c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Frances Coleman is editorial page editor for the Mobile (Ala.) Register.)

UNDATED _ Warning: A “stealth political group” is prepared to descend on Washington.

That’s what the president of the National Organization for Women calls the Christian men’s group known as Promise Keepers. NOW would have you believe it hates Promise Keepers because Promise Keepers believes in the “subjugation” of women.

But here’s why NOW really hates the group: NOW has made its own set of promises over the years, many of which are in direct conflict with what Promise Keepers advocates, and most of which have turned out to be lies.

Lie No. 1: Thirty years ago, NOW members and their ilk promised liberated women could “have it all” _ career, marriage, children, social life, you name it _ with no negative consequences.

Lie No. 2: Everything that’s “unfair” about being female _ whether it’s lower pay, bearing a disproportionate burden of child care and housework, or a genetic predisposition to more body fat and less physical stamina _ is the fault of men.

Lie No. 3: Equality means sameness.

Lie No. 4: Organized religion, because its hierarchies are male-dominated, degrades women.

Lie No. 5: Marriage is OK, but divorce is a viable alternative causing no lasting damage to oneself or one’s children.

Lie No. 6: All the progress made by women in the past 30 years can be credited to NOW.

Let’s take the last lie first. The economic and social liberation of American women had been fermenting since the suffrage movement 50 years earlier. With or without NOW, three things would have ensured its ultimate flowering: an increasingly better-educated populace, changes in the economy, and the development of the birth control pill.

As for “having it all,” that’s the biggest lie of all. Take it from me.

I am and I do some of all that NOW promised modern women they could be and do. I have a demanding career, and I have a husband and two children. Either of those could be full-time pursuits, but millions of women have chosen to combine them.

The consequence of that choice, which NOW will not acknowledge, is that neither gets the full attention it demands. There are not enough hours in the day or energy in the body to work 50 or 60 hours a week and also give a husband and children everything they need.

You can either decide to do your best with the time and energy you have, which is what I do because I love both pursuits; or you can live a life of guilt, stress and confusion, deriving no real joy from either, which is what women do who accepted NOW’s lie.

Enter Promise Keepers, whose organizers exhort men to take on their full responsibilities as husbands and fathers. You’d think a women’s group would want men to fully share the burdens of marriage and parenting. But you’d be wrong. To NOW, Promise Keepers’ reliance on conservative, paternalistic, biblical notions of family structure means its members want women to be subservient _ period, end of story.

NOW’s real problem? It believes evangelical Christian men would, if they could, take women back to pre-liberation days; that Promise Keepers believes women are inferior and belong only in the home.

Promise Keepers’ view of the family is, of course, markedly different. They believe marriage is ordained by God, and works best when it is a lifetime commitment. Men and women are equals before God, but have distinct roles in the family. The Christian man’s role is to serve as the family’s loving, caring leader.

I will tell you that Promise Keepers is not my or my husband’s cup of tea, relying as it does on a very emotional sharing of spiritual beliefs. For better or for worse, we are too reserved for that. We are, however, both committed to our marriage and to our children, as well as to our jobs and other responsibilities. We are also church-goers.

We are not fools, however. NOW, on the other hand, with its decades of lies and its leader’s blatherings about a “stealth political group,” is precisely that.

MJP END COLEMAN