Bill McCartney, the founder of the Promise Keepers, repeatedly has said politics will play no role in Saturday’s giant rally of Christian men on the greensward between the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument.
But can politics lurk far from any mega-event like this religious revival meeting scheduled in the nation’s capital, the most political of American cities?
Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, and other critics of the group have just as frequently accused the Promise Keepers of having “a political agenda.”
Yet, while McCartney and other Promise Keepers officials seem as eager to publicly distance themselves from politics as Ireland is to link them to it, if history is any guide, the debate seems disingenuous, observers say.
That’s because politics and religion have been knitted together in American life since before the Revolution.
Washington, D.C., has long been viewed by many as the place where America’s moral sense gets blended into the laws of the land.
The Promise Keepers already had made something of a political impact in the nation’s capital even before their assembly. The subject of President Clinton’s weekly Saturday radio talk, a White House spokesman said Friday, “is how we can all take responsibility for raising our children and strengthening families. . . . He is going to be talking about some of the issues that they are concerned about.”
Meanwhile, members of Congress took notice as well. Some, like Sen. John Ashcroft, a Missouri Republican and possible presidential candidate, made it a point Friday to mingle with Promise Keepers.
Sen. Sam Brownback and Rep. Todd Tiarht, both Kansas Republicans, held a reception in a congressional office building for Promise Keepers from their home state.
“Whenever we have a large contingent of constituents, no matter what group they’re from, we try to host them,” said Bob Murray, Brownback’s communications director. “There’s no refreshments and no entertainment, it’s just a place for them to gather,” he said.
The Promise Keepers are only the latest in a long line of Christians who by their size, energy and commitment are likely to influence the political process.
“Throughout American history these political and religious impulses are intertwined,” said Marie Griffith, who teaches in the religion department at Northwestern University and has written a book on the Promise Keepers’ female counterparts.
“Our country is unique in having this tradition where the churches were disestablished very early, unlike in parts of Europe. But as a result of that, voluntary movements and institutions have always sought to bring religion into the political sphere in some way.”
“Politics is inevitably involved because American politics tends to have a lot of morality drip through it,” said Mark Silk, director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
“Look at drug policy and needle exchange,” he said. “There’s a lot of overlap. National moral reform tends to have political implications in this country even when in some respects it looks very individualistic and private, men assuming responsibility, and so on.”
U.S. history is filled with examples of the mixing of politics and religion.
The abolitionist movement caught fire in the early 1800s as evangelical Christians caught up in the Second Great Awakening, a major, 19th Century religious revival, became increasingly political.
Similarly the 19th Century feminist movement grew from the evangelical churches of the time.
Prohibition was essentially a religious crusade that became so politically successful that the states ratified a constitutional amendment, Silk said.
Father Charles Coughlin, the controversial “radio priest” of the 1930s and 1940s, gained a huge following before he was silenced by Roman Catholic Church officials. His use of broadcasting paved the way for clergy like Pat Robertson, who sought the presidency and founded the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group.
Griffith suggested Promise Keepers’ critics are somewhat hypocritical because they are trying to change the nation’s moral values just as McCartney’s group is. Critics like NOW and the liberal Center for Democracy, whose views she partly subscribes to, are trying to impose their vision on Americans, Griffith said. “There’s a moral dimension at the very core of what they’re trying to do.”
Even as the Promise Keepers tried to stay above the fray, other overtly political groups made it clear they viewed Promise Keepers as allies. The conservative Family Research Council took out advertisements in Washington to counter feminist charges that the men’s group was anti-women.
“We just want to encourage these guys that they’re doing a good thing,” said Gary Bauer, the council’s leader.
