The Godly Man also looks a lot like Bill McCartney, the rugged, bronzed, born-again football coach at the University of Colorado. Four years ago McCartney was seized by a vision of stadiums filled with deep-throated men chanting the praises of Jesus. The fruit of that vision is Promise Keepers, a nondenominational, multiracial organization committed to training men how to be responsible to God, to their wives and children, to their churches and to each other. Already this year Promise Keepers has filled six stadiums with a total of 234,000 disciples. In turn, the success of Promise Keepers has inspired a whole new evangelical industry: dozens of books, tapes and videos explaining how Christians can recover their true masculinity. There’s even a slick bimonthly magazine, New Man, which features advice on safe sex (“it’s called “marriage”’) and columns on fitness and finances.
For Promise Keepers, the first step in forming Godly Men is getting them away from women. At their latest weekend rally, 52,000 men – farmers in overalls, bikers with ponytails and black leather jackets, businessmen in Bermuda shorts and 300 Texans wearing fluorescent orange hunting caps – jammed Colorado’s Folsom Stadi-um last month. A Christian rock band set the mood. When the music stopped, the crowd rose to do “the wave,” shouting “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” Preacher followed preacher with messages on how to be a good father and loving husband, expressing emotion and the importance of male bonding. “We’re scoring baskets for Jesus,” declared emcee Bob Horner, an official with Campus Crusade for Christ. Then, as the band broke out with “Born to Be Wild,” evangelist Chuck Swindoll roared onto the platform astride a motorcycle to deliver a sermon on avoiding temptation. Never, he said, has he allowed himself to be alone – even at lunch – with any woman other than his wife. There was some gentle, if clunky, gender-based humor: “You know why it takes one million sperm and one egg to make a baby?” another speaker asked. “It’s because not one of those stinkers will stop and ask directions.”
The hit of the weekend was coach McCartney. Welcomed by wild cheers, he mounted the platform, surrounded by members of his football team. Suddenly the coach called for his wife, Lyndi, in order to “show ’em how the Black and Gold [his team’s colors] do it.” The crowd roared as he bent his wife over backward in a long kiss.
McCartney then launched into a rambling, Hemingway-esque speech about death, risk-taking, winning and racial harmony – all flavored with anecdotes from the Bible and sports. “We are the brotherhood,” McCartney shouted. “We’re connected. We’re going to look out for each other.” A chant filled the stadium, echoing his words. An African-American in the stands began to weep and was hugged by a tattooed white man with no shirt. Nor were they the only pair to embrace. “One guy confessed his addictions to drugs and sex to me,” said Larry Dong, 35, a real-estate broker from Phoenix, Ariz. “If my wife were here, I wouldn’t have been able to talk about things like sexual impurity.” From the podium, McCartney looked out and saw that it was good. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” he said.
This isn’t the first time that evangelicals have used athletics to turn men on to religion. At the turn of the century, evangelist Billy Sunday, a former baseball star, rallied “back-slid” Christians with robust sports metaphors. Billy Graham, who feels equally at home in a stadium and on a golf course, has assured audiences that “Jesus was the greatest athlete who ever lived.” McCartney was inspired by the 40-year-old Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
But the current men’s movement is not just another revival of muscular Christianity. As their therapeutic approach makes clear, the movement’s leaders are primarily focused on restoring ruptured relationships. “God has dictated that we answer the questions men are asking,” says Dan Schaffer, Promise Keepers’ Colorado state director. The answer may be Jesus, but the questions concern wounded egos, broken marriages, neglected children, alcohol, drugs and even incest. The movement’s rapid growth – some 150,000 local churches have tapped Promise Keepers for information – indicates that evangelicals are no less prone to sin than those they seek to save.
Boisterous stadium rallies are only the beginning for men who join the movement. Promise Keepers pledge to form small male-bonding groups when they return to their communities. Each Promise Keeper also designates a “faith partner” with whom he can share his deepest fears and secret sins on a daily basis. The purpose is to make each man “accountable” to another for keeping his promises. It takes a year for most men to develop that trust. And some never do. “I’d like to get an accountability partner, but it’s hard to find someone with my standards,” says Robert Smith, who is head deacon at First Baptist Church in Rawlins, Wyo. Wives, it appears, are the principal promise reapers. “My hus-band came home with patience, which he never had, listening and understanding,” says Madeline Cialella of Waterbury, Conn. “I give God the glory.”
Ultimately, the Christian Men’s Movement hopes to restore male leadership in the home – and in what some leaders see as increasingly feminized churches. “In Biblical times, men identified with and received their identity from the church,” argues Dan Schaffer of Promise Keepers. Jesus had his Apostles and Paul confided in traveling companions like Barnabas and Timothy. But ever since the 19th-century temperance movement, Schaffer believes, “women [have been] looked to for moral leadership” in American churches. No one at the last rally criticized the modern feminist movement. But clergymen there felt so hungry for male affirmation that McCartney called 5,000 pastors to come forward and be blessed by their lay brethren. “My grandmother was a prayin’ woman,” recalled a tearful Robert Lavala, pastor of a bikers’ church in Las Vegas. “But my granddaddy was a fishin’ man. It seems like it’s been like that forever.” The movement’s message to men is simple: following Jesus is not for women only, nor is it a spectator sport.
