Promise Keepers is back, this time with an explicitly pro-Trump agenda.
At its “Daring Faith” rally in Tulsa, Okla., last weekend, the link between being a godly man and supporting Donald Trump was made explicit, according to various media reports. And Oklahoma’s Republican governor told the 1,500 men and boys gathered there not to worry about being called “Christian nationalists.”
Public Radio Tulsa reported: “When asked whether (Gov. Kevin) Stitt is bothered by being called a Christian nationalist, Stitt shook off the label and said he was inseparable from his faith.”
The Sooner State’s governor wasn’t the only one promoting Christian nationalism at the conference held on the campus of Oral Roberts University.
John Amanchukwu
John Amanchukwu, a conservative pastor and political activist, told the men Democrats are “a bunch of punks and perverts,” according to a report in The New York Times. Amanchukwu is affiliated with Turning Point USA, a far-right political group led by Charlie Kirk, who also was a keynote speaker at the Tulsa event.
Kirk said Democrats and the Left “want American men to be weak, put into corners, afraid of your own shadow. If men, and Christian men, start to recommit to the truths of the promises of the Bible, this country can and will be saved.”
Reporting for the Times, religion writer Ruth Graham observed: “Mr. Kirk’s speech went on to mock the concept of preferred pronouns and criticize pandemic lockdowns. He, like other speakers at the Daring Faith conference, also described the rise of transgender identities as a particular threat, raised the specter of men losing their jobs for speaking openly about their beliefs and pushed back on the concept of ‘toxic masculinity.’”
She added: “The appearance of high-profile political conservatives like Mr. Kirk at the conference is a sign that the conservative media stars that rose in the Trump era have ambitions beyond the political sphere.”
Promise Keepers began in 1990 as the passion of Bill McCartney, then head football coach at the University of Colorado Boulder. The organization gained international attention in October 1997 with a “Stand in the Gap” assembly on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., that drew about 800,000 people.
The organization continued to offer rallies and other events after that but fell out of public awareness when McCartney resigned as president in October 2003 to care for his ailing wife. It was born again in 2021 under the leadership of then President Ken Harrison, who began the explicit tilt toward Republican political affiliation. He appeared on Steve Bannon’s podcast on “Real America’s Voice” to promote a summer rally at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys.
The new Promise Keepers is not the old Promise Keepers, according to Mark DeMoss, a noted evangelical leader who previously was a spokesman for the organization. He told the Times: “It’s not the same Promise Keepers as the Promise Keepers of the ’90s.”
“Promise Keepers was launched to help men in their marriages and their families, not to elect the next president or the next Congress,” DeMoss said. “There’s no such thing as a Republican marriage or a Democratic marriage.”
In its current iteration, Promise Keepers blends pro-family messages with pro-Republican messages, as though the two are related.
The lineup of speakers for the Tulsa event included Hollywood actor Jim Caviezel, a darling of conservative evangelicals who support Trump; Kirk of Turning Point USA, which is working a national campaign to get Trump sent back to the White House; former high school football assistant coach Joseph Kennedy who took his prayer case to the U.S. Supreme Court; Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, a former Southern Baptist pastor who is a Trump apologist; Oklahoma Gov. Stitt; and a dozen other speakers lesser known outside conservative evangelical circles.
The group’s new leader is Shane Winnings, an Army veteran who became a police officer and then an itinerant evangelist. Last year, he was ordained as a minister by Messenger Fellowship, a church-like “company of leaders” based in Tennessee.
Being concerned about racial justice is old news, he told the Times: “Frankly, that’s what got Promise Keepers to begin its decline.”
Related articles:
Promise Keepers plans a stadium rally after 20 year gap, will fight liberals and LGBTQ community
Belmont says no to Promise Keepers after warning of ‘mutilated bodies’ in anti-trans post
Two other venues also have declined to host Promise Keepers events
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