders cap." -Christianity Today, November 17. 1997.

"McCartney used the event as a launching pad for two historic initiatives. First, he plans to take the PK organization and its trademark stadium events worldwide. Second, PK is calling for large gatherings of Christian men to assemble on the steps of every U.S. state capital on January I, 2000."-Christianity Today. November 17. 1997. .

"In North America, meanwhile, PK announced that 37 stadium gatherings will be held during the next two years without charge- 9 of them exclusively for pastors, both male and female." Christianity Today, November 17, 1997.

"[Promise Keepers] claims that 2.6 million men have attended its regional rallies." -Newsweek, October, 13. 1997.

"The day after Stand in the Gap, McCartney reiterated PK's expansive agenda, saying on NBC's Meet the Press, 'I believe God is showing us now that He wants us to go global. How that unfolds is anybody's guess.' "-Christianity Today. November 17. 1997.

"A Washington Post poll pegged the Stand in the Gap gathering as 80 percent white, 14 percent black, and 2 percent Asian." -Christianity Today, November 17, 1997.

"PK's massive success at Stand in the Gap has transported this men's movement from the religious margins quickly into the national debate over America's cultural destiny at the turn of the millennium."-Christianity Today, November 17. 1997.

"The seven-year-old organization boasts annual revenues of $87 million, a two-story brick headquarters in Denver and 360 paid staff members."-Time, October 6. 1997.

In [the book] Promise Keepers: The Third Wave of the American Religious Right, coauthors Alfred Ross and Lee Corkorinos, of the Center for Democracy Studies, write:

" 'In its conception and execution, Promise Keepers is one of the most sophisticated political movements the right wing has yet conjured up.' "-Time, October 6, 1997.

"Certainly, it's possible that, at some point, the [Promise Keepers'] leaders will be seduced by politics and will decide to put their massive mailing list to some partisan political use. And it's inevitable that political gurus from the far right will try to temp their flock."-Newsweek, October, 13. 1997.

"Before the final visitation of God's judgments upon the earth there will be among the people of the Lord such a revival of primitive godliness as has not been witnessed since apostolic times. .

"The enemy of souls desires to hinder this work; and before the time for such a movement shall come, he will endeavor to prevent it by introducing a counterfeit. In those churches which he can bring under his deceptive power he will make it appear that God's special blessing is poured out; there will be manifest what is thought to be great religious interest. Multitudes will exult that God is working marvelously for them, when the work is that of another spirit. Under a religious guise, Satan will seek to extend his influence over the Christian world." - Great Controversy, 464