NEWS STORY: Hundreds of thousands gather to repent, seek religious revival

c. 1997 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ A fired-up Bill McCartney, founder of the evangelical men’s movement Promise Keepers, Saturday (Oct. 4) told one of the largest crowds to ever gather on the National Mall they must become a unified”brotherhood of believers”to make the world right with God.”The reason there is great momentum and optimism […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ A fired-up Bill McCartney, founder of the evangelical men’s movement Promise Keepers, Saturday (Oct. 4) told one of the largest crowds to ever gather on the National Mall they must become a unified”brotherhood of believers”to make the world right with God.”The reason there is great momentum and optimism is because we have been divided and a house divided cannot stand,”McCartney told several hundred thousand men jammed together on the Mall.”But now we are being reunited … this is unity with diversity, this is diversity without dissension.” The rally, three years in the making, drew men _ young and old, black and white, as well as Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans _ from across the country and around the world for six hours of prayer and praise, confession and rejoicing aimed at re-establishing male responsibility in the family and overcoming racial and sectarian divides.”We’re going to spend all eternity together,”McCartney told the vast throng of men,”but (when) we get up there we want to testify that we did it together.”Can’t no guy leave out of here a lone ranger,”he said.

Indeed, in what might prove to be one of McCartney’s more controversial remarks in a day largely free of controversy, the former University of Colorado football coach told the hundreds of thousands of men that each of them should”return home and submit to the authority of a local shepherd, a pastor.” The idea of shepherding, popular is some charismatic circles, raises hackles in other evangelical communities where it is believed to have the potential for developing cult-like mentalities.


But McCartney, citing Hebrews 13:17, said of the issue,”It’s not negotiable.” McCartney also challenged the gathered men to meet on the steps of state capitols on Jan. 1, 2000, to show evidence of having created “vibrant mens’ ministries” and to demonstrate their commitment to denominational and racial reconciliation.

“I look to the year 2000 … to mark the end of racism inside the church of Jesus Christ and then it will have a dynamic impact on society,” he said.

The mood of the unabashedly theologically conservative Christian rally, estimated to have cost the seven-year-old evangelical men’s ministry some $9 million, moved back and forth from festive rejoicing to somber repentance and confession of sins, to praise and prayer as the throngs sang old hymns and contemporary Christian choruses or clasped hands in prayerful fellowship.

The “Stand in the Gap” assembly takes its name from the biblical book of Ezekial, the visionary and apocalyptic prophet whose message was directed at the Israelite exiles in Babylon: “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none” (Ezekial 22:30, New International Version).

Speakers chastised the men for putting their personal ambitions and pleasures before God and their families and, in one of the most dramatic moments of the afternoon, were asked to take pictures of their families from their wallets and hold them as they prayed for forgiveness.

After the ceremonial opening with the blowing of the shofar, representing, officials said, the heritage of Messianic Jews _ those Jews who believe in Jesus _ and an American Indian chant, organizers structured the day around confession and prayer focusing on men’s failures before God and their families and for their contributions to religious sectarianism and racism.

“When it comes to marriage and family we have not done well,” said Bruce Fong, an associate professor at Multnomah Biblical Seminary Graduate School in Portland, Ore. “We make the same dumb mistakes.” And, he said, “two of the biggest mistakes need to end today _ no more abuse, no more abandonment!”


Throughout the day, the speakers addressed portions of the Stand in the Gap Covenant, which was repeated aloud by the men at the end of the rally. In the covenant, the men promised to recommit themselves to God.

“When faced with moral, ethical and sexual temptation, we commit to ask You for help that we might do the right thing,” the covenant says in one section.

“Where we have done little to confront the sins of sectarianism and racism, we commit to intentionally love the brotherhood of believers and to be an observable example of unity in Christ,” it says in another.

Those gathered for the rally were enthusiastic.

