Godly Masculinities: Gender Discourse Among the Promise Keepers

Abstract

At the peak of its prominence, the Promise Keepers had attracted criticism from many quarters. More recently, this evangelical men's movement has struggled to retain the visibility it once enjoyed. Using insights from cultural theory, I analyze a select sample of best-selling men's manuals representing various advice genres within this movement. I argue that PK gender discourses have given rise to four evangelical archetypes of godly manhood: the Rational Patriarch (traditional masculinity), the Expressive Egalitarian (men's liberationism), the Tender Warrior (poeticized manhood), and the Multicultural Man (interracial masculinity). I explore how PK luminaries utilize two rhetorical devices-discursive tacking and gendered metaphors-to rnanage the tensions and contradictions that surface within and among these discourses. These archtype enable the Promise Keepers to define themselves with reference to other new social movements. Multiple depictions of godly manhood contributed to the rapid rise of this evangelical men's movement during the 1990s, and maybe one source of its recent decline.