GOD OF OUR FATHERS

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In the spit-and-shine military town of Lawton, Okla., real men ain't supposed to cry. This is the home of Fort Sill, a U.S. Army post, where soldiers learn to kill with gun, mortar and missile, where the big boys belly up to the bar at Gertlestone's pub and down stiff shots of Jaegermeister, where the measure of a man lies partly in his ability to tuck his pain away in a place where nobody--nobody--can see it. No tears allowed in plain sight.

Yet a few miles away, in the dimly lighted sanctuary of the First Assembly of God church on a humid Thursday night, dozens of men are weeping openly in the pews, men who have come from the base, men who ain't supposed to cry unless their team has won the Super Bowl, if at all. But here they are, a more than slightly disconcerting sight, middle-age guys sobbing and hugging and professing love for one another. They admit to having broken promises, they beg forgiveness--for insensitivity, for infidelity, for abandoning their children, for racial hatred, for sins as petty as reading pornography to transgressions as heinous as abusing their wives--and they swear to be Promise Keepers--with the help of the Big Guy. As one of their hymns goes, "Oh victory in Jesus, my Savior forever."

The scene is repeated in similar small, regularly held fellowship groups around the U.S. (about 20,000 at last count) and has been displayed in spectacular proportions in stadiums across the country, last year congregating an average of 50,000 men at each of 22 sites for a total of 1.1 million souls. Male souls always, for the Promise Keepers are intent on carving God's masculine face back onto the spiritual tableau where they believe the model of divine fatherhood has eroded. The seven-year-old organization boasts annual revenues of $87 million, a two-story brick headquarters in Denver and 360 paid staff members, and it is out to retake male responsibility--and re-establish male leadership--in a country that it sees as badly detoured from a godly and natural course, falling into the snares of poverty, illegitimacy, drug abuse, juvenile delinquency and disease because American men have forsaken Christian values.

Such patriarchal fervor has already set off political alarms. Thus, as proof of their arrival on the national political scene, the Promise Keepers have attracted a dedicated group of watchdogs wary of any threat to civil liberty posed by these men who have found a very male god. There will be a lot to watch. This Saturday, Promise Keepers will bring their tears-and-revival extravaganza to Washington, in a six-hour program of worship, repentance and prayer, titled "Stand in the Gap," at the National Mall. It could rival in numbers the more than 870,000 who attended the Million Man March organized by Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. Says Promise Keepers leader and founder Bill McCartney: "Guys are gonna leave with a new resolve, saying, 'I'm gonna take responsibility, and it's gonna show up in the church, in families, in the community, in the workplace.'"