“It’s changed my life, it’s changed the men’s life in my church,” said Mike Klein, 43, of Red Bluffs, Calif., a member of the Church of God (Anderson, Ind.). And 14-year-old Paul Masci, a Southern Baptist and high school freshman from Atlanta, said because of Promise Keepers “a lot of people have changed.”

Joe Perry Jr. of Baltimore, carrying his 3-year-old son Joseph Micah on his shoulder, said he came to the rally “to demonstrate to my son what God not only does in my life but what he has done in others’ lives.”

Randy Phillips, president of the group, mindful of the criticism that has been leveled against Promise Keepers for allegedly seeking to subjugate women, told the dense throng as the assembly got underway:


“We have not come to demonstrate our power to influence men; we have come to display our spiritual poverty. … We have not come to exalt our gender as males; we have come to exalt the man Jesus Christ.

“No women should feel threatened by this gathering because the ground is level at the foot of the cross,” he said. “In the kingdom there is neither male nor female.”

A perfect autumn day _ sunny skies and temperatures climbing into the high 70s _ greeted the gathering of casually clad church-going men who said they were turning the stretch of public land usually peopled by tourists and bureaucrats into a Christian temple.

The mass of men so filled the Mall, stretching between the Capitol and beyond the Washington Monument and the Ellipse in front of the White House, that organizers said some 25,000 participants were caught in side streets and couldn’t get on the Mall.

Earlier, before the rally began, McCartney briefed reporters on the assembly’s goals and Promise Keepers’ plans for the future.

“This is not a march,” McCartney said in distinguishing the event from the 1995 Million Man March sponsored by the Nation of Islam. “This is a solemn assembly. … We’re coming before a holy righteous God and asking for forgiveness.”


Political causes were virtually absent, except for a smattering of posters near the Washington Monument likening abortion to the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II.

And only a handful of protesters showed up at the edge of the event. A little more than 200 demonstrators with the National Organization for Women filled a grassy corner not far from the Mall, denouncing the leaders of the movement as “wolves in sheeps’ clothing” pursuing “a right-wing agenda” in the name of the gospel and family values.

The multi-colored, multi-racial crowd represented a broad cross-section of America and was compared to the turning of the color of the leaves on the trees lining the Mall by Jack Hayford, senior pastor of the Church on the Way, Van Nuys, Calif., one of the co-emcees.

“I’m proud to be an American Indian by race, but I’m more proud to be a Christian by grace,” said Tom Claus, wearing a white headdress with blue-feather trim.

In his weekly Saturday radio address, President Clinton took note of the gathering on the Mall. He said while “there are those who have political differences” with the organization, “no one can question the sincerity of the … men who are willing to re-assume their responsibilities to their families, and to their children, and, therefore, to our future.

“Their presence here is yet another example of the nation’s understanding and attention to the need to strengthen our families,” Clinton said.


While seeking to stay clear from identifying the movement with any political agenda, McCartney acknowledged that some Christian critics were looking for proof that the movement had moved beyond changing men’s personal lives to focusing on issues of “justice.”

“They’re saying you’re having a pep rally and we haven’t seen enough fruit and that’s a sound criticism to some extent,” he said.

He defined justice as “to see the needs of others and respond to it.”

But, he said, after the Stand in the Gap rally “you ought to start seeing more fruit. … I think you’re going to see the men of God in this nation meet those needs in an unprecedented way.”

Still, officials insisted Promise Keepers harbor no political intentions.

Paul Edwards, a vice president of Promise Keepers, told an early morning TV show that the group was aimed only at men because “men are the problem and they need to fix it.”

And he said the massive assembly was aimed at the church not the government, despite its being held in the nation’s seat of power.

“This is a revival movement, not a reform movement,” Edwards said. “The issue is the heart.”


“We’re speaking primarily to the church,” he said. “It is the church that has lost its moral authority.”

Eds: Michael J. Paquette and B. Denise Hawkins contributed to this report.)

